Gains from upgrading a 9940X to a 14700K? (or even a 13700K)

[fxscreamer]

Like the title says, I currently have a 9940X 14-core/28 threads, but it's Skylake-X architecture (2017 tech). I have a 4070Ti and play at 1440p and 4K 144hz depending on the game. From a real world standpoint, should I notice considerable gains upgrading to something like a 14700K? (rumored 20-core October 17th release)

 

If we base it on something now, let's say a 13700K?

[Zando_]

Anything high refresh rate, yeah modern chips are going to absolutely eat Skylake-X alive. Heck, its predecessor would eat it alive if you get a sample that clocks as high, clock for clock Broadwell-E is faster in games than these Skylake-X chips, they just don't have the clock headroom so you can brute force past them (same as how Haswell-E can perform the same if running ~300Mhz higher core/200Mhz higher uncore in my experience). I run my 7980XE at 4.0GHz flat as I only have it on a 280mm AIO, so my 6950X (since sold) was actually faster in stuff like Fallout 76 that's extremely single core bound.

[fxscreamer]

3 minutes ago, Zando_ said:

Anything high refresh rate, yeah modern chips are going to absolutely eat Skylake-X alive. Heck, its predecessor would eat it alive if you get a sample that clocks as high, clock for clock Broadwell-E is faster in games than these Skylake-X chips, they just don't have the clock headroom so you can brute force past them (same as how Haswell-E can perform the same if running ~300Mhz higher core/200Mhz higher uncore in my experience). I run my 7980XE at 4.0GHz flat as I only have it on a 280mm AIO, so my 6950X (since sold) was actually faster in stuff like Fallout 76 that's extremely single core bound.

Interesting, one thing I forgot to mention is I AM overclocking at 36% from the motherboard, putting all cores at 4.1ghz, but I know that pales in comparison to modern gen chips.

[Zando_]

2 hours ago, fxscreamer said:

Interesting, one thing I forgot to mention is I AM overclocking at 36% from the motherboard, putting all cores at 4.1ghz, but I know that pales in comparison to modern gen chips.

4.0GHz vs 4.0GHz on my 7980XE vs 6950X, 6950X won in games. This isn't just me either, forget the site but some review spot ran the same 4.0GHz vs 4.0GHz on a 7900X vs 6950X (as they're both 10c chips) at X299 launch and found the same behavior. Mesh is better in productivity applications, but noticeably worse in games due to higher core-to-core latencies vs ringbus. Latency is king for gaming as you're trying to shove out frames in milliseconds, and any choking causes screen tearing or hitching to the user. You can beat it by sheer out-clocking. Same as I could match my 6950X's single core (in cinebench R20 at least, I didn't do in depth testing) when I had it running at 4.2GHz core/3.5GHz uncore, by using a 5960X running 4.5GHz core/3.7GHz uncore. Or slightly beat it, as that 5960X was a middle of the pack j-bin and did up to 4.7GHz allcore (it just wouldn't do higher than that, hit a pretty hard wall).

 

Current gen mainstream Intel chips are still ringbus (I believe some HEDT are again now too) so that low latency, unlike all the 14nm iterations they have a markedly better IPC than older chips, and on top of that they'll clock in excess of 5GHz easily. Friend's 13900K will do 6GHz on 4 of the P-cores IIRC. So they out-latency, out-IPC, and out-clock X299 chips by a wide margin.

 

I love my HEDT stuff but there's a reason I'm downsizing my collection to just X299, using said X299 as a tinkering rig and not a main one, and shooting for 13th gen as an upgrade. I'm currently using a Ryzen 3700X as a stop-gap solution, as I don't have the cooling (even with my custom loop hardware) to clock the 7980XE up much more, I could probably get 4.2 or 4.4 out of it. And the 3700X is still an improvement in games due to running 4.2-4.4GHz with PBO, and having a better IPC while doing it. I haven't looked at the latency difference though, I know ringbus is still much better than AMD's setup, but I don't know how close it is to mesh, and the difference hasn't been stark enough for me to want to test further.

