Question I7-10700KF is making me weak in the knees.

[GodisanAtheist]

Amazon has it going for $270. Paired with a ~$220 motherboard (what Z490 boards seem to be going around these days) it would be a relatively affordable way to springboard to a solid 8/16 core set-up to carry me for the next several years.

Basically everything else in the sig-rig would play it forward into the new one.

Have some concerns about putting down $500+ clams for what amounts to some extra CPU cores without any real forward looking tech, but who knows if and when any of those things (resizable BAR, PCI-E 4.0, DDR5, etc) actually become entrenched and really required for performance. By then (6-8 years down the line) I'll be ready for my new graphine chiplet based 64 core processor upgrade.

Drop in a new GPU when that market settles down and should be in good shape.

What am I missing, and why isn't everyone doing this?

 

[Mopetar]

GPUs have way too much overhead involved in their production to make this practical. They will always be (at least tied to) high-volume products. I think once the mining-boom is over, the $200~$400 market is going to show a lot of life, new and used.

We saw the same thing after the end of the last boom. A lot of discount cards hit the market and if you got one right away you could get a better deal than you normally would have.

 

[moonbogg]

Mining should be banned and the punishment should be the same as if you were caught making terroristic explosives. Send them to GITMO, melt all the keys to their cages and use the metal to make IO brackets for graphics cards with a stamp of their cell number on it. Gaming would never feel better.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Mining should be banned and the punishment should be the same as if you were caught making terroristic explosives. Send them to GITMO, melt all the keys to their cages and use the metal to make IO brackets for graphics cards with a stamp of their cell number on it. Gaming would never feel better.

Aaaaaand, back in the real world, there are companies tying together emergency services, GPS, and the Ethereum blockchain. Saving lives through mining. Imagine that.

That said, personally, I do enjoy your rants, @moonbogg , no matter how detached from reality they may be.

 

[Hulk]

All valid points but what what is going to keep this cycle from repeating and becoming the norm? At what point are 99% of the gamers completely squeezed out and throw in the towel?

Simple, the free market will prevent it. If there is money to be made due to surging demand and low supply something will happen to correct the imbalance.

What exactly is hard to predict? The market moves in unexpected ways. If the crazy margins persist with GPU's it's possible Intel could become a major player to fulfill the midrange segment either with discrete cards or by putting the 96 EU version in desktop chips. AMD is ramping up. There is always a knee-jerk overreaction to these types of market fluctuations. We'll probably see excess supply next year.

Here's another scenario. Once all the miners have their cards when the next generation of cards come out they may sell their current cards and buy the new ones. The "old" cards are still plenty fast for gaming and there could be a huge supply of cheap cards on e-bay. Now there is a continuous supply cycle, I mean once the miners have cards. It's the beginning of this new paradigm that is causing the shortages. COVID is only magnifying the effect.

 

[VirtualLarry]

What if, AMD and Intel, finally decide, when DDR5 platform gets here, to "get serious" about 1080P "Gaming APUs" (yes, I know that Intel doesn't call them "APUs"). (Maybe Intel should take a book from their "Xe" graphics architecture playbook, and call them "XPUs". Basically, Intel CPUs, paired up with powerful Xe GPU/iGPU, either on-die, or on-package, suitable for actual real-world gaming. Send the check to my Paypal, Intel.)

These "Gaming APUs", would be less likely to be used for mining / purchased by miners (I think?), because each one would require a motherboard, and essentially a whole system-build, and it wouldn't be nearly as cost-efficient, as buying cheap rig parts and risers and then spending on more-powerful GPUs for actual coin mining. Yet, would provide a PC-Gaming experience, at least (*I envision) as good as consoles would. Potentially, for similar price ranges.

Essentially, relegating actual higher-end GPUs, to "extreme enthusiast"-class gaming (4K 120Hz), or of course, coin mining.

