Need help in choosing hardware (CPU)

Drop__

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Mar 29, 2017
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Not sure what my best upgrade route is (mainly gaming). The situation/options are:

  • The new AMD 1700 + motherboard is $450(cad). Not too worried about current gaming hiccups.

    The 1600X gets released on April 11 which is a good slightly cheaper AMD option but I don't know how it compares with the 1700.

    Can get what I believe is an i7-3770K from my brother. The motherboard is about $120(cad) at the cheapest.

    Upgrade the chip in the current motherboard(lga-1150) What I've seen from preliminary searches are about $330(cad)
Not really sure what is best for long term. I don't want to upgrade and then have to do it again right away, but the older options are cheaper. Please feel free to provide whatever opinions you have on this. I'm sort of cheap/frugal, but am more than willing to shell out the money that I need to ie. I have the money.
 
Solution
I have an i7 4790 aswell, it's a very good cpu, single core performance is on par with ryzen 1600x/1800x. I run mine together with an gtx 1070 and they have been a lovely par and eat any game I throw at them. :)
So your brother will give you an i7 3770k and motherboard for 120$? If so that's a very good deal. Otherwise the 1700 won't give extra performance over the 1600x, the 1600x will even give higher performance at stock than the 1700 at stock. Also what gpu do you have?

I see you have a Lga-1150? what cpu do you currently have? You could look into an i7 4790 (used?) it's a very good processor. :)
 

mamasan2000

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What CPU do you have now?

Impossible to tell if within a year or two a quadcore will be limiting. Quadcore has been the standard for 10 years or so. Will it continue to be? I wouldn't count on it, since clockspeed isn't going up much if at all. So that could determine if you go with Intel 4 core or AMD 6-8 cores.
We haven't seen 1600X benchmarks yet, can't say much about that. Looks like it will have similar clockspeeds as Ryzen 7-series so probably similar perf.
For games so far, it is usually about clockspeed more than cores. For everything else, number of cores kill.

I would wait a couple weeks, check benchmarks and look at older benchmarks where Ryzen 7 and older Intel stuff was benchmarked. I've seen tests where a heavily overclocked i7 3770k was included. It is not such a bad chip. It's up there on the charts. But of course you would have to OC.
And that is on todays stuff. Who knows what it looks like in 1-2 years.
 

Drop__

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Mar 29, 2017
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He gave me an i7 3770Kbut looking on ebay, the cheapest lga1155 motherboard was about $120. I'm just not sure how long that would be viable or if it's better to spend that money on a new system.
Currently I have a Pentium K which is good for a few games like Rainbow Six Siege, but mainly I've been using it for school stuff. I'll search around for a i7 4790 maybe.
The 1600X seems like a good long term option and then I can have a gaming specific PC. That was my main interest.