The latest generation of Intel Core CPUs have arrived accompanied by the new Z490 platform. Incredibly, there are over 50 Intel Z490 motherboards on the market, with prices ranging from $150 all the way up to $1,300. Here's what you should buy.
Top 5 Intel Z490 Motherboards: 10th-gen Intel Core Platform
- Thread starter Steve
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Buhaj
Posts: 148 +241
If I was building a PC, I'd pick an AMD CPU and a respective motherboard anyways - a couple FPS more in a game is not worth switching a mobo every time I upgrade a CPU.
QuantumPhysics
Posts: 6,306 +7,258
and how many times in your life have you upgraded a CPU without MOBO?
Evernessince
Posts: 5,469 +6,158
For me I went from a 5820K to a 1700. Then on the same platform it went 1700, 2700X, 3700X. The only reason I even bothered purchasing the 2700X is because the upgrade only took a few minutes. Otherwise I would not have bothered tearing the PC apart. People don't seem to consider that if you make upgrades easy, people upgrade more.
AMD and Intel have the same upgradability though. Both the x570 and the z490 will support 1 more cpu upgrade.
Dear Doctor Walton,
I think (thats what this space is for amarite?) the Asus Formula is a better overall choice for high end board over the MSI.
Pros:
Power stages for iGPU, which allows QuickSync, the MSI does not power the iGPU
ATX form size better compatibilty
$250 cheaper than the MSI Godlike
Cons:
'ONLY' 70 amp power stages vs 90amp on MSI.
Missing Thunderbolt3
Which can be easily remedied by their $89 new TB3-TR card on amazon.
I think (thats what this space is for amarite?) the Asus Formula is a better overall choice for high end board over the MSI.
Pros:
Power stages for iGPU, which allows QuickSync, the MSI does not power the iGPU
ATX form size better compatibilty
$250 cheaper than the MSI Godlike
Cons:
'ONLY' 70 amp power stages vs 90amp on MSI.
Missing Thunderbolt3
Which can be easily remedied by their $89 new TB3-TR card on amazon.
Evernessince
Posts: 5,469 +6,158
X570 supports 2000 and 3000 series CPUs right now. When Zen 2 launches that will also include 4000 series CPUs. That's 3 generations already. Intel at most will support 2.
Nobody is going to buy an x570 with a 2000 series. Let's be realistic
kiwigraeme
Posts: 1,995 +1,405
Now with AMD it is in people's minds - before with intel it wasn't really a possibility - or the performance difference was so little and/or the chips too expensive . I have a 3700x on a mid range x570 m/b - but with zen 3 - I can easily get a good 2nd pc - we have 2 in our house . 3700x to go with a cheap b550 board = some cheap 16GB of ram into an existing case/PSU - say $200 for that PC and pop in a 4700x for $300 on my X570 and I now have 2 great pc for $500 - maybe move over 1TB M2 as well and buy a 2TB or 4TB M2 card for $200-$300 ( they will become much cheaper )
soulsassassin
Posts: 147 +94
From someone who sells CPUs for living you would be surprised how many people buy 2000 series with an x570
Doesn't matter at all. Since 2009 Intel has Never offered any worthwhile CPU upgrade for LGA11xx sockets. So even there will be another "generation" of CPU's for Z490, there won't be anything that is worth upgrading.
No. Worthwhile upgrade needs to be at least around 50% faster (calculated).
i7-8700K
Base clock 3.70 GHz
Turbo 4.70 GHz
i9-9900K
Base 3.60 GHz
Turbo 5.00 GHz
We have same architecture, slightly lower base clock, slightly higher turbo clock, bigger core-to-core latency etc so improvement is around 35% max. Also price is huge so that's not worthwhile upgrade.
When comparing AMD:
3950X
Max Boost: 4.70 GHz
Base: 3.50 GHz
2700X
Max Boost: 4.30 GHz
Base: 3.70 GHz
We have around 15% better IPC from architecture, slightly lower base clock, slightly higher boost clock, double amount of cores.
Improvement is somewhere around 110+%.
Also because AMD motherboards are miles better than Intel ones, upgrading from i7-8700K to i9-9900K makes very little sense, better to buy AMD CPU + motherboard.
i7-8700K
Base clock 3.70 GHz
Turbo 4.70 GHz
i9-9900K
Base 3.60 GHz
Turbo 5.00 GHz
We have same architecture, slightly lower base clock, slightly higher turbo clock, bigger core-to-core latency etc so improvement is around 35% max. Also price is huge so that's not worthwhile upgrade.
When comparing AMD:
3950X
Max Boost: 4.70 GHz
Base: 3.50 GHz
2700X
Max Boost: 4.30 GHz
Base: 3.70 GHz
We have around 15% better IPC from architecture, slightly lower base clock, slightly higher boost clock, double amount of cores.
Improvement is somewhere around 110+%.
Also because AMD motherboards are miles better than Intel ones, upgrading from i7-8700K to i9-9900K makes very little sense, better to buy AMD CPU + motherboard.
MaxSmarties
Posts: 559 +326
Good to have choice, but I still feel ridiculous that Intel forced us to change motherboard with a 10th gen that is not different from a slightly overclocked 9th gen.
The socket change was just a marketing move, and many good quality Z390 motherboards would have been ok for a 10700K or a 10900K.
The socket change was just a marketing move, and many good quality Z390 motherboards would have been ok for a 10700K or a 10900K.