It would also, eat away at the lowest-end GPUs, meaning, mid/low-tier 1080P "Gaming" GPUs, would go away, to be subsumed by these updated DDR5 "1080P Gaming APUs", which is fine, because those GPUs would be redundant in the market anyways, since they aren't useful for "extreme enthusiast" (4K) gaming, nor really very effective at coin mining.

TL;DR: "The future for mainstream 1080P Gaming, is DDR5 APUs
".

 

[killster1]

Didn't the CEO of Nvidia basically state at some point in the past that he envisioned GPUs / PC gaming devices as a "Luxury item, like a SuperCar"?

Maybe this current condition is bearing out some of his expectations of the market, and coming true. Maybe GPUs will be incredibly expensive devices, things that are bestowed upon 18-year-olds upon HS graduation, for their future profession and lives, by well-off middle-class families. Other families, may never know what it's like to own a GPU. Sad to say.

how do you use a computer with out a gpu? Maybe they don't game at 1440@144hz on a vrr 82" big screen but they still can game on any cpu that has built in graphics (worst case scenario right?) on a free 21" trinitron. Everything is a choice in life, spend it on cocaine, alcohol, junk food, gambling, or just save up and buy the best you can afford, this wont last forever.

 

[beginner99]

-Stuff like this is definitely giving me pause, but really thinking about it, how much of the market is going to actually have PCI-e 4.0 support... Even in 4 years?

True. It all depends how often you update. If you plan for just a couple years, then yeah it's not really a concern.

 

[scineram]

What if, AMD and Intel, finally decide, when DDR5 platform gets here, to "get serious" about 1080P "Gaming APUs" (yes, I know that Intel doesn't call them "APUs"). (Maybe Intel should take a book from their "Xe" graphics architecture playbook, and call them "XPUs". Basically, Intel CPUs, paired up with powerful Xe GPU/iGPU, either on-die, or on-package, suitable for actual real-world gaming. Send the check to my Paypal, Intel.)

These "Gaming APUs", would be less likely to be used for mining / purchased by miners (I think?), because each one would require a motherboard, and essentially a whole system-build, and it wouldn't be nearly as cost-efficient, as buying cheap rig parts and risers and then spending on more-powerful GPUs for actual coin mining. Yet, would provide a PC-Gaming experience, at least (*I envision) as good as consoles would. Potentially, for similar price ranges.

Essentially, relegating actual higher-end GPUs, to "extreme enthusiast"-class gaming (4K 120Hz), or of course, coin mining.

It would also, eat away at the lowest-end GPUs, meaning, mid/low-tier 1080P "Gaming" GPUs, would go away, to be subsumed by these updated DDR5 "1080P Gaming APUs", which is fine, because those GPUs would be redundant in the market anyways, since they aren't useful for "extreme enthusiast" (4K) gaming, nor really very effective at coin mining.

TL;DR: "The future for mainstream 1080P Gaming, is DDR5 APUs
".

Rembrandt will totally make that happen! All the things will come together in that.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Amazon has it going for $270. Paired with a ~$220 motherboard (what Z490 boards seem to be going around these days) it would be a relatively affordable way to springboard to a solid 8/16 core set-up to carry me for the next several years.

Basically everything else in the sig-rig would play it forward into the new one.

Have some concerns about putting down $500+ clams for what amounts to some extra CPU cores without any real forward looking tech, but who knows if and when any of those things (resizable BAR, PCI-E 4.0, DDR5, etc) actually become entrenched and really required for performance. By then (6-8 years down the line) I'll be ready for my new graphine chiplet based 64 core processor upgrade.

Drop in a new GPU when that market settles down and should be in good shape.

What am I missing, and why isn't everyone doing this?

Reading the thread, all the salient points have been made. But I feel like typing

It is evident that you have an admirably long upgrade cycle at 5yrs+. I surmise that means you are not focused on high refresh competitive gaming. Reading you patient gamer threads, good stuff BTW, leads me to that conclusion as well.

