Question Is the i7 10700K still a good option for a gaming PC?

vultusprime

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May 28, 2011
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Hi
I will be buying a new 1080p gaming PC in the near future.
AMD 5600X seemed like a good option, but considering that I would keep the new PC for at least 5 years, an 8 cores CPU looked more appealing.
Intel latest releases were a little disappointing, so I was thinking about the last generation i7 10700K.
What do you think?
 

Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
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Were you planning on trying to play at really high FPS or just something that will produce a reasonable frame rate with decent visuals?

In the first case, the 5600X might be the better option. The Zen 3 cores are going to have better IPC that will allow the frame rate to get a lot higher before the CPU becomes a bottleneck.

On the other hand, if you're not trying to go for that, I suspect that 8 cores will age a bit better over the next half decade, particularly now that consoles are offering 8 actual desktop-equivalent cores.

The other question is how soon you want to build. The 10700K isn't hard to come by right now. There's even a few good deals you can get occasionally. The 5600X on the other hand has a far more sporadic availability and will sell out again quickly when it does come into stock.

However, unless you have a GPU already, it may not be a bad idea just to postpone building at all because those are even more impossible to get your hands on without camping out websites or just dropping a lot of money to buy one from a scalper.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
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Yeah GPU supplies are awful right now. You got a budget?
I wouldn't know what sort of integrated graphics are offered with an AMD processor. But given the fact that I could only fill a cart with the GTX 1070 Mini OC that I bought four years ago for twice what I paid for it then, I'm building a machine that survives on the iGPU of an Intel processor until a sane routine equilibrium settles over the dGPU market. Oh, sure, I've got a spare GTX-970 full-length card that would hold me over, but my custom-building plan calls for a Mini card.

I'm still trying to be kind to everyone about needs with which I'm not entirely familiar. My own interests are car-racing and flight simulators. I can game in 1440 or 1080 -- either one. I only have the GTX 1070 -- that's all. And I'm only rocking a Kaby Lake 4-core i7-7700K OC'd to AVX2 toleration at 4.8Ghz.

There must be "new games" that would work better on a hexa-core like an i5-10600K. I just don't have them. I never collected action comic books or action figurines; I have to see what it's worth to me to develop skills for any particular game. But I have other things to do with my computer, and it keeps me very busy.

I've been pissy with folks suggesting that I need to buy a Comet Lake processor right away. I'm going to finish the case-preparation and other sub-projects on my Sky-and Kaby-Lake systems. Eventually I should be able to swap out the mobo, the CPU, and as necessary -- the RAM -- to still use the same cases, PSUs, drives of any and all flavors.

But right now, after replacing the original Sky- with a Kaby- for 4.8Ghz, all the other cars at Le Mans are faster, my keyboard responds the same and I have the same reaction times. It's good, but it's frustrating. Should I buy a hexa-core now to make it worse? Just kidding.

No, I'll have some bucks to drop on the RIGHT motherboard and the RIGHT [last year's] processor after I've pre-planned what I'm getting myself into and what I can get out of it.
 

moonbogg

Lifer
Jan 8, 2011
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Funny how before Ryzen 5, Intel was the best choice for "high FPS gaming". Now with Ryzen 5 out, people suggest the Intel chips that were the fastest only a few months ago are now only good enough for low FPS, casual gaming, lol. The Ryzens are faster, but even at 1080P with an RTX 3090, the difference is only a few percent and often times there's just nothing in it.
Whatever you buy to last for 5 years, go with 8 cores or more. 6 will start to gimp you by then for sure. So that means a 5800X for $450 or 10700K for $250-$300. I chose the 10700K over the 5800X since $450 is hilariously bad for 8 cores these days.
Also, notice how I had to edit this post just now to remind myself of the Intel 11 series. They are worthless for the price. If paying that much, get a 5800X. It's the only CPU in that price bracket that makes any sense at all. Otherwise, save the money and get an Intel 10 series. The i7 10850K is at a low price right now and it has 10 cores. If I were buying again right now, I'd get that.
 
