Question i7 7700k to i7 12700k worth it ?

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pcslookout

Lifer
Mar 18, 2007
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Mainly for gaming but maybe some Virtual Machines too.


Edit: Thanks everyone got one for $200 brand new!
 
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coercitiv

Diamond Member
Jan 24, 2014
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i want to keep everything in my rig but i think i'm going to need a new cooler because of mount holes compatibility.
Check for availability of adapters from Noctua in your region, you'll be looking for this: NM-i17xx-MP83. More info about their socket 1700 support here, including conditions for ordering one for free. Personally I ended up ordering the adapter kit for my NH-D14 directly from Noctua, since the adapter isn't readily available in my region.

You should also know that Asus has double mounting holes on their budget boards, so the old socket coolers will technically fit, although you'll have to decide whether the slightly lower package height will affect mounting pressure / cooling performance.
 
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ondma

Platinum Member
Mar 18, 2018
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There are many games that have difficulty with 4 cores these days. 8700k has 6 cores, I'd argue it performs quite a bit better than the 7700K in gaming and especially virtual machines.
Yea, I would think the gameplay would be a lot smoother with the specified upgrade. I had a quad without hyperthreading and the hitching was terrible. Hyperthreading would help of course, but 4 cores is marginal these days for gaming. Upgraded to 8700k and it is smooth as butter. Of course, that was with Witcher 3. Perhaps if the poster is playing only older games, he wont see much difference.

Edit: I am extremely glad that AL is competitive now, but why not consider 5600x/5800x?
 

pcslookout

Lifer
Mar 18, 2007
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Yea, I would think the gameplay would be a lot smoother with the specified upgrade. I had a quad without hyperthreading and the hitching was terrible. Hyperthreading would help of course, but 4 cores is marginal these days for gaming. Upgraded to 8700k and it is smooth as butter. Of course, that was with Witcher 3. Perhaps if the poster is playing only older games, he wont see much difference.

Edit: I am extremely glad that AL is competitive now, but why not consider 5600x/5800x?

amd 5600x/5800x maybe. What about the amd 5900x ?
 

Markfw

Moderator Emeritus, Elite Member
May 16, 2002
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Is it better than a i7 12700kc ?
In everything but gaming, then its close. But its better in multithreaded things. Its really close, so you have to decide which is more important to YOU. I think the 12700kc also take a little more power, the socket is a little harder to cool (1700 that it), and the motherboards are a little more.
 
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pcslookout

Lifer
Mar 18, 2007
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In everything but gaming, then its close. But its better in multithreaded things. Its really close, so you have to decide which is more important to YOU. I think the 12700kc also take a little more power, the socket is a little harder to cool (1700 that it), and the motherboards are a little more.

Would this cool a 12700kc ok ?


I need a small heatsink for a reason sorry.

Can explain why if needed.
 

tamz_msc

Diamond Member
Jan 5, 2017
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According to Noctua, it should be OK. As long as you don't overclock and have good airflow, that cooler should fit your needs.

On Newegg, the difference between the 12700K and 12700KF is $5. Considering the price difference, I'd take the -K version. You never know when you are in need of a spare GPU, and integrated graphics is nice to have as a backup.
 

Rayman30

Member
Mar 7, 2019
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Normally I would ask for exact use case, but honestly going from a 7700K to a 12800K is going to benefit everything you do, I cannot comment on subjective value, but I will say its a significant jump in performance across the board objectively.

But for gaming specifically, its only going to be a slight gain in FPS at 4K, a moderate jump at 1440P and a significant jump at 1080P. But, where you are likely to see the biggest gains are .01% and .1% lows, frame timings will be much better resulting in smoother overall gameplay.

I would not hesitate to make that upgrade, its likely the last CPU upgrade you will need for a long time.
 

epsilon84

Golden Member
Aug 29, 2010
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How much of a performance bump ?

This is the specs of my current system

i7 7700k
32 GB of DDR4 ram
2 TB NVMe SSD
4 TB 7200 rpm Hard Drive
EVGA Geforce GTX 2060 super

I'm gonna go against the grain here and say that your current system is actually pretty well rounded, considering the class of GPU. Sure, you might be a bit CPU limited in some modern games, an overclock (if you haven't already) in the 4.7 - 5.0GHz range would help a bit.

When you actually go and upgrade your GPU, would be the time to pull the trigger on a CPU upgrade as well. As it stands, I think you might be disappointed with the gains you'll get from a 12700K, at least from a gaming sense. The 2060S would become a big bottleneck IMO, unless you intend to play BF 2042 which really needs a 6 core or better CPU for smooth gameplay. For everything else that is CPU heavy, the 12700K will be literally 2-3 times as fast.
 