[fxscreamer]

3 hours ago, Zando_ said:

4.0GHz vs 4.0GHz on my 7980XE vs 6950X, 6950X won in games. This isn't just me either, forget the site but some review spot ran the same 4.0GHz vs 4.0GHz on a 7900X vs 6950X (as they're both 10c chips) at X299 launch and found the same behavior. Mesh is better in productivity applications, but noticeably worse in games due to higher core-to-core latencies vs ringbus. Latency is king for gaming as you're trying to shove out frames in milliseconds, and any choking causes screen tearing or hitching to the user. You can beat it by sheer out-clocking. Same as I could match my 6950X's single core (in cinebench R20 at least, I didn't do in depth testing) when I had it running at 4.2GHz core/3.5GHz uncore, by using a 5960X running 4.5GHz core/3.7GHz uncore. Or slightly beat it, as that 5960X was a middle of the pack j-bin and did up to 4.7GHz allcore (it just wouldn't do higher than that, hit a pretty hard wall).

 

Current gen mainstream Intel chips are still ringbus (I believe some HEDT are again now too) so that low latency, unlike all the 14nm iterations they have a markedly better IPC than older chips, and on top of that they'll clock in excess of 5GHz easily. Friend's 13900K will do 6GHz on 4 of the P-cores IIRC. So they out-latency, out-IPC, and out-clock X299 chips by a wide margin.

 

I love my HEDT stuff but there's a reason I'm downsizing my collection to just X299, using said X299 as a tinkering rig and not a main one, and shooting for 13th gen as an upgrade. I'm currently using a Ryzen 3700X as a stop-gap solution, as I don't have the cooling (even with my custom loop hardware) to clock the 7980XE up much more, I could probably get 4.2 or 4.4 out of it. And the 3700X is still an improvement in games due to running 4.2-4.4GHz with PBO, and having a better IPC while doing it. I haven't looked at the latency difference though, I know ringbus is still much better than AMD's setup, but I don't know how close it is to mesh, and the difference hasn't been stark enough for me to want to test further.

Wow that's quite the comprehensive reply. I guess where I'm at is I use my system for Photoshop heavily with hundreds of layers in my files (easily filling 40-50GB of ram is I wanted). I also do occasional video editing, and of course.... gaming.

I guess my hope is that going to a 14700K is going to have me FEEL it. I'm hoping just using Windows 11 / Photoshop / Premiere / Gaming... it's just going to stomp on my current setup. Granted, what I have is stable AF, but I know it's getting long in the tooth. At least on paper (benchmarks) I know the gap would be staggering, but numbers aren't always everything.

[Zando_]

7 hours ago, fxscreamer said:

Wow that's quite the comprehensive reply. I guess where I'm at is I use my system for Photoshop heavily with hundreds of layers in my files (easily filling 40-50GB of ram is I wanted). I also do occasional video editing, and of course.... gaming.

I guess my hope is that going to a 14700K is going to have me FEEL it. I'm hoping just using Windows 11 / Photoshop / Premiere / Gaming... it's just going to stomp on my current setup. Granted, what I have is stable AF, but I know it's getting long in the tooth. At least on paper (benchmarks) I know the gap would be staggering, but numbers aren't always everything.

It should definitely be noticeable. Especially in anything that'll take advantage of wicked fast single core, which both your games and Photoshop will. You'll likely see both a higher and more stable framerate with a ringbus chip. Unlike my 7980XE vs 6950X, you shouldn't have to look as hard for it, as the modern chips have a much greater lead on Skylake-X.

 

If you're using Premiere for that video editing, it will benefit from QuickSync (which requires an iGPU, thus HEDT chips miss out on it) as well. Not sure how noticeable to the end user that is though.

[Slizzo]

I gained a ton of performance moving from my 10940X locked at 4.8GHz all core via MCE, to my current 7950X3D. Like 50%-80% frames in a specific game in one setting.