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Rigg

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May 6, 2020
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Funny how before Ryzen 5, Intel was the best choice for "high FPS gaming". Now with Ryzen 5 out, people suggest the Intel chips that were the fastest only a few months ago are now only good enough for low FPS, casual gaming, lol. The Ryzens are faster, but even at 1080P with an RTX 3090, the difference is only a few percent and often times there's just nothing in it.
Whatever you buy to last for 5 years, go with 8 cores or more. 6 will start to gimp you by then for sure. So that means a 5800X for $450 or 10700K for $250-$300. I chose the 10700K over the 5800X since $450 is hilariously bad for 8 cores these days.
Also, notice how I had to edit this post just now to remind myself of the Intel 11 series. They are worthless for the price. If paying that much, get a 5800X. It's the only CPU in that price bracket that makes any sense at all. Otherwise, save the money and get an Intel 10 series. The i7 10850K is at a low price right now and it has 10 cores. If I were buying again right now, I'd get that.
I think I agree with just about everything you wrote here.

Intel 10th gen seems to be the best bang for the buck right now. Especially if Micro Center pricing is available to the perspective buyer. The 500 series motherboards are a step up in features as well. The platform cost argument for AMD has been significantly diminished with AM4 nearing end of life and 500 B/H intel boards getting memory overclocking. Really the only gamble is if PCIE gen 4 becomes a significant factor in the near future. I'm on the fence in that regard. The efficiency argument has some legs but I wouldn't really consider it a major factor in a gaming rig.

I say this as someone who has bought and sold enough Ryzen CPU's/AM4 motherboards to have lost count of how many I've owned.
 
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LikeLinus

Lifer
Jul 25, 2001
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Funny how before Ryzen 5, Intel was the best choice for "high FPS gaming". Now with Ryzen 5 out, people suggest the Intel chips that were the fastest only a few months ago are now only good enough for low FPS, casual gaming, lol. The Ryzens are faster, but even at 1080P with an RTX 3090, the difference is only a few percent and often times there's just nothing in it.
THIS, right here, It's something I've been saying for years. A lot of people here totally dismiss the Intel CPUs because they want to say Ryzen is the best (yay, you won a benchmark!). I get it, because I have them both, but that doesn't make Intel obsolete! It's a bit ridiculous, if we're being honest.

They are close enough in performance that you should pick what is within your budget and available. You won't miss the small percentage of performance.
 

vultusprime

Member
May 28, 2011
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Thank you all for the replies.
My main concern is the 6 vs 8 cores issue which is being discussed in the background over the internet.
The 5600X or the new 11600K for that matter, when tested in games they give a cpu usage of over 50% to 65%. That's fine today, but I ask myself how high will that number be when I try to play the latest triple A game in 2023-2024?
As I mentioned earlier, this new PC will be with me for at least 5 years and in that time I may consider upgrading the VGA but not the CPU.
It has been said that an 8 cores chip will give more breathing room for the future. Is that true? I don't know!
If 8 cores is the best choice, then the 10700K is the only viable option. The new 11th gen is not interesting, and Ryzen 7 5800X is too expensive.
 
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Leeea

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Apr 3, 2020
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The one thing about buying intel is be careful what mainboard you get.

The Z series, the H series, etc all perform differently with the same CPU, and sometimes run ddr memory at different speeds or disallow XMP.


In short, with the wrong mainboard you will not get the performance you see in the reviews. Do your research and know exactly what your getting. From my perspective the Intel product stack is far more confusing then AMDs.


For example, years ago I purchased a H97 board for myself, when I should have purchased a Z97 board. My H97 board allowed over clocking, but then Intel decided that was reserved for the z97 boards. Now I have to pick between a bug fixed BIOS or overclocking*. I went for the bug fixes. I also decided I will pay a premium to buy non-intel.

