i5 8400 with GTX 1060 6GB or Ryzen 5 1400 with GTX 1070 8GB

i5 8400 with GTX 1060 6GB (1200€) or Ryzen 5 1400 with GTX 1070 8GB (1300€)?

  • i5 8400 with GTX 1060 6GB

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spirit

Moderator
Staff member
Having just skim-read this thread and the long old AM4 vs Intel (whatever they're on now... 1151?) and 1060 vs 1070 vs something in the future debate, I have to say I've always been of the mindset that you should get what is best today. The exception is if you know that something is coming out next week which you know it's going to totally obsolete anything around today - which in this case is quite unlikely! It has had happened a few times in the past 10 years but somehow I don't really see the next generation of GPUs absolutely sending the current ones into oblivion.

Intel has changed their socket a lot of times in the past 8 or so years, going from 1156 to 1155 and then to 1150 and 1151 (I think that order is correct), but truth be told I am using an i7 3770K from 2012 and don't feel the need to upgrade. To be fair, this setup is using DDR3 RAM so if I were going to upgrade at this stage I'd want a new motherboard and DDR4 RAM. AMD has also introduced several different sockets since 2010 for their high-end platforms, namely AM3, AM3+ and AM4 but have had backwards compatibility on their side. AM3+ lasted for about 5 or 6 years simply because AMD withdrew from the performance market for a few years - what's to say that AM4 wouldn't have come sooner than it did had AMD remained competitive with Intel between about 2013 and 2016 and we'd be looking at AM4+ or AM5 now? We don't know how long AM4 is going to stick around for or if their next socket will be compatible with AM4. Does it really matter that much at the end of the day? Chances are the Ryzen CPUs are good enough now to last you for a long time before you're going to need to upgrade, by which point you'll be looking for a new board anyway for some other reason or new must-have feature. I wonder how long I'll stay on LGA 1155 for.

The point is that you should probably get the GTX 1070 since right now it is better than the 1060 and if that means getting a Ryzen 5 rather than i5 then do it. I haven't looked thoroughly into it all as have been out of the loop for a little while but from what I gather they're pretty similar and as others have said, it's the graphics card that is key here. Get the best GPU you can afford and put the CPU second - but still get a decent one. For years we used to say an i5 with an NVIDIA GTX x80 card or AMD HD xx70 card (e.g. 5870, 6970, 7970 etc) was better than an i7 with a GTX x70 or an HD xx50 card. Technology changes so quickly that if you keep on waiting for the 'next big thing' then you'll be waiting forever rather than spending that time enjoying your system and playing your games. Also, just because something becomes previous generation doesn't immediately render it obsolete!
 

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
Having just skim-read this thread and the long old AM4 vs Intel (whatever they're on now... 1151?) and 1060 vs 1070 vs something in the future debate, I have to say I've always been of the mindset that you should get what is best today. The exception is if you know that something is coming out next week which you know it's going to totally obsolete anything around today - which in this case is quite unlikely! It has had happened a few times in the past 10 years but somehow I don't really see the next generation of GPUs absolutely sending the current ones into oblivion.

Intel has changed their socket a lot of times in the past 8 or so years, going from 1156 to 1155 and then to 1150 and 1151 (I think that order is correct), but truth be told I am using an i7 3770K from 2012 and don't feel the need to upgrade. To be fair, this setup is using DDR3 RAM so if I were going to upgrade at this stage I'd want a new motherboard and DDR4 RAM. AMD has also introduced several different sockets since 2010 for their high-end platforms, namely AM3, AM3+ and AM4 but have had backwards compatibility on their side. AM3+ lasted for about 5 or 6 years simply because AMD withdrew from the performance market for a few years - what's to say that AM4 wouldn't have come sooner than it did had AMD remained competitive with Intel between about 2013 and 2016 and we'd be looking at AM4+ or AM5 now? We don't know how long AM4 is going to stick around for or if their next socket will be compatible with AM4. Does it really matter that much at the end of the day? Chances are the Ryzen CPUs are good enough now to last you for a long time before you're going to need to upgrade, by which point you'll be looking for a new board anyway for some other reason or new must-have feature. I wonder how long I'll stay on LGA 1155 for.

The point is that you should probably get the GTX 1070 since right now it is better than the 1060 and if that means getting a Ryzen 5 rather than i5 then do it. I haven't looked thoroughly into it all as have been out of the loop for a little while but from what I gather they're pretty similar and as others have said, it's the graphics card that is key here. Get the best GPU you can afford and put the CPU second - but still get a decent one. For years we used to say an i5 with an NVIDIA GTX x80 card or AMD HD xx70 card (e.g. 5870, 6970, 7970 etc) was better than an i7 with a GTX x70 or an HD xx50 card. Technology changes so quickly that if you keep on waiting for the 'next big thing' then you'll be waiting forever rather than spending that time enjoying your system and playing your games. Also, just because something becomes previous generation doesn't immediately render it obsolete!