MaxSmarties
Posts: 559 +326
In the old days, several.
Lately, none.
MaxSmarties
Posts: 559 +326
Except he was speaking about i5 8600K upgrade. The upgrade from an 8600K, a quite popular CPU, to a 9900K makes sense.
It hardly does.
8600K:
Base: 3.60 GHz
Turbo: 4.30 GHz
Max turbo is 16% higher, IPC is same, HT is enabled, core count is 33% up. We hardly get that 50% calculated improvement on outdated platform. Also as AMD example shows, that 50% is pretty low improvement as AMD usually (this time too) offers over 100% improvement.
So it makes some sense but very little.
A 10700K, certainly, but probably not a 10900K as the 1151 socket layout was never really designed for 10 cores - the 2066 layout was always required (as it was designed for up to 18).
This is why the pinout changed between Skylake and Kaby Lake CPUs - both only went up to 4 cores in the desktop market, but the latter had higher power requirements for the best models (with the change in pinout mostly being for extra Vcc pins). The pinout was changed again with Coffee Lake, and for similar reasons, but by the time the refresh hit, Intel had pretty much run out of reserved pins to convert into Vcc ones.
So given that Intel pretty much keep the same setup for 1 or 2 generations at most (the socket might be the same, but the pinout and supporting chipset changes), the only way they could increase the core count, clock speed, and power consumption over the likes of 9900K was to add more pins.
This is why AMD went with 1331 pins right from the start with AM4 - the first generation Ryzen chips topped out at 8 cores, 95W, etc but still provides sufficient pins to power the latest 16 core, 105+W CPUs.
I said 8600k. Or an 8400. Or even an 8100. How is a 9900k not a worthwhile upgrade over them
You hardly get a 50% increase from an 8600k to a 9900k? The fanboy is strong with this one.
AMD offers your hypothetical 100% but with a higher tier product. The 3900x is the price competitor of the 9900k and it doesn't offer your 100% increase. When you get to the point of paying 750+ for a cpu than you might as well buy a new motherboard.
Good theory. But fact is that Coffee Lake CPU's run fine on Skylake/Kaby Lake motherboards https://www.extremetech.com/computi...00k-might-run-just-fine-on-older-motherboards
Even 9900K runs fine on Z170
So in reality there was no other reason than make more money for socket switch.
9900K is way too expensive considering platform is outdated. That's why.
How do you get much more? 33% comes from cores, 0% from IPC, almost nothing from SMT in games, 16% from turbo clocks. Also core to core latency is higher. In reality those calculated figures are even lower.
3900X easily offer over 100% increase, if comparison is against 6 core Zen+. 3950X launch price is $749 and it offers over 100% improvement even when comparing against Fastest Zen+.
And basically you're right, 9900K is so expensive too that better to buy new motherboard.
Who said anything about games? Why are you changing your arguments just because they got proven wrong? Makes you look biased dude.
Does the 3950x offer 100% improvement compared to the 2700x in games? NOPE. So why does it have to be games when it comes to Intel?
You said it yourself, without even bringing HT into it 9900k is 50% faster than the 8600k. So according to your first argument, a worthwhile upgrade. With HT into the mix it's 100+% faster than the 8600k in anything that can use cores / threads. You know, exactly like the 3900x you mentioned compared to the 2600x.
So WTF are you talking about is beyond me. An outdated platform? Oh really, you realize that the z370 was realized in 2017. You know, between zen 1 and zen 2. So what platform would you have from AMD in the time? X370? That's not an outdated platform? Oh kay
Because single core turbo helps mostly on games. That's why. Single core turbo helps on games, SMT does not. On other way around, SMT helps outside games but then we must also consider base clock, not max turbo.
2700X and 3950X both have SMT so there is no need to consider it.
It's barely 50% faster and as AMD example shows, that improvement should be much bigger. 50% is just bare minimum to even consider. And considering high price and outdated platform, that is not worthwhile upgrade.
That's only 50%, not 100%. There is problem with these percentages yes. As if we consider 9900K is 100%, then 8600K is somewhere around 50%. But on other way around, if 8600K is 100%, then 9900K is around 200%.
Z370 is outdated platform because:
1. It has not PCI Express 4.0
2. It lacks M.2 connection wired to CPU.
When it comes to X370, it has no 1. BUT it has 2. So even X370 is much better than Z370.
That is main reason why Intel Z490 platform is outdated too. It does not have 1 or 2. Intel is over 3 years behind AMD, not surprising. And yes, I still have X370 platform from that is still better than Z490 platform from 2020.
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But I didnt mention games or single core turbo. YOU said that in order for an upgrade to be worth it there needs to be at least a 50% increase in performance. You also said that Intel never had a a worthwhile cpu upgrade. Well, there is a 100% increase in performance between the 8600k and the 9900k so you were wrong. Period
And beucase you were proven wrong, you now started changing your argument talking about motherboards etc. Which is irrelevant to your original point
No it's not barely 50% faster, it's actually 100% faster. Check cinebench scores. But doesn't matter, since 50% is the bare minimum, then Intel did offer a worthwhile upgrade, so you were wrong for saying otherwise.
And the x370 has bad memory support. Doesn't matter though. In your hypothetical the person already has the z370, he's not going to buy it new. Also, the z370 performs better with read / writes than the x370, so your wired to the m2 is irrelevant when it actually performs worse