*the BIOS that allows overclocking will not boot win10
 
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moonbogg

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Jan 8, 2011
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Thank you all for the replies.
My main concern is the 6 vs 8 cores issue which is being discussed in the background over the internet.
The 5600X or the new 11600K for that matter, when tested in games they give a cpu usage of over 50% to 65%. That's fine today, but I ask myself how high will that number be when I try to play the latest triple A game in 2023-2024?
As I mentioned earlier, this new PC will be with me for at least 5 years and in that time I may consider upgrading the VGA but not the CPU.
It has been said that an 8 cores chip will give more breathing room for the future. Is that true? I don't know!
If 8 cores is the best choice, then the 10700K is the only viable option. The new 11th gen is not interesting, and Ryzen 7 5800X is too expensive.

Yes it's true. 6 cores will start to look more like 4 cores in future titles. There are even some current titles where the performance difference is well beyond the margin of error and is staring to tax the hyperthreading capability of the CPU with the 6 cores being saturated.
I think AMD feels it's in the position Intel was in before the Ryzen 5's came out. AMD is not in that position with regard to gaming. The Ryzen chips before the 3000 series were significantly slower than Intel chips for high-end gaming. Things improved with the 3000 series, but you were still leaving a decent chunk of performance on the table. The Intel chips are already so fast for gaming, that having an even faster AMD 5000 series chip offers little tangible gain at any practical resolution and detail settings. So AMD charges a high price for their 8 core offering since it's the fastest, but their competition is more than just good enough for gaming. Intel is still excellent. So for gamers, the high price makes much less sense while the 10 series chips are very difficult to ignore at their current low prices , even for the most high-end gaming configurations.
 

B-Riz

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Feb 15, 2011
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If you are staying with 1080P, get the 5600X and a nice but not expensive B550 and a PCIE4 X4 NVME with high IOPS.

If going with Intel, get a 10700 and board, no need to pay extra for the K model.


I would still get a 5600X right now, look at the SPEC performance on 5600X vs 10700; Zen3 is just a way better CPU than Comet Lake.


Everyone worried about 6c / 12t, i7 8700K vs 10700K; 8700K is holding its own in gaming :p

 

DrMrLordX

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Apr 27, 2000
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I wouldn't know what sort of integrated graphics are offered with an AMD processor.

No offense, but OP wants a 1080P 60+ fps rig, for which current and future iGPUs are not adequate.

If 8 cores is the best choice, then the 10700K is the only viable option. The new 11th gen is not interesting, and Ryzen 7 5800X is too expensive.

Okay so, here's the issue I (and possibly others) are driving at:

A 5800x is $449, while a 10700k is $320. If you have no intention of OCing the 5800x (and really, why would you?) you might actually save money on the board going with a 5800x and something like a B550, but before even taking that into consideration, the price delta is around $130.

What kind of video card do you expect to get if that price differential is going to make or break your budget? The dGPU is going to be the #1 greatest expense you face when building a new PC. If you want to cheap out and upgrade later, fine, but at that point you will want to avoid the 10700k since you will probably want/need PCIe4.0 in the future. I don't think you need it for a 3080 today, but for video cards 2-3 years down the road?

If you just want a gaming rig for right now, then yes, an Intel chip might save you a few dollars (before taking board into account) assuming you don't ever need to upgrade anything else in the system. If you do need to upgrade PCIe devices at some point in the future, you want either Z590 or B550 or X570 for PCIe4.0 support.
 
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krumme

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For 60hz gaming i would go for a 10850k and the throughput. It will last as long as the consoles. So 5 years plus.
For 144Hz or 280 there is no other option than to fork out for the 5600x and upgrade in 2-3 years.
A 10700 is meaningles. The multicore perf is hardly any stronger than a 5600x as shown above. And the gaming and single perf dif is big.
I think zen 4 and alderlake will be super due to new memory part, and the zen5 the same jump as zen1. I think zen5 will be a monster Mike core as amd have hinted. We will get our big fat expensive core then. I dont think amd will go up in numbers of cores for desktop but keep then zen2 policy. After 16c utility goes down the drain.
 
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ondma

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If you are staying with 1080P, get the 5600X and a nice but not expensive B550 and a PCIE4 X4 NVME with high IOPS.

