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How do you justify a CPU upgrade?

S

sn2x

Joined
Apr 14, 2016
Messages
121 (0.04/day)
Back when I was on Intel I would upgrade maybe every two years or so. I always went with a K series i7 and a few years later I was always able to sell the CPU + Motherboard (and sometimes even RAM) at the same price I initially paid (or more).

This made upgrades easy, I'd sell the old parts then buy the new parts, not having to add any extra money to the equation.

I ended up buying a first gen Ryzen CPU about a year ago, 8-Cores for the low price of about $130. Zen 2 launched the middle of last year and the gains looked good, but from a pricing perspective for me it doesn't look quite as good.

Every time I think about upgrading I am hesitant by the fact that upgrading to 3rd Gen will cost me 2-3x what my current CPU is worth these days.

Looking at 3700x, an 8-Core like my current CPU, I might be able to get ~8% higher all core overclock and it is like 17% IPC gains, and I could maybe even have some PCIe 4 support if I update to a BIOS before they removed support, but I'd end up having to spend at least an extra $200 for it, which is even more than I paid for the first Gen CPU in the first place.

Feel like I might as well just stick with first gen Ryzen for the long haul...
 
true.
upgrade path is really nice but resale value on 1st/2nd gen ryzen and threadripper plunged immensely.

you ended up paying very little for the 8 core and unless you feel like it's underpowered stick to it.you can go with 3600 too.

what do you use it for ?
 
cucker tarlson said:
true.
upgrade path is really nice but resale value on 1st/2nd gen ryzen and threadripper plunged immensely.

you ended up paying very little for the 8 core and unless you feel like it's underpowered stick to it.you can go with 3600 too.

what do you use it for ?
Click to expand...

Mostly gaming(60 FPS)/web browsing with occasional video editing.

Digital Foundry did mention that some games do drop below 60 FPS on first gen Ryzen but I have a variable refresh monitor so I'm not really bothered there...
 
sn2x said:
Mostly gaming(60 FPS)/web browsing with occasional video editing.

Digital Foundry did mention that some games do drop below 60 FPS on first gen Ryzen but I have a variable refresh monitor so I'm not really bothered there...
Click to expand...
so if you got it cheap and it's still doing the job,what's the worry?
upgrade when you are bothered.by that time 3700x will undergo a price cut too.
 
I upgrade (main system) when the CPU cant do what I want it to do at a reasonable level, or I get double the performance from my current CPU, so FX -8350 to a 2700X was basically Double the Performance over all, even though I could of held off for another yr (Which I wish I did)

Other systems I just upgrade when I see the second market at a good price, like Ryzen 1st Gen and that it fits into my budget im willing to spend.
 
Might as well wait for Zen 3/Ryzen 4xx0, and see what the performance uplift amounts to over Zen 2.
 
sn2x said:
Back when I was on Intel I would upgrade maybe every two years or so. I always went with a K series i7 and a few years later I was always able to sell the CPU + Motherboard (and sometimes even RAM) at the same price I initially paid (or more).

This made upgrades easy, I'd sell the old parts then buy the new parts, not having to add any extra money to the equation.

I ended up buying a first gen Ryzen CPU about a year ago, 8-Cores for the low price of about $130. Zen 2 launched the middle of last year and the gains looked good, but from a pricing perspective for me it doesn't look quite as good.

Every time I think about upgrading I am hesitant by the fact that upgrading to 3rd Gen will cost me 2-3x what my current CPU is worth these days.

Looking at 3700x, an 8-Core like my current CPU, I might be able to get ~8% higher all core overclock and it is like 17% IPC gains, and I could maybe even have some PCIe 4 support if I update to a BIOS before they removed support, but I'd end up having to spend at least an extra $200 for it, which is even more than I paid for the first Gen CPU in the first place.

Feel like I might as well just stick with first gen Ryzen for the long haul...
Click to expand...
Whats your current CPU/board? 1700 or 1800? And the board?
B350... X370.. B450 or X470 ???
 
I keep it simple. Around every 4 years I do an entirely new build. CPU, cooler, mobo, RAM, PSU, SSD, backup HDD, case. I generally upgrade my GPU based on need so it might be sooner than 4 years but I treat the GPU as a separate issue.