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Shmee

Memory & Storage, Graphics Cards Mod Elite Member
Super Moderator
Sep 13, 2008
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I'm gonna go against the grain here and say that your current system is actually pretty well rounded, considering the class of GPU. Sure, you might be a bit CPU limited in some modern games, an overclock (if you haven't already) in the 4.7 - 5.0GHz range would help a bit.

When you actually go and upgrade your GPU, would be the time to pull the trigger on a CPU upgrade as well. As it stands, I think you might be disappointed with the gains you'll get from a 12700K, at least from a gaming sense. The 2060S would become a big bottleneck IMO, unless you intend to play BF 2042 which really needs a 6 core or better CPU for smooth gameplay. For everything else that is CPU heavy, the 12700K will be literally 2-3 times as fast.
This is a very good point. While Alder Lake would be a big upgrade, depending on games played and your resolution, you may be largely GPU bottlenecked. What resolution do you game at?

It may be wiser to either get a better GPU along with a CPU upgrade of some sort (5800X/5900X are good options along with Alder Lake), or wait till you can upgrade both if budget does not currently permit.

EDIT: It looks like you play at 2560x1440? While I don't know about Planet coaster, most modern games will want more GPU power at this point for that resolution.
 
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Jul 27, 2020
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I wish I could find a YouTube video of performance on Planet Coaster with a i7 12700k at 2k or more resolution.
I have a 3900X and while I don't have any parks with 5000+ guests, The largest park that I've made is around 4000~

The game is heavily, heavily CPU restricted and upgrading from my 1700 to a 3900X was a massive increase in performance. At 4000 guests at 4k resolution I'm steady at around 30FPS, All 24 threads are being used and my CPU usage is about 50%.
The FPS seems tied to a single thread for whatever reason, so IPC is king for keeping framerates higher - though having more threads makes the game way, way smoother and more stable, especially when you have a bajillion objects.

I'm sure that the difference from a 7700k to a 5600 would be pretty substantial.

If that guy is to be believed, Alder Lake is your best bet since it has the best single threaded IPC at the moment.
 
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Timorous

Golden Member
Oct 27, 2008
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Games like Planet Coaster are heavily CPU-bound especially with a lot of objects on screen. 7700K to 12700K is a 60% increase in theoretical single threaded performance. You should be seeing substantial gains.

That was what I was thinking.

Lots of those kinds of games, Cities Sky lines. Paradox Grand Strategy etc are all very limited in their threading so you ideally want a few really beefy cores and that is something ADL has.

Such a shame those kinds of games are not tested and when they are it is just useless FPS metrics. Who cares about that when what matters is tic rate late game which is what makes the end game in those kinds of titles such a slog.
 

Ed1

Senior member
Jan 8, 2001
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I went from a 3570k@4.6ghz with a GTX970 to a 12600k with 970 (same GPU for now).
As was posted above it really depends on a lot of things and the games you play. what res do you play is the monitor 60, 120, 144hz ? all these thing will matter as to the performance.

I will give one brief example though, I like BF titles, starting with BF4 on old system I would run Vsync off with a frame cap of 120, worked great.
Then BF1 came out and that frame cap had to be moved down to 75 to feel smooth.
Then BFV came out and things changed a lot, the CPU% would run into 85-96% and this would make input moves in gameplay not smooth an laggy, this forced me to use a frame cap now of only 60 which didn't fix totally but was ok.

With 12600k I don't need a frame cap and gameplay is very smooth with good mouse response, frame still varies a bit but around 75-85 avg.

So it greatly depends on the game.
 
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ondma

Platinum Member
Mar 18, 2018
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I'm gonna go against the grain here and say that your current system is actually pretty well rounded, considering the class of GPU. Sure, you might be a bit CPU limited in some modern games, an overclock (if you haven't already) in the 4.7 - 5.0GHz range would help a bit.

When you actually go and upgrade your GPU, would be the time to pull the trigger on a CPU upgrade as well. As it stands, I think you might be disappointed with the gains you'll get from a 12700K, at least from a gaming sense. The 2060S would become a big bottleneck IMO, unless you intend to play BF 2042 which really needs a 6 core or better CPU for smooth gameplay. For everything else that is CPU heavy, the 12700K will be literally 2-3 times as fast.
I understand what you are saying. However, my experience was the opposite. I have a 1060 6gb and upgraded from an i5 2300 to an 8700k. I found a huge increase in smoothness in cpu intensive games with the CPU upgrade. Of course the 7700 k has hyperthreading and is faster than the 2300, but the 2060 is also about 2x faster than my gpu. I guess bottom line, is if the OP is seeing smooth gameplay in the games he plays, a cpu upgrade might not be useful. But if he is having stuttering or hitching, a cpu upgrade would most likely solve the problem, even if it didnt increase frame rates per se.
 