AMD has always stated that AM4 will last until DDR5 with a long life cycle. Number I usually hear is 2021 before AM5.
 

Shlouski

VIP Member
Number I usually hear is 2021 before AM5

So could be between 2 and a half years to about 4 years?

I believe that we would all hope that a 8400 build would last at least 4 years, right?

I will tell you what, 4 years from now we will do a computer upgrade build vs a new build (if we remember lol), we will see if it makes sense for him to keep his motherboard and ram, just upgrading what he can or if it would make more sense for him to build new.
 

spirit

Moderator
Staff member
AMD has always stated that AM4 will last until DDR5 with a long life cycle. Number I usually hear is 2021 before AM5.
I reckon I'll still be on LGA 1155 until about then. If things stay the way they've been for the past 7 years or so then an AM4 system will likely be usable after 2021. You will probably have upgraded from the 1070 by then if you're into gaming though.
 
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Shlouski

VIP Member
I reckon I'll still be on LGA 1155 until about then.

Yeah, I really didn't need to upgrade my 3770k for gaming, I don't see any difference with my 8700k, only upgraded because my guest gaming pc a q9550 build was just starting to struggle with new games.
 

spirit

Moderator
Staff member
Yeah, I really didn't need to upgrade my 3770k for gaming, I don't see any difference with my 8700k, only upgraded because my guest gaming pc a q9550 build was just starting to struggle with new games.
Yeah the Q9550 was good for a long time but there was a fair difference between the Core 2 Quad and the Core i processors, after all I think I remember seeing on Anandtech benchmarks that a Sandy Bridge i3 is comparable to a Core 2 Extreme QX9770, haha! The 3770K isn't an awful lot different to the CPUs of today.

As mentioned, I wouldn't worry too much about CPU upgradability for a gaming build, I'd be more concerned about getting the best graphics card. Much easier to upgrade a graphics card in the future too.
 

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
Man you might as well just burn me at the stake for suggesting an AMD based build would have a longer socket lifetime than an Intel build.

Even though that's how it's pretty much always worked...
 

Intel_man

VIP Member
I went from a i7 920 to a server pull Xeon W3690.. 5 years into ownership. So, I can give some insight here based on experience and not keyboard warrior my way through claiming that upgrading within the same socket later down the road isn't feasible. Look, I spent at the time $120 for that W3690 and when overclocked, Benchmark numbers in single core and multithreaded applications, I was on par with AMD's current ryzen 5 1600 in stock clocks. Not too shabby for a 2011 chip. Also, I didn't have to migrate to a new mobo and ram... Which would've cost a lot more than $120.

The i5 8400 doesn't have much headroom to improve apart from the 8700k if the OP plans to do a minor upgrade and it doesn't seem like the later i9s coming for the 1151 will work on anything other than the Z390 so we're back to the 8700k being the peak. So, not a significant jump.

Meanwhile a 1400 going to a 1700 or even the Zen refresh 2700 would be a noticeable jump. That's still economically viable to do 5 years down the line. Especially when you pick up used chips.

The OP's needs and the performance goal won't be satisfied regardless of the build listed. Between the two, I'd go for the 1400 and 1070. If the OP decides that the pc can't satisfy 144fps @ 1080p, it's cheaper to go from 1400 to 1700 than it is to go from 1060 to 1070 or 1070ti. Maybe this will change when the 11xx nvidia cards come out, but as of right now, the Amd build is a smarter buy.
 

Shlouski

VIP Member
I'm all for choosing long socket life in the right situation, its great for those with tight budgets that can only afford the cheapest entry level cpu's and can't or don't want to wait until they've saved up more.
 

Shlouski

VIP Member
So, I can give some insight here based on experience and not keyboard warrior my way through claiming that upgrading within the same socket later down the road isn't feasible.

lol, I think most people in this thread have had quite a lot of experience and nobody has once said that upgrading within the same socket isn't feasible, but in this unique situation it is unlikely to be wise.

Meanwhile a 1400 going to a 1700 or even the Zen refresh 2700 would be a noticeable jump. That's still economically viable to do 5 years down the line

$140 for the 1400 and then pay another $230 for 2600x, a total of $370, close to double the price for a 7% gaming improvement over a $190 8400, even with a cheaper second hand 2600x its not worth it.

The OP's needs and the performance goal won't be satisfied regardless of the build listed.

Omnidyne disagrees, but agreed with you on this.

