Is it worth it to upgrade the CPU?

[notPotatoe]

Hi,

I wanted to ask if it is worth upgrading my CPU from i5-9400F to anything else, I have an RTX 2060 and I don't consistantly get 144fps in some games, is upgrading the cpu even going to do much? I would gladly upgrade my GPU if it wasn't for the current state of the market...

Thanks.

[curiousmind34]

1 minute ago, notPotatoe said:

Hi,

I wanted to ask if it is worth upgrading my CPU from i5-9400F to anything else, I have an RTX 2060 and I don't consistantly get 144fps in some games, is upgrading the cpu even going to do much? I would gladly upgrade my GPU if it wasn't for the current state of the market...

Thanks.

It depends on which games you play. If you were to upgrade and you live near a micro center you can get a 9900k for 250, but if you play at higher resolutions or higher detail settings or more demanding games it might not help.

[tkitch]

check cpu usage during play and report back

[CommanderAlex]

5 minutes ago, curiousmind34 said:

It depends on which games you play. If you were to upgrade and you live near a micro center you can get a 9900k for 250, but if you play at higher resolutions or higher detail settings or more demanding games it might not help.

I agree, also, maybe OP has a Z series motherboard to get more performance out of the chip if they choose to do so. 

[curiousmind34]

1 minute ago, tkitch said:

check cpu usage during play and report back

Realistically it won't show up as 100% because it won't be multi core bottleneck, so make sure to right click the cpu chart so you see each individual core for single core bottleneck.

[notPotatoe]

5 minutes ago, curiousmind34 said:

It depends on which games you play. If you were to upgrade and you live near a micro center you can get a 9900k for 250, but if you play at higher resolutions or higher detail settings or more demanding games it might not help.

I mainly play fps games like CoD or Apex at 1080p but CoD struggles and Apex has common dips in performance. I unfortunately don't live in the US, so no micro center for me

[notPotatoe]

2 minutes ago, SpiderMan said:

I agree, also, maybe OP has a Z series motherboard to get more performance out of the chip if they choose to do so. 

Unfortunetly I've got a B360I motherboard, it was a prebuild so didn't have much of a say in it.

[curiousmind34]

2 minutes ago, notPotatoe said:

I mainly play fps games like CoD or Apex at 1080p but CoD struggles and Apex has common dips in performance. I unfortunately don't live in the US, so no micro center for me

A CPU upgrade likely could help you, try looking at pcpartpicker for the price of 9900k or 9900 or 9900kf. If they are reasonably priced, you should get one. Your board does not support overclocking anyway so a 9900 or 9900f could be good if its cheaper than the 9900k.

[notPotatoe]

3 minutes ago, curiousmind34 said:

A CPU upgrade likely could help you, try looking at pcpartpicker for the price of 9900k or 9900 or 9900kf. If they are reasonably priced, you should get one. Your board does not support overclocking anyway so a 9900 or 9900f could be good if its cheaper than the 9900k.

A price of a new 9900 is $361 and 9900K is $392 where I am.

[tkitch]

Just now, notPotatoe said:

A price of a new 9900 is $361 and 9900K is $392 where I am.

you need to find out how loaded your CPU is during gaming.  If you're pretty steadily over 85-90%?  And upgrade would probably make a visible difference.

If you're hitting GPU caps?  then it won't make much difference. 

[curiousmind34]

2 minutes ago, notPotatoe said:

A price of a new 9900 is $361 and 9900K is $392 where I am.

might be a bit steep but not that bad compared a 3700x, so I might buy the 9900. But you should wait for other people's opinions before you go out and just buy.

[notPotatoe]

4 minutes ago, tkitch said:

you need to find out how loaded your CPU is during gaming.  If you're pretty steadily over 85-90%?  And upgrade would probably make a visible difference.

If you're hitting GPU caps?  then it won't make much difference. 

Yea it is basically at 90-100% when playing Apex

[tkitch]

then yes, upping your CPU power will make a visible difference for you!

 

If you can get a decent CPU upgrade price, go for it

[notPotatoe]

Just now, tkitch said:

then yes, upping your CPU power will make a visible difference for you!

 

If you can get a decent CPU upgrade price, go for it

Thanks for the tips! Unless something changes, will probably upgrade in the near future.

[notPotatoe]

18 minutes ago, curiousmind34 said:

might be a bit steep but not that bad compared a 3700x, so I might buy the 9900. But you should wait for other people's opinions before you go out and just buy.

Also, a quick question, are the temps on the 9900 enough to handle by the (I think) stock intel cooler I have?

[curiousmind34]

Just now, notPotatoe said:

Also, a quick question, are the temps on the 9900 enough to handle by the (I think) stock intel cooler I have?

Yes, it is not a k series cpu, so it has the same TDP

[notPotatoe]

1 minute ago, curiousmind34 said:

Yes, it is not a k series cpu, so it has the same TDP

Sure, thanks.

[notPotatoe]

Ok, after a bit of thinking and looking around, wouldn't it be more worth it to buy a 9700? Seems like they're pretty similar, aside of the HyperThreading capabilities of the 9900, or are there other benefits I don't see?

[-rascal-]

4 hours ago, notPotatoe said:

Ok, after a bit of thinking and looking around, wouldn't it be more worth it to buy a 9700? Seems like they're pretty similar, aside of the HyperThreading capabilities of the 9900, or are there other benefits I don't see?

 

Right for the 9th Gen CPUs, the difference between the i7 and i9 is Hyper-Threading (i.e. 2-thread per core vs 1-thread per core).

From what I can find, at least for Apex Legends, i7-9700 (K) and i9-9900(K) performance are the same.

The extra threads on the i9-9900(K) vs the i7-9700(K) does not yield more performance.