Obviously no one knows when you will be able to get a significant upgrade to that 980ti for anything approaching a sane price. You could take the advice to mine, and justify paying the huge markup that way, because you will get the difference back over time. Or you can hold on to your card and ride it out.

But the way I see it is, it really does not matter which way you go there. Because I would pony up for a AM4 5 series board and CPU. In regards to the newer feature set, better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it. And your 6600K should be informative about CPU choices. You went with the i5 because the gaming benches showed it was the best bang for buck at the time. But here we are in 2021 and the i7 would have aged much better, and been well worth the extra money. Particularly given how they hold value for resale. There is just no way I would let a couple of $100s savings keep me from buying a better platform, when I expect it to carry me for the next half decade or more.

I am not tired of typing yet, so wait, there's more! The Devil's Advocate in me needs to comment too.

A client gave me their old Cyberpower PC (psu and one of the GTX 780s in SLI died) when I built them a new gaming PC. X79 with i7 4820K@4.53GHz Corsair AIO, 4x4gb XPG 1600 in quad channel. I put a Xeon 2650 v2@3.5GHz and another 16GB in quad in it, because I wanted the extra threads for VMs. Messing around with it, I used a 2070 Super, and gaming on a 1440p 75Hz monitor was great. A system from 2013 can still throw down. Worse case scenario, I would just turn on Gsync compat mode, since I can even make an old turtle of an overclocked FX 6100 system with PCIE 2.0 board play most games smoothly that way.

Point being, that 10700K isn't going to suck much worse than a 5800x for gaming in 5yrs. Despite the dripping sarcasm employed, the person who pointed that out, ain't wrong. But $200 for a better Ryzen build would definitely not be a deal breaker for me given that timeframe.

TL;DR - Ryzen is the better investment. 10 series i7 is a good choice too.

 

[Ranulf]

The 10700K in this case is the best budget or midrange cpu offer out there right now especially as it has built in graphics if you need it. IMO a 19% or so IPC increase does not justify a $100 price increase to $300 for a 6C/12T cpu at this point.

 

[B-Riz]

Reading the thread, all the salient points have been made. But I feel like typing

It is evident that you have an admirably long upgrade cycle at 5yrs+. I surmise that means you are not focused on high refresh competitive gaming. Reading you patient gamer threads, good stuff BTW, leads me to that conclusion as well.

Obviously no one knows when you will be able to get a significant upgrade to that 980ti for anything approaching a sane price. You could take the advice to mine, and justify paying the huge markup that way, because you will get the difference back over time. Or you can hold on to your card and ride it out.

But the way I see it is, it really does not matter which way you go there. Because I would pony up for a AM4 5 series board and CPU. In regards to the newer feature set, better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it. And your 6600K should be informative about CPU choices. You went with the i5 because the gaming benches showed it was the best bang for buck at the time. But here we are in 2021 and the i7 would have aged much better, and been well worth the extra money. Particularly given how they hold value for resale. There is just no way I would let a couple of $100s savings keep me from buying a better platform, when I expect it to carry me for the next half decade or more.

I am not tired of typing yet, so wait, there's more! The Devil's Advocate in me needs to comment too.

A client gave me their old Cyberpower PC (psu and one of the GTX 780s in SLI died) when I built them a new gaming PC. X79 with i7 4820K@4.53GHz Corsair AIO, 4x4gb XPG 1600 in quad channel. I put a Xeon 2650 v2@3.5GHz and another 16GB in quad in it, because I wanted the extra threads for VMs. Messing around with it, I used a 2070 Super, and gaming on a 1440p 75Hz monitor was great. A system from 2013 can still throw down. Worse case scenario, I would just turn on Gsync compat mode, since I can even make an old turtle of an overclocked FX 6100 system with PCIE 2.0 board play most games smoothly that way.

Point being, that 10700K isn't going to suck much worse than a 5800x for gaming in 5yrs. Despite the dripping sarcasm employed, the person who pointed that out, ain't wrong. But $200 for a better Ryzen build would definitely not be a deal breaker for me given that timeframe.

