I’m currently using an I3-10100 with a GTX 1080 (I’m planning to upgrade to a 3070 I found for $150), and I have 32GB of RAM. I mainly play War Thunder, Baldur’s Gate 3, Minecraft RTX, and HL2 RTX. Should I upgrade to the I5-11400F for around $90, or is it better to pay $200 for the I7-11700F?
3 Answers
Honestly, just save your money! Look out for 7500f/7600x/9600x bundles that are popping up for under $350. You could even sell your old parts and recoup some cash, making the upgrade fairly inexpensive and net you a much better CPU with upgrade potential in the future.
You might get downvoted for suggesting AMD, but it’s a solid idea. Many are quick to defend Intel, but common sense suggests looking at the entire market!
The performance difference between the I5-11400F and the I7-11700F is about 10% in real-world tasks, and up to 17% in benchmarks. Since the price hike is over 100%, you might want to save that cash for something else. The I5 would be perfectly fine for your gaming needs, and you could use the savings to upgrade an SSD or something else that’s bottlenecking your performance.
I’d go for the I7-11700F. The I5-11400F might become obsolete pretty quickly, and investing a bit more now could save you from another upgrade sooner than you think.
By the time you’d need the extra performance that AM5 offers, you’d be better off building a whole new system. Better to save up for that.