CPU Recommendations

luke127

The Ghost
Messages
868
Location
Australia
Hey guys,

I'm looking at making the upgrade to Coffee Lake, as I'll essentially be jumping 4 generations. Reason being, I'd like to get better performance on CPU heavy tasks (such as chunk generation (NOT LOADING) in minecraft).

Now, minecraft generally uses 1-2 cores, so I'm mainly interested in single core performance. I was looking at the i3 8350k as it overclocks to a minimum of 4.5 GHz easily from what I've seen. A significant majority seem to hit 4.7-4.8, and a somewhat rare few have hit 5 GHz or slightly higher.

I've currently got an i5 4460. I do a fair amount of programming during university semesters, though the majority of my PC's workload is either heavy browsing or gaming. My GPU is a GTX 1070, so I have no issues there, and I have a Samsung 850 EVO for storage, so no issues there either. Almost everything important on this build is recent, except for my CPU.

So feel free to make some recommendations. Prices should be listed in AUD, and of course making the upgrade to Coffee Lake or Ryzen will require a new mobo, CPU, and DDR4 RAM. 16GB is required.

Cheers,
Luke
 
You're looking at a website that's comprised of random numbers with no real methodology, and percentages don't always tell the number.

You're wanting single threaded numbers sure, but benchmarks don't tell the whole story because every system and what's working behind the scenes will be different. As per the percentage story, real benchmarks show in CPU load gaming, that the actual difference (give or take in favor of either OC or not) that the FPS differences are minimal. If we look here you can see that most if not all show the 8400 being within a 5fps of the 4.5GHz clocked i3. The 8400 being a 2.8GHz clocked chip. Now given our knowledge of Intel and their "architectural differences" we already know that from Sandy to Coffee there isn't much difference in terms of actual raw IPC, and IPC gains that are noted are purely from clockspeed increases rather than architectural differences. The benchmarks also show, that we're at a point in games that even that IPC difference isn't huge now. Actually, I feel you'd find that if you could overclock your current i5 to 4-4.2GHz or so performance would be similar to the i3 and i5 CL chips.

We already know that the lower clocked i5 demolishes both in productivity, so there's no need to discuss that. Also, having more cores during regular usage it'd have an advantage here too. Tbf because of how cheap it is I have been considering an i5 8400 to replace my 7700k for every day use and gaming. The i3 8350k for what it is is actually a solid damn chip, it's just priced too high IMO compared to the i5 8400 which clearly keeps up with it in gaming. As a side note, you'd find a 1600x would feel the exact same as the other two in 90% of everything even stock.
 
What about a Ryzen 1600? The 1600X is more expensive, and doesn't come with a cooler. I'm trying to save as much money as I can here, and the difference between the 8350k and the 8400 is $50 here (Which admittedly would get spent on a cooler).
 
Pretty sure both the i3 and i5 come with a cooler. The difference between the 1600 and X is XFR and some clocks. I've built two rigs with the 1600 and I was pretty impressed. Seemed just like my Intel rigs and that was before many bios updates.

I mean on paper and in truth the fastest clocked Intel would win for single thread of course, the difference being is it enough to make up for lacking in mutli-threaded work loads for you. THat's what you have to ask yourself. For every day tasks all 3 would be about equal so in the end it's up to you.
 
Personally I say cant go wrong with the Ryzen 5 1600 as its a very balanced processor for its price point.
Intel may have the numbers but AMD ryzen is very good at gaming too.
 
I ended up going with a Ryzen 1600. Should I decide to do anything with the gameplay that I occasionally record, the Ryzen processor will allow me to do video encoding and uploads significantly more efficiently than my current i5 4460 processor.
 
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