If going with Intel, get a 10700 and board, no need to pay extra for the K model.


I would still get a 5600X right now, look at the SPEC performance on 5600X vs 10700; Zen3 is just a way better CPU than Comet Lake.


Everyone worried about 6c / 12t, i7 8700K vs 10700K; 8700K is holding its own in gaming :p

As I said earlier, SPEC is definitely an outlier. 10700 vs 5600x is 33% more cores, and overall IPC of Zen is certainly not 33% faster than Intel overall.
Problem with Intel is you have to get a K cpu and x90 board or be stuck with low clocked ram. That pretty much negates the price advantage.
 

SteveGrabowski

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Oct 20, 2014
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As I said earlier, SPEC is definitely an outlier. 10700 vs 5600x is 33% more cores, and overall IPC of Zen is certainly not 33% faster than Intel overall.
Problem with Intel is you have to get a K cpu and x90 board or be stuck with low clocked ram. That pretty much negates the price advantage.

Intel is allowing memory overclocking on B560 and H570 boards when paired with an i5 or better.


Didn't know you ever needed k-series cpus to OC memory. Is that something they put in for Skylake or later? Because I run OC memory (DDR3-2400) with my locked Xeon E3-1231v3, though on a Z97 board.
 

SteveGrabowski

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Also, notice how I had to edit this post just now to remind myself of the Intel 11 series. They are worthless for the price. If paying that much, get a 5800X. It's the only CPU in that price bracket that makes any sense at all. Otherwise, save the money and get an Intel 10 series. The i7 10850K is at a low price right now and it has 10 cores. If I were buying again right now, I'd get that.

i5-11400 is pretty good for $185. Outperforms the $230 R5-3600 across the board for gaming and they seem to trade blows in non-gaming tasks according to Gamers Nexus' review, though the 11400 uses a lot more power. At the high end though, god I haven't seen that kind of ridiculous cpu release since the FX-9590 or the RDRAM Pentium 4 chips that got outperformed by way cheaper Athlon XPs.
 

ondma

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Intel is allowing memory overclocking on B560 and H570 boards when paired with an i5 or better.

But that is for Rocket Lake. The discussion was about Comet Lake. Could be wrong, but I dont think you can "play it forward" and use Comet Lake in a 5xx series motherboard.
 

B-Riz

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Feb 15, 2011
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As I said earlier, SPEC is definitely an outlier. 10700 vs 5600x is 33% more cores, and overall IPC of Zen is certainly not 33% faster than Intel overall.
Problem with Intel is you have to get a K cpu and x90 board or be stuck with low clocked ram. That pretty much negates the price advantage.

I feel the SPEC tests are the best tests in AT Bench to show how "good" the CPU tech is.

So buying a better CPU now will be better long term than going with something cheaper, if one has the budget for it.

 
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will889

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Thank you all for the replies.
My main concern is the 6 vs 8 cores issue which is being discussed in the background over the internet.
The 5600X or the new 11600K for that matter, when tested in games they give a cpu usage of over 50% to 65%. That's fine today, but I ask myself how high will that number be when I try to play the latest triple A game in 2023-2024?
As I mentioned earlier, this new PC will be with me for at least 5 years and in that time I may consider upgrading the VGA but not the CPU.
It has been said that an 8 cores chip will give more breathing room for the future. Is that true? I don't know!
If 8 cores is the best choice, then the 10700K is the only viable option. The new 11th gen is not interesting, and Ryzen 7 5800X is too expensive.

I think it's really a 6c/6t CPU that would become outdated in a few years not a 6 core threaded CPU with very strong cores.
 
Nov 26, 2005
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Correct me if I am wrong but you get higher minimum fps with a faster CPU than a slower one, right? If so frame processing latency will be lower/quicker.

According to Anandtech Reviews, + my local pricing:
10700K - 8 Cores, 10700K - $269
R20 ST - 518
R20 MT - 4870

11700K - 8 Cores, 11700K - $399
R20 ST - 591
R20 Mt - 5633

5600X - 6 Cores, 5600X - $299
R20 ST - 602
R20 MT - 4440
 
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TheGiant

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Jun 12, 2017
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Correct me if I am wrong but you get higher minimum fps with a faster CPU than a slower one, right? If so frame processing latency will be lower/quicker.