I went from a i7 920 to a server pull Xeon W3690.. 5 years into ownership

The i7 920 was released in 2008 and the Xeon W3690 3 years later in 2011 for 1000+ dollars and it is 60% faster than the i7 920. For starters, the guy that sold you a 2 year old 1000+ dollar cpu for $120 is either, a family member, a friend or a moron, may even be straight up BS, even now another 5 years later, 7 year after they launched, they are still selling for around 100 dollars. I would have said go for the AMD build if I new somebody was going to hand him RYZEN 7 2800X for 30 dollars 2 years from now, a family member might go out and buy him one for free. Do you think people should be factoring millions of different possible future variables into which build they suggest?

Lets also remember future technologies you maybe be giving up on, in 2008 you likely didn't have usb3 or SATA 6.0 Gbit/s support, but in 2011 it was common for even cheap motherboards to have these, these are just two of many examples that come straight to mind, one of my biggest reasons for upgrading this time was NVME support, technologies will continue to progress for the next 5 years and if he want to take advantage of them he will likely need a new motherboard and that will likely need new ram.


 
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Intel_man

VIP Member
lol, I think most people in this thread have had quite a lot of experience and nobody has once said that upgrading within the same socket isn't feasible, but in this unique situation it is unlikely to be wise.
This isn't a unique situation. Claiming it is a unique situation doesn't actually make this a unique situation.
$140 for the 1400 and then pay another $230 for 2600x, a total of $370, close to double the price for a 7% gaming improvement over a $190 8400, even with a cheaper second hand 2600x its not worth it.
Oh man, you are fox news'ing your way through this to make numbers work.

Counting $140 on the 1400 if the OP's already going to buy this makes no sense. At best, you could consider the 100 euros difference based on the cost of the two systems + $230 for the 2600X. What you're missing in the comparison in the i5 8400 build is, it's got a GTX 1060. Ditching the GTX 1060 to go to a GTX 1070 is a $400 purchase. Which is essentially what YOU need to consider before claiming that it's only a 7% gaming improvement. Because then at that point, both system has a GTX 1070 in there and you're comparing solely on the difference of a 2600X vs a i5-8400.

But feel free to think that your comparison makes sense. Just like there's people out there who think the moon landings were fake. You do you.
For starters, the guy that sold you a 2 year old 1000+ dollar cpu for $120 is either, a family member, a friend or a moron, may even be straight up BS, even now another 5 years later, 7 year after they launched, they are still selling for around 100 dollars.
For starters, I never said I purchased my i7 920 right when it came out. System was built in 2010, so I caught the mid to tail end of the nehalem line with the D0 stepping. Then, 5 years later, I decided I needed a performance boost on the cpu side and had the option of either going for a new build, or keeping the X58 platform. I kept the X58 platform and scavenged on eBay a server pull W3690 or X5690. I ended up sniping a W3690 for $120 off ebay. You'd be surprised how cheap server pulls are for Xeons on eBay.

Take a look at how cheap Xeons for the LGA 2011 (not v3) socket are right about now if you search through Ebay for server pulls.
one of my biggest reasons for upgrading this time was NVME support
Cool... do you have a particular need for the NVME bandwidth/speed besides running benchmarks on it to see how much faster the numbers are technically and stroking the ego? Day to day use, NVME drives vs SATA ssd drives, you won't see a noticeable difference in most use cases unless you whip out a timer and time it. You can argue Intel's optane drives are noticeable, and while they are very noticeable on random read/write and it's superior latency values, they aren't targeted to your average consumer... yet because of high price premiums.

in 2008 you likely didn't have usb3
add in cards bro.
but in 2011 it was common for even cheap motherboards to have these
Gee thanks for telling me that the X58 design predates USB3.0 and SATA3. It's almost as if none of these can be solved by pci-e add in cards. Which is almost always why I recommend against mATX boards.
 

Shlouski

VIP Member
This isn't a unique situation. Claiming it is a unique situation doesn't actually make this a unique situation.

Lol, This is a unique situation, every build has different user with different needs and budgets. Claiming it isn't a unique situation doesn't actually mean this isn't a unique situation.

Oh man, you are fox news'ing your way through this to make numbers work.

You wish.

Counting $140 on the 1400 if the OP's already going to buy this makes no sense

Wow, so this cpu is free then?
He will need to buy both cpu's right?
He can't afford the 2600x so he will need to buy a 1400 first and then upgrade, understand?
This is be more expensive than just buying the 7% slower 8400, we agree the computer isn't up to the task, so what will affect graphics performance the most, I would say a better gpu. He should be saving his money for future gpu upgrades, not cpu upgrades that only get him 7% more performance than if he just went with the 8400 from the start.

Ditching the GTX 1060 to go to a GTX 1070 is a $400 purchase. Which is essentially what YOU need to consider before claiming that it's only a 7% gaming improvement. Because then at that point, both system has a GTX 1070 in there and you're comparing solely on the difference of a 2600X vs a i5-8400.