Right now I have about 2 1/2 years on this build. Probably by the time my current rig is around 4 years old it will be a good idea to look at getting a 6 core 12 thread CPU but I may go with an 8 core 16 thread CPU anyway.
 
The "best" way i found it to be by buying what you want. Going home, install it, configure it and then test it, in whatever apps or games you use. If you are satisfied with the money payed and the performance keept it, if not return it to the store(provided you can do that in your country).
These days i'm debating with myself on keeping an 8600k or getting a 9700k vs an AM4 platform with either an R5 3600 or 3700x, the vote is not in, yet :)
 
Pretty much when its not enough for what I use it for which is mainly gaming but since I don't have high FPS 'standards' /don't play competitive games they last for a good while.

In my previous PC a i 3-4160 lasted me just over 3+ years and I replaced it when new games like Far Cry 5,Just Cause 3,etc maxed it out at 100% and it was a stuttery mess.

Sure sometimes I also think about upgrading for no real reason but then I think about it again and realize that no I don't need it yet.
Hopefully this 1600x will last me until 2022 or so.
 
When a part of the platform is broken and/or otherwise severely bottlenecking the GPU.
 
I think the best thing is just match the CPU with whatever task you're doing. My 9900k is a great fit for my 2080 Ti and my 3900X is a great fit for the Titan XP at 1440p for gaming a 3700X/3800X would have worked also but I found them both pretty boring and probably would have went with another 9900k if the 3900X didn't exist.

If you're running a gpu slower than a 2060/5700 you should still be fine even at 1080p although my friend who recently went from a R7 1700 at 3.9ghz with 3200Mhz ddr4 to a 3700X was getting bottlenecked in Gears 4/5, Battlefield V, COD MW multiplayer with a GTX 1080 he now has a 2080 Super though which would have been even worse.

My previous CPU a 5820k held back my Titan Xp in some games so I grabbed a 9900k at launch because at the time the only good option from AMD was a 2700X and I wasn't overly impressed with it or the X470 motherboards. I typically don't look at cost only raw performance whenever I upgrade although I will likely never spend more than $500 on a CPU.
 
like above:
we should know which graphicscard ya have then its easier to recommend
 
I upgrade when I feel the need. I ask myself a simple question : do I really need a new CPU ?
When my E6600 wasn't strong enough for my needs I switched to a 3570k. Then when I bought my 1080Ti the 3570k wasn't strong enough to make the GPU work as intended so I switched.
Now those AMD look nice but for gaming my 6700k is strong enough for my resolution. For sure I would like to have 10 cores or more but do I need those ? I don't. If I do cpu video encoding I can let the computer work at night it's not an issue.
If I had tons of money to throw I would buy a 9980XE, for fun.
Now if the CPU starts to struggle in the future I will just overclock until it dies, if it's not enough I will then consider upgrading.
I do mostly gaming on this computer so, thanks to console gaming, the computer requirements are pretty low for the time being.
The next CPU test for me will be Cyberpunk 2077 but I guess I can wait the Ampere GPU and then the intel PCI-e 4.0 (or 5.0 ?) platforms :D
 