According to Anandtech Reviews, + my local pricing:
10700K - 10 Cores, 10700K - $269
R20 ST - 518
R20 MT - 4870

11700K - 8 Cores, 11700K - $399
R20 ST - 591
R20 Mt - 5633

5600X - 6 Cores, 5600X - $299
R20 ST - 602
R20 MT - 4440
please
what does have a throughput benchmark, which has very low depndancy on bandwitch, latency have to do with gaming min fps
cinebench is the worst benchmark for correlation with gaming fps
 

DAPUNISHER

Super Moderator CPU Forum Mod and Elite Member
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Thank you all for the replies.
My main concern is the 6 vs 8 cores issue which is being discussed in the background over the internet.
The 5600X or the new 11600K for that matter, when tested in games they give a cpu usage of over 50% to 65%. That's fine today, but I ask myself how high will that number be when I try to play the latest triple A game in 2023-2024?
As I mentioned earlier, this new PC will be with me for at least 5 years and in that time I may consider upgrading the VGA but not the CPU.
It has been said that an 8 cores chip will give more breathing room for the future. Is that true? I don't know!
If 8 cores is the best choice, then the 10700K is the only viable option. The new 11th gen is not interesting, and Ryzen 7 5800X is too expensive.
The 5800x is not too expensive. We are just being beaten over the head by reviewers, shills, viral marketing, and manipulative math, that says it is. The rest of the builds being roughly equal in cost, if you pay $150 more and keep it 5 years, that's a $30 a year difference. That is an inconsequential amount of money, in North America anyways.

And before we return to our regularly scheduled programming; They do the same thing with GPUs. The one that really grinds my gears is the frames per dollar charts. Why the Fudge do I care what that value is, if I am getting 27 fps average at 1080p low? Am I suppose to pat myself on the back because I paid $1.50 per frame and not $4.50 per frame like that "poor sucker" playing at ultra on high refresh with buttery smooth performance? Or care that I could have been getting another 50 cents worth of frames by buying the competition's card? It is all smoke and mirrors. And like it or not, they condition us to the point where we repeat their silly rhetoric and marketing driven info to each other.

Back to our show: Buy what you want, but keep things in context. Because millions of dollars are being spent to ensure you don't.
 

ondma

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Mar 18, 2018
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The 5800x is not too expensive. We are just being beaten over the head by reviewers, shills, viral marketing, and manipulative math, that says it is. The rest of the builds being roughly equal in cost, if you pay $150 more and keep it 5 years, that's a $30 a year difference. That is an inconsequential amount of money, in North America anyways.

And before we return to our regularly scheduled programming; They do the same thing with GPUs. The one that really grinds my gears is the frames per dollar charts. Why the Fudge do I care what that value is, if I am getting 27 fps average at 1080p low? Am I suppose to pat myself on the back because I paid $1.50 per frame and not $4.50 per frame like that "poor sucker" playing at ultra on high refresh with buttery smooth performance? Or care that I could have been getting another 50 cents worth of frames by buying the competition's card? It is all smoke and mirrors. And like it or not, they condition us to the point where we repeat their silly rhetoric and marketing driven info to each other.

Back to our show: Buy what you want, but keep things in context. Because millions of dollars are being spent to ensure you don't.
I dont think that is totally fair to reviewers. Personally, 150.00 is not a lot of money to me, so I would not let the price deter me if the 5800x was the chip I wanted.

However, there *are* 2 problems with its price. First, there is only 1 sku available. Normally there is an initial model and a higher priced, slightly tweaked model comes later. The 5800x is more like the more expensive tweaked model, but there is no lower priced sku available. Secondly, the 5800x is bracketed by a cheaper 5600x with very good performance, and the 5900x which gives a lot more cores for not much more money. It is kind of academic now, though, since the 5900x has very poor availability.