Hello all.
As the thread title suggests, I want to upgrade my current gaming rig (i7 4970k and gtx 980) up to a rtx 2070s/2080s and just waiting on the new Intel CPU's due in November.
My concern is the new consoles next year... Am I wasting my time upgrading now or is it better to wait a little? Maybe for new RTX cards next year? I understand we don't know proper specs for ps5 or next xbox but it's not like i'm spending a small amount! I'm not exactly tech savvy but just don't want to waste a small fortune to see my rig not being able to blow away next gen consoles.
Any help would be HUGELY appreciated!
Fuck's sake this ended up long.
No CPU you can buy right now will be likely to "blow away" next generation consoles. And don't even consider buying an Intel or AMD HEDT platform for gaming - low boost clocks, high power consumption, and by the time the thread counts will matter there will be better alternatives.
Chapter 1: Now
Console games currently have access to seven threads and seven cores, and only six of each of those fully. While some PC games may benefit from more than that, any gains will be very small. Some games even benefit from having hyperthreading / SMT disabled (moving to one thread per core).
Right now, a 9900K or 3800X will be somewhere in the region of five or six times as fast as the PS4 or X1 CPU. Even a 4790k is going to be something like 2.5 ~ 3 times as fast in practice. Right now, you have no real need to upgrade unless high framerate gaming is a priority. If 60hz is your cap then you have no need to do
anything at the moment. Or even this year. Or possibly even next year: multi-gen, multi-platform games will rule the roost and if those are going to run at 30 fps on a PS4 / X1 then your 4790 should handle them fine.
Don't rush. Don't do
anything right now if you're not going beyond 60 fps.
Certainly don't blow $1500+ on a gaming PC if that's a lot of money to you. Because when software starts targeting next gen consoles on the CPU side, that's where things will change.
Chapter 2: In 2 or 3 years
With a hypothetical 8 core, Zen 2 CPU at ~3.2 gHz, that 9900k will be about 50% faster, the 3800x a little less. Probably fine to get you through the entire generation at console settings and console frame rates with added stability to boot. But if, for example, you want to take a CPU heavy console game from 30 to 60 fps, with world detail and draw distances cranked up, then that 9900k or 3800x won't cut it.
Odds are, with 8 cores and 16 HW threads available, next gen only console games (when they arrive) are going to work towards maximising the use of at least 14 HW threads (though this will take time). Hopefully, that will scale towards 16 cores in the PC space.
Socket 1151 is pretty much a dead end - a ten core chip next year, supposedly, which won't have the core count of AMD and won't have PCI-E 4 for faster SSDs to close the gap on console streaming.
AMD on the other hand has AM4, which supports up to 16 cores, PCI-E 4, and will see a next gen architecture with at the very least improved cache hierarchy for highly threaded apps (higher IPC on average). But unless games really take advantage of high thread counts (might take a long time), and start rewarding high transfer rates from PC SSDs over PCI-E 4 ... even that might not "blow consoles away".
TLR
Ride your 4790K for a while yet if you're not currently a HFR gamer - a 9900K
can't blow next gen consoles away and even a Zen 2/3 at 16 cores can
only do it when games are ready, and that might take a while.
Meanwhile, buy a good GPU if you want it and ride it hard, regardless of upgrading your CPU, mobo and main ram. The GTX 2080 is a beast, and even when its ray tracing falls behind due to it's inflexibility it'll still be a fast card that will last you a good few years.
I'm on a 4790K too. It's been great. Not a chance in hell I'm budging from this thing until more of the future has revealed itself. There is no rush.