TL;DR - Ryzen is the better investment. 10 series i7 is a good choice too.

I'm going to piggyback off of these good points and be more blunt. Anything Intel right now is a dead socket with inferior CPU's and features.

Get a B550 or X570 and 5600X, there is probably going to be one more AM4 CPU release, as the PCIE 4.0 boards offer too much value for AMD to dismiss them for immature DDR5.

Also, their past history with AM3 / AM3+ makes me think they will do something like that versus the hard Intel ripoff of new chip-sets and boards every 2 CPU releases.

A 5800X is a better CPU for the money than a 10900K; and a 5600X will be better long term than an already tapped out process Intel 10 series.

CPU 2021 Benchmarks - Compare Products on AnandTech

CPU 2021 benchmarks: Compare two products side-by-side or see a cascading list of product ratings along with our annotations.

www.anandtech.com

 

[Ranulf]

I'm going to piggyback off of these good points and be more blunt. Anything Intel right now is a dead socket with inferior CPU's and features.

Get a B550 or X570 and 5600X, there is probably going to be one more AM4 CPU release, as the PCIE 4.0 boards offer too much value for AMD to dismiss them for immature DDR5.

Also, their past history with AM3 / AM3+ makes me think they will do something like that versus the hard Intel ripoff of new chip-sets and boards every 2 CPU releases.

A 5800X is a better CPU for the money than a 10900K; and a 5600X will be better long term than an already tapped out process Intel 10 series.

CPU 2021 Benchmarks - Compare Products on AnandTech

CPU 2021 benchmarks: Compare two products side-by-side or see a cascading list of product ratings along with our annotations.

www.anandtech.com

Thats a pretty big IF there in this current supply/demand situation of chips. Its certainly possible, especially given the silly XT models AMD put out last summer, 3-4 months before the 5000 series but not something I would bet on.

You can cite the past with AM3/3+ but this isn't 2012. AMD is the top dog performance wise (mostly) and is pricing their products showing that they believe it. AMD did have to be browbeaten by public opinion to guarantee support for 5000 chips on x470 mobos so they might just want to avoid complications and move on to DDR5.

 

[moonbogg]

5800X is good, but the 10850K is $320 right now. More cores for less money or faster single thread and less cores for more money? Funny how the roles are switched at this very rare point in time. People used to say get Ryzen for more cores and good enough gaming performance for less money. Intel offers more cores and more than good enough gaming performance for less money. That's all going away though from the 11th gen on out I think. I bet Alderlake is really fast and they charge a hilarious price for it. Rocketlake won't be very fast but they will still charge a hilarious price for it.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Damn.

I managed to source a reasonably priced ATX Z490 board (MSI) that wasn't a stripped down piece of crap but now the KF increased in price on Amazon (guess other folks saw it too...) to $300.

At the end of the day I'm really splitting hairs here and the total for a board and chip is going to land in the $400-$500 range if I decide to pull the trigger (the closer to $400 the better, though as that would place things firmly in "good deal" territory).

 

[B-Riz]

5800X is good, but the 10850K is $320 right now. More cores for less money or faster single thread and less cores for more money? Funny how the roles are switched at this very rare point in time. People used to say get Ryzen for more cores and good enough gaming performance for less money. Intel offers more cores and more than good enough gaming performance for less money. That's all going away though from the 11th gen on out I think. I bet Alderlake is really fast and they charge a hilarious price for it. Rocketlake won't be very fast but they will still charge a hilarious price for it.

My link above is the AT Bench 5800X vs 10900K; barring some MT scenarios, the 5800X is far superior.

10850K should be considered a dead end option on a dead end socket and board. Intel boards have to be horribly overbuilt because of the stuck on 14nm and forced frequency boosts for performance. So an overbuilt and more expensive board vs a B550 or X570.