CPU upgrade

[chezstar]

I currently have an intel i5 9400f and want to upgrade because the workload is topping it out. Due to my motherboard I am restricted to 1151 sockets (8th or 9th gen). Should I look at i9's for around a 13% improvement or save to get a new motherboard and newer gen CPU?

[mMontana]

If your computer has more than 8gb of ram... it depends.

You have 3200mhz 32gb of ram? Switching mainboard to an AM4 mainboard and a Ryzen 5600 can bump up way more than 13% improvement, with a limited expense and a similar power budget.

With low ram, I'd suggest you to switch to a DDR5 system (mainboard, CPU, RAM)

[podkall]

Ryzen would be a decent investment

 

[podkall]

16 minutes ago, chezstar said:

the workload is topping it out

what kind of wokload?

[Kisai]

5 hours ago, chezstar said:

I currently have an intel i5 9400f and want to upgrade because the workload is topping it out. Due to my motherboard I am restricted to 1151 sockets (8th or 9th gen). Should I look at i9's for around a 13% improvement or save to get a new motherboard and newer gen CPU?

Usually a cross-upgrade on the same chipset doesn't really justify the cost.

 

Generally when you are in the market for an actual upgrade, you want to switch platforms (eg DDR4/PCIe4 to DDR5/PCIe5) to justify the cost. Otherwise most incremental upgrades aren't worth the cost when they offer trivial performance upgrades.

 

Like in general going from an i3 to i5 to i7 to i9 on the same chipset doesn't change the configuration as much as people think it does:

Note how the existing CPU has 6 cores, and is 16.8% behind the 9900KF. Where as the multithread is 48.5%. That is owing to to having 2 more cores on the 9900kf, not because the cores are maybe 16.8% faster.

 

So it will depend on your work load. If the thing you're doing is gimped mostly by the clock speed, than a 16.8% potential performance gain is not worth paying more than double for the CPU. Even considering two additional cores, that's not a guarantee of doubling the performance if your task isn't multithreaded.

 

Where as upgrading to the highest intel part in the same use case:

That is nearly 6 times the performance increase on a multithreaded task, but the single thread rating here is as much as the multithreaded one above and still 3 times better than the 9th gen upgrade.

 

Now, with all that said, these aren't quite apples to apples comparisons. Usually when you compare a game or compare a business application, the "boost/turbo speed" is only good for a few seconds in a benchmark, it's not a sustained over the entire time a real task would be run. So synthetic benchmarks can be misleading.

 

[chezstar]

Sorry I realised it maybe more helpful to list my current system in this matter: 

CPU: Intel(R) Core™ i5-9400F - 6-Core 2.90GHz, 4.10GHz Turbo - 9MB

HDD: 1TB Seagate BarraCuda SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 7200RPM Hard Drive (1 Drive)

MOTHERBOARD: Cyberpower B360M Xtreme AC: M-ATX w/ 4 RAM Slots, AC
Wi-Fi, USB 3.1, SATA3, 2x M.2

POWERSUPPLY: Cooler Master MWE 400W 80+ Power Supply (I have brought a thermaltake 600w rgb 80+ to replace this)

SSD: 240GB ADATA Ultimate SU630 2.5" SSD - 520MB/s Read / 450MB/s

VIDEO: MSI GeForce(R) GTX 1660 6GB - DX12(R), VR Ready, HDMI, DP - 3

MEMORY: 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4/3000mhz Dual Channel Memory (Corsair
Vengeance LPX w/Heat Spreader)

The workload i was referring to is from streaming games. 

I am new to all of this so any help is appreciated.