DAPUNISHER

Super Moderator CPU Forum Mod and Elite Member
Super Moderator
Aug 22, 2001
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I only play games like Planet Coaster.

Doubt it would help 10 to 20 fps increase on minimum fps there at 1440p but you never know.
I did a quick search and it seems like crazy big and complex parks in Planet Coaster are CPU killers. The guy in the vid below, went from your CPU to a 5900x, it made an enormous difference. He already had a 3090, but I suspect you will see significant improvement from a 5 series or 12th gen setup even with a 2060Super. 7th gen is aging like milk; ditch it is my advice.

 

maddogmcgee

Senior member
Apr 20, 2015
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Yeah most of the advice on here about GPU bottle necking was from people who play shooters and things I think. For sims its all about the cpu, with single core performance on the primary thread super important. A fast cpu is not about playing above 60fps, its about extending the time you can keep playing before it becomes a stuttering mess (well under 30fps). Although many of these games can use a large amount of Vram after mods as well.....even something as ancient as Skylines needs 8gb with mods (from memory).
 

epsilon84

Golden Member
Aug 29, 2010
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Yeah most of the advice on here about GPU bottle necking was from people who play shooters and things I think. For sims its all about the cpu, with single core performance on the primary thread super important. A fast cpu is not about playing above 60fps, its about extending the time you can keep playing before it becomes a stuttering mess (well under 30fps). Although many of these games can use a large amount of Vram after mods as well.....even something as ancient as Skylines needs 8gb with mods (from memory).

How much faster is a 12700K in single thread compared to a 7700K? Considering you can overclock a 7700K to 4.8-5.0 without too much difficulty, so the 7700K can essentially wipe out the clock speed deficit, which brings things down to IPC improvements from Skylake to Alder Lake.

Are we talking about a 20-25% IPC improvement? Or am I severely underestimating the 12700K here?
 

epsilon84

Golden Member
Aug 29, 2010
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I understand what you are saying. However, my experience was the opposite. I have a 1060 6gb and upgraded from an i5 2300 to an 8700k. I found a huge increase in smoothness in cpu intensive games with the CPU upgrade. Of course the 7700 k has hyperthreading and is faster than the 2300, but the 2060 is also about 2x faster than my gpu. I guess bottom line, is if the OP is seeing smooth gameplay in the games he plays, a cpu upgrade might not be useful. But if he is having stuttering or hitching, a cpu upgrade would most likely solve the problem, even if it didnt increase frame rates per se.

With all due respect, a 7700K is a lot more relevant to modern gaming (at acceptable frame rates) than an i5 2300, which lacks clockspeed AND threads (plus IPC). I do see your point, and I'm sure you would have seen a huge difference from your own upgrade. I just don't think you can really compare the 2 because, generally speaking, a low clocked 4C/4T CPU would struggle to maintain 60fps in any moderately CPU intensive game, whereas I'm sure a 7700K is still more than capable of that feat. It just won't hit those blazing high fps like current gen CPUs, but again it all boils down to what GPU you pair it with, and whether the game is more CPU or GPU bound.

I'm not familiar with the game that the OP plays, but i would only suggest upgrading to a 12700K if he is severely CPU bottlenecked on a 7700K.

Generally speaking, a highly clocked 4C/8T CPU like a 7700K can generally still keep up with a 2060 class GPU in all but the most CPU bound titles.
 
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Jul 27, 2020
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How much faster is a 12700K in single thread compared to a 7700K? Considering you can overclock a 7700K to 4.8-5.0 without too much difficulty, so the 7700K can essentially wipe out the clock speed deficit, which brings things down to IPC improvements from Skylake to Alder Lake.

Are we talking about a 20-25% IPC improvement? Or am I severely underestimating the 12700K here?

With a relatively big overclock to 5.1GHz, at least for the 7700K, the CPU ends up at 12.2 seconds for a turn time reduction of 5% over the stock 7700K. The overclocked result puts it around the 8700K stock CPU, at 12.5 seconds, and not distant from the 8600K at 5GHz, which benefits from a few additional physical cores and some architectural advancements.

Looks like the overclock won't help the 7700K. It's pretty weak.
 
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