Question Intel i5 9400 vs. i9 9900K for internet browsing and watching video streaming

Harry_Wild

Senior member
Dec 14, 2012
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To all you CPU experts here:

I have an i5-9400 CPU that I use for internet browsing like AnandTech and watching video streaming like YouTube!, Netflix. My system has 32GB of DDR4 RAM 3200 and a TI 1050 with 4GB GRDDR5. My MVME is Samsung MZVLB512HBJQ-000L7.

How much faster will upgrading to an Intel i9-9900K CPU be for my activities?

Brought this desktop tower on impulse! LOL!
 
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OlyAR15

Senior member
Oct 23, 2014
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Why even bother asking? It seems all your posts are you asking a question despite already having made up your mind, then ignoring all the replies if they don't agree with you and you end up doing whatever you want. So just do what you want and stop wasting everyone's time here.
 

Harry_Wild

Senior member
Dec 14, 2012
830
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106
Why even bother asking? It seems all your posts are you asking a question despite already having made up your mind, then ignoring all the replies if they don't agree with you and you end up doing whatever you want. So just do what you want and stop wasting everyone's time here.
Oh, that just hurt me badly that you think that of me! I just trying hard to get some opinions on this matter for myself and others that may have the same or similar questions about CPU upgrades and such! Isn't that the purpose of this forum?
 

Markfw

Moderator Emeritus, Elite Member
May 16, 2002
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Oh, that just hurt me badly that you think that of me! I just trying hard to get some opinions on this matter for myself and others that may have the same or similar questions about CPU upgrades and such! Isn't that the purpose of this forum?
BTW, you realize the 9900X is a 10 core socket 2066, and the motherboard on ebay is $200 for the cheapest, and the CPU is $600. Its a Skylake dinosaur that came out 4 years ago. Yours is a coffeelake and came out in 2019. So why would you go to OLD, obsolete, expensive hardware instead of a Ryzen or Alderlake ? And they would be less expensive !!!!

This is why you are getting these replies. And everything I just posted took 5 minutes of google time or less.
 

mindless1

Diamond Member
Aug 11, 2001
8,053
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If what you already have isn't cutting it, probably your internet connection or last leg, ISP congestion is to blame. The hardware is already more than enough.

If you were saving streaming/etc video to watch locally and wanted realtime shader effects during playback, for example a sharpening filter, then a bit newer and one tier higher nvidia card than a 1050 would help, but the video card market is still crazy high priced so even then, would be worth waiting a while... plus some monitors, especially TVs, have their own sharpening function so no need to do it on the video card at a price premium... though it's a bit fiddly to have to keep switching the sharpening level globally instead of only having it applied in the software player for video playback.
 

DaaQ

Golden Member
Dec 8, 2018
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really depends on the motherboard that you have in the prebuilt, I believe you typo'd 9900x for 9900k.

Again motherboard will determine if you will gain, if its not a Z motherboard but an H you won't be able to overclock it. I don't think.
 

UsandThem

Elite Member
May 4, 2000
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BTW, you realize the 9900X is a 10 core socket 2066, and the motherboard on ebay is $200 for the cheapest, and the CPU is $600. Its a Skylake dinosaur that came out 4 years ago. Yours is a coffeelake and came out in 2019. So why would you go to OLD, obsolete, expensive hardware instead of a Ryzen or Alderlake ? And they would be less expensive !!!!

This is why you are getting these replies. And everything I just posted took 5 minutes of google time or less.
They likely meant the 9900k based on previous posts: https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/how-fast-is-your-browser.2581196/page-10#post-40645168

Oh, that just hurt me badly that you think that of me! I just trying hard to get some opinions on this matter for myself and others that may have the same or similar questions about CPU upgrades and such! Isn't that the purpose of this forum?
Of course the discussion would be more understanding if we were talking about AAA gaming, 4k video editing, animation, etc.

But we're talking about the difference between internet browsing and YouTube videos on the same generation's i5 vs. i9, which pretty much a potato could easily do.

Anyways, in your post I linked to from Dec 2, you already decided you want to upgrade to the 9900k from your 9400, so I'm not sure why you are acting like you are undecided? Along the way, you've upgraded the PC to 32GB of RAM, and wanted to replace a $3000 4k monitor because you didn't like the bezel size, so I can only conclude you just like throwing money away. :oops:
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,339
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Anyways, in your post I linked to from Dec 2, you already decided you want to upgrade to the 9900k from your 9400, so I'm not sure why you are acting like you are undecided? Along the way, you've upgraded the PC to 32GB of RAM, and wanted to replace a $3000 4k monitor because you didn't like the bezel size, so I can only conclude you just like throwing money away.
Trust fund baby?