You should really read the thread before commenting, its clear that you haven't or have misunderstood. So MANY times (I urge people to go back and read the tread) I have stated that I would take the slower gaming pc now, but once a gpu upgrade has been done (we agree needs to be done for 144hz) and as its normal for gamers to do gpu upgrades, the 8400 would end up being the faster gaming pc, I would prefer to take the cpu that would last me longer.

Just like there's people out there who think the moon landings were fake. You do you.

You may sink to personal attacks to try and prove your point, but I will not, I will just wish you a good day :).

For starters, I never said I purchased my i7 920 right when it came out. System was built in 2010, so I caught the mid to tail end of the nehalem line with the D0 stepping. Then, 5 years later, I decided I needed a performance boost on the cpu side and had the option of either going for a new build, or keeping the X58 platform. I kept the X58 platform and scavenged on eBay a server pull W3690 or X5690. I ended up sniping a W3690 for $120 off ebay. You'd be surprised how cheap server pulls are for Xeons on eBay.

Fair enough, that's a nice purchase. The same could be possible with the 8700k, this could extend the life of a gaming pc quite far past AM4.

Cool... do you have a particular need for the NVME bandwidth/speed besides running benchmarks on it to see how much faster the numbers are technically and stroking the ego?

Ouch, again with the attacks, two times in one post, this I fear is getting personal.

I went from two Samsung 850 evo ssd's raided, to one nvme drive and wow, the real life performance difference is huge. Games like Civ and StarCraft load so much faster, loading into saved games in games like stellaris and stardrive is great, the difference is like night and day.

Raided ssd's:

raid ssd.png

Just one NVME:

nvme.png


add in cards bro.

You could use add in cards, but you can lose some functionality, e.g. older systems that didn't support sata6 and usb3 may not support the ability to boot from the pci cards (maybe would work with some messing around) or you could just buy a cheap new motherboard which already has most of the important stuff on it. By the time a few pci cards have be stuck on it, if you can fit a few on it, it probably wouldn't cost much more just to buy a new mobo, granted you would need ram too, but it might be worth it by then.
 
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OmniDyne

Active Member
Omnidyne disagrees, but agreed with you on this.

That's a tough decision. Those prices are high, and I'm not sure a Ryzen 5 1400 would be able to push a GTX 1070.

Each computer has a serious trade off.

Do you have any other options? Those computers aren't really spec'd appropriately.

But again, neither of those builds makes much sense.
 

Shlouski

VIP Member
Shlouski said:
He's going to have to upgrade anyway if he want to stay playing at 144fps with decent settings

That's simply not true.

OmniDyne said:
The Ryzen 5 1400 can run most games well over 100 FPS.

Seems like you changed your mind, so which is it?
 
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Intel_man

VIP Member
Lol, This is a unique situation, every build has different user with different needs and budgets. Claiming it isn't a unique situation doesn't actually mean this isn't a unique situation.
Lol, it really isn't a unique situation. Many people come across the same dilemma of which PC to choose and based on what they want, it's a compromise. This is no different.
You wish.
Don't need to when you're already doing it.
Wow, so this cpu is free then?
He will need to buy both cpu's right?
He can't afford the 2600x so he will need to buy a 1400 first and then upgrade, understand?
This is be more expensive than just buying the 7% slower 8400, we agree the computer isn't up to the task, so what will affect graphics performance the most, I would say a better gpu. He should be saving his money for future gpu upgrades, not cpu upgrades that only get him 7% more performance than if he just went with the 8400 from the start.
The CPU's not free, but you'd rather add the cost of a 1400 in the upgrade to a newer CPU, but not consider the cost of the 8400 or the GTX 1060 in the i5 build.

I have stated that I would take the slower gaming pc now, but once a gpu upgrade has been done (we agree needs to be done for 144hz)
If you're talking about the i5-8400 + GTX1060, sure. The R5 1400 + GTX1070 only needs a CPU upgrade to achieve 144hz. Guess which one's cheaper to upgrade to achieve 144hz? Not the i5.
the 8400 would end up being the faster gaming pc
Debatable.
You may sink to personal attacks to try and prove your point, but I will not, I will just wish you a good day :).
Only if you believe the moon landings were fake.
The same could be possible with the 8700k,
Jump from a i5-8400 to the i7-8700k is nowhere near as big as what I experienced nor the R5 1400 to R7 1700 (or R7 2700).
this could extend the life of a gaming pc quite far past AM4.
Those are opinions with no hard evidence.
Games like Civ and StarCraft load so much faster
Placebo effect?
the difference is like night and day.
Placebo effect? You need to prove that beyond stating "night and day".
 

spirit

Moderator
Staff member
He has enough information to go on should he decide to read through this thread now.

If you want to continue debating socket longevity please create a new thread in the CPUs section.
 
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