Help me choose between a few CPU options

[21rkosta]

Budget (including currency): Relative, though generally $200-300

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Emulation, 4k gaming on old titles, 4k modern gaming eventually,

Other details:

Existing parts: 2 x 8gb HyperX DDR4 (Not sure the speed?, will check and update), GTX 970, EVGA 650w PSU. microATX case

 

Question:

 

Looking at doing a cpu upgrade. My current cpu is a 6600k so no meaningful upgrades on the current socket. Local to a microcenter so looking mostly at their deals, open to any options that would be cheaper elsewhere.

 

Want to get others opinion on best options price to performance wise.

 

My budget is not super tight, it's more of a price to performance and price to upgradability path consideration. I would go used but used CPUs don't seem to be that good of a deal, and I've had enough motherboard hassles to know that I want a new motherboard with a warranty.

 

Upgrade Options

3600 / Gigabyte B450M DS3H - ($85 + $80 - $20): $145

5600x / Gigabyte B450M DS3H Bundle - $192.18

12400f / ASRock B760M-HDV - (160 + 90 - 20): $230

12600k/ ASRock B760M-HDV /Some CPU cooler - (170 + 90 - 20 + 20): $260

5600x3d / ASUS TUF Gaming B550 Plus / 16gb DDR4 - $299 (I already have ram but it happens to more or less match this kit so I could switch from 16gb to 32gb, I would also have to get a case but would probably pick up some cheap used thing for like $20)

 

Usecase:

Emulation is a main usecase which is why a CPU upgrade is more pertinent then GPU upgrade. Also even on games which the 970 can handle relatively fine (40-60 fps), theirs definitely some cpu-based lag especially if I have other tasks running like discord.

 

I will probably upgrade my GPU soon but figured I would wait until I actually have a list of new games I want to play (just got into gaming again so still working through the back catalog). When I do upgrade GPU it will most likely be more 4k 60hz and 1440p 60hz rather then high refresh rate gaming (my monitor is 4k/60hz). I do want to make sure I'm not missing out on any features crucial for GPU performance (resizable bar, pcie generation, etc) and will not be a bottleneck for any current gpu (probably will get something used roughly ~3080-esque but not sure yet).

 

I may use it as a general workstation in the future, if so I would benefit from the additional cores (I fairly frequently have workloads in my work that scale linearly with core count, less dependent on IPC). Though that said this is not top concern for now. The upgrade path to a higher core count cpu if necessary in the future is definitely a consideration, should I ever need to start using this machine as my primary workstation.

 

Thoughts:

 

Im currently leaning towards the intel platform just as I would have a clear upgrade path, with at least 13th gen and likely 14th gen (depending on if 14th gen supports ddr4). Not sure how much ddr4 speeds or ddr4 vs ddr5 effect performance, and if thats something I should take into consideration. 3D vcache seems interesting, and could be potentially very useful in binary translation tasks and texture upscaling of emulation.

 

If I decide against a major GPU upgrade it might be nice to have saved that extra bit for a smaller GPU upgrade (used 1080s are about $100 right now), again thought less of a strict budget more of a price to performance thing.

 

Having 4 ram slots on a motherboard might be nice to allow easier ram upgrades, though again not necessary (plus ddr4 is getting pretty cheap so I could always just get 2 x 16gb kit).

 

I probably don't plan on overclocking, maybe late stage owning the CPU to squeeze a bit of extra life out of it, but I don't want to spend the money on a nice cooler to do so.

 

As other features go, I like having integrated graphics for debugging purposes but not really necessary, same goes with dedicated bios reset button. USB C and >1GB ethernet are definitely cool to have, but I'd most likely never use them.

 

[191x7]

Out of those, the X3D. Runs the smoothest.

[Failure 101]

5600x + a GPU upgrade 

[planetary problem]

the 12600k will be the most logical i think, it wont have the highest FPS, but the E cores will handle background tasks leading to a consistent FPS (the benchmarks are done on a clean, background task less OS), and go intel, i don't remember exactly but intel has much better IPC for some specific instructions game emulation uses