Edit: But @ $80 for 32GB of DDR4-3000, everyone should have 32GB. I actually upped my main PC to a 5900X and 4x16GB of DDR4-3200.
 
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Ranulf

Platinum Member
Jul 18, 2001
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To all you CPU experts here:

I have an i5-9400 CPU that I use for internet browsing like AnandTech and watching video streaming like YouTube!, Netflix. My system has 32GB of DDR4 RAM 3200 and a TI 1050 with 4GB GRDDR5. My MVME is Samsung MZVLB512HBJQ-000L7.

How much faster will upgrading to an Intel i9-9900X CPU be for my activities?

Brought this desktop tower on impulse! LOL!

It would not be faster for your activities.
 
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Asterox

Golden Member
May 15, 2012
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To all you CPU experts here:

I have an i5-9400 CPU that I use for internet browsing like AnandTech and watching video streaming like YouTube!, Netflix. My system has 32GB of DDR4 RAM 3200 and a TI 1050 with 4GB GRDDR5. My MVME is Samsung MZVLB512HBJQ-000L7.

How much faster will upgrading to an Intel i9-9900X CPU be for my activities?

Brought this desktop tower on impulse! LOL!

Your video streaming, Youtube(default is VP9) or Netflix(H265/HEVC) that is Hardware accelerated from Intel Quick Sync. Your CPU mostly resting, or you have very low CPU usage with Youtube or Netflix video playback.


Upgrade to i9 9900K, for your needs it would turn out to be completely useless.

You can try Youtube AV1 playback, but first you must change Youtube video settings to Always prefer AV1.


 
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SamMaster

Member
Jun 26, 2010
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I used to have an i5 2400 (non-k) with 8GB of RAM and it ran YouTube and Netflix just great with no slowdowns from sites save from internet speed limitations. your 9400 is leagues better than it, and for such basic uses, a 9900k is highly unnecessary. If you were gaming, working on content creation, coding, or anything CPU thread intensive, then you would see a difference, but not in your use case. Save your money, or use it for another kind of upgrade, like perhaps an NVME drive or a big HDD for backups and storage, or perhaps a BlueRay burner for archiving purposes. Not a 9900k.
 

Harry_Wild

Senior member
Dec 14, 2012
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I used to have an i5 2400 (non-k) with 8GB of RAM and it ran YouTube and Netflix just great with no slowdowns from sites save from internet speed limitations. your 9400 is leagues better than it, and for such basic uses, a 9900k is highly unnecessary. If you were gaming, working on content creation, coding, or anything CPU thread intensive, then you would see a difference, but not in your use case. Save your money, or use it for another kind of upgrade, like perhaps an NVME drive or a big HDD for backups and storage, or perhaps a BlueRay burner for archiving purposes. Not a 9900k.
I will save the $ to upgrade my other desktop to the AMD4 architecture CPU with more power and more highways lanes and DDR5 support and a new micro motherboard. Black Friday/CyberMonday sales. I did notice that Black Friday has the best prices for CPU, memory. CyberMonday had it for MVME, motherboards. LOL! No deal on GPUs yet!
 

Tech Junky

Diamond Member
Jan 27, 2022
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I did notice that Black Friday has the best prices for CPU, memory. CyberMonday had it for MVME, motherboards. LOL! No deal on GPUs yet!

Black Friday sales are just reductions from markups made prior. I did an ADL rebuild and purchased parts a week prior to BF and saved more than waiting for the "sales" to start. There were a couple of items I could have swapped though for ~$50 difference but, the overall savings wouldn't be enough to deal w/ the swapping of receipts for the $50.

If you're considering an upgrade though in general it's pointless within the same generation. Now, going from 9th gen to 12th gen opens additional options for speed. DDR5 being an option but with pricing currently being multiples of what it should be for the same performance of DDR4 it's not worth the memory upgrade. The biggest jumps though are the PCI version from Gen 3 to Gen 5 which is 4X faster for things like GPU's or other PCI gadgetry. The hybrid big/little cores also make a difference in how things are handled.

Even using the iGPU to transcode video files is more than up to the task as I use it as a DVR recording OTA and it processes files within seconds to strip commercials from them. I also use the same box as a router / WIFI / firewall / NAS and other functions. It blows away anything off the shelf for performance.
 
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UsandThem

Elite Member
May 4, 2000
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I will save the $ to upgrade my other desktop to the AMD4 architecture CPU with more power and more highways lanes and DDR5 support and a new micro motherboard.
The ATOT browsing and YouTube videos will fly with all those CPU "highways" and DDR5. Maybe you can even budget a RTX 4090ti and an Intel Optane P5800X into the future build as well! ;)