You seem to have had a lot of luck ditching those old K series combos for good money. I've never been able to recoup my intial investment in full after using it for a while, except for a graphics card once during the mining craze. Unless you get a golden OC K series CPU, they never end up being as expensive as when you bought them. RAM can go up in price if the retail prices increase by a lot, but that hasn't happened in a while. Motherboard prices can be all over the place.
As for how I justify my upgrade decision regarding CPUs.
I upgraded to Zen 2 from my i5-4570S when that combination (with 12GB DDR3 and an NVME drive) started to struggle with my demands. VR gaming and VR videos were choppy sometimes. I wanted to try some gaming on my 4k VRR monitor and it seemed to be producing worse results than GPU benchmarks suggested (RTX 2070). I also experienced some hickups during normal application uses. For that system, I had already upgraded to 12GB from 8GB before, that made a big difference. It was "only" 12GB because I had 2x2GB DDR3 lying around and didn't want to pay for 2x4GB, at the time used DDR3 was quite expensive. I also upgraded my GTX 960 2GB to an RTX 2070 when I got my VR headset. I used a modded BIOS to run a boot NVME 1TB Samsung 960 Evo, so no bottleneck there for the system, application or games. Going from 4C/4T to 8C/16T was a big improvement. I thought about the 3600 with 6C/12T, but since I do a bit of encoding every once in a while to compress my blu ray library, I thought those extra 2 cores would come in handy and the price increase (about 120€) seemed worth it, after I paid about that much (340€) for the 4770K some years ago. Single thread performance was noticeably better, MT was no contest. When the system runs full tilt it is a bit noisier, but that was expected, since 4C/4T at 3.6GHZ on 1V (MCE and undervolt) produced next to no heat. The extra features of the board were a nice to have. I now have enough M.2 PCIe slots to run all NVME flash storage in my main rig (2TB MP510 for system, applications and games and 2TB 660p for videos, pictures and other data). That would not have been possible in my old system (I run mATX and had no more PCIe slots for extra M.2 slot adapter cards, would have needed to run a SATA cable for M.2 SATA). Going to DDR4 also meant that I would be "cheap" RAM, compared to (even) used DDR3. So I spoiled myself and got a 64GB kit, which should last for the duration of the socket. PCIe 4.0 is a going to be a feature at some point, but not right now and it was not the reason I went with an X570 motherboard. That was mostly because it was the only good mATX option with enough (high bandwidth) PCIe lanes for my M.2 SSDs and some upgradeability left. The B450M Mortar I had before could only use two M.2 PCIe slots of one M.2 PCIe slot and the x4 PCIe slot. So if I used two M.2 PCIe SSDs, only one PCIe x1 slot was available for upgrade and that only version 2.0. No B550 with at least 3.0 lanes coming from the chipset, so far.

My brother is still rocking a 6 core Phenom X6 1090T and 16GB DDR3 with a GTX 1060 and he is only just now starting to want to upgrade, because some modern games feel slow.
 
I have multiple systems so hard to fathom cpu upgrade.
I like running older systems finely tuned, so whatever might not run on one will on another.
Eventually I will get a ryzen3/threadripper.
 
I used to upgrade every few years, then the market just bored the crap out of me so I don't justify upgrades anymore, I just wait until I see something that could benefit me then span it up.
 
if you can afford it you dont need to justify it.. if the bug bites feed it..

if you cant afford it keep what you have until it no longer does what you need it to..

over the last five years (time flies) i have gone through four cpu up grades.. 4790k.. 7700k.. 8700k and now a 9900k.. my bugs seem pretty well satiated at the moment so i dont see me doing any more cpu upgrades any time soon.. the same applies to my gpus..

trog
 
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I upgrade baised on my budget and software needs. my 9600k is serving me well for now but I would like to get to 8 cores 16 threads with AVX512 or newer instruction sets eventually. though the lower the price of an item the less value it loses as it ages. since companies normally drop prices by % across a whole stack of products and $20 out of $200 is more tolerable then losing $40 of $400.
 
.....what i find works best for me is to first be real with myself. Is it a need?(rarely ever) Or do i just want it and can i comfortably afford it?(often lies to self). I often sell the old hardware first and it usually accounts to over half of the cost of the new. Add in a little overtime and.......yeah i'm no help to your situation. Enjoy life!!! As long as its not detrimental to yourself or family:D.
 
For regular use (non enthuisist gaming and office work) it's hard to justify CPU upgrades because CPU is the most over-rated and most over-recommened component this generation.

Even like 6 to 7 year old i7s are still like 3-4x faster than the CPU in the console and have plenty of threads for 90% of users.

It's actually been cringe to hear people force or over-recommened CPU upgrades when there really not need (EX: "if you upgrade your 6770k you'll go from 90 frames average to 105"........ wow big deal !!!!)
 
I want to know who your selling two year old tech to full as new price.
I have some stuff they are after here.
 
sn2x said:
Feel like I might as well just stick with first gen Ryzen for the long haul...
Click to expand...
That's what I did. Built my entire system with future plans of going w/ 3000-series, but my 1600X gets the job done so well that I've decided to keep it for as long as it lasts.
Though, lately I'm getting tempted with crazy price drops on 2700/2700X. If it drops any lower by my next birthday, I might pull the trigger and forget about 3000-series altogether.
 
Quite a few factors but the main thing being is if my current system is still performing with what i want to do with it and how long i can keep holding onto it so that the next upgrade would be an even more big step forward.

Intel didnt really innovate for a long time so 6 years with my 3930k was easy as pie. Still gamed and surfed the web pretty well. But the board gave up the ghost so i was forced to upgrade.
 
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