i7-8700K vs i7-9700K

i7-8700K will do just fine for your need but hey the new 9th gen series offers more speed, hyper-threading, core, if you’re planning to upgrade in another 4-5 yrs this will be the great choice.

The i7 9700k doesn’t Hyperthread. They ditched it for +2 real cores. Which sounds good to me. Why I bought it instead of the i5 9600k. A few places had it on special pricing this week.

For DAW use, the 8700k outperformes the 9700k, Hyperthreading does really help.
http://www.scanproaudio.info
Has some benchmarks .

Discussing this in the other thread. Cubase 10 new build - I7 or I9? - Steinberg Lounge - Steinberg Forums

In most cases the 8700k will outperform the 9700k but…
If you need to turn off HT, expect to see the opposite true.
If you want super tight latency or use power hungry plugins, expect to see them even out.

The 9700k will all core OC easier and higher, which amplifies the 2 points above.

But you would never want to turn off hyperthreading in the first place.
Currently setting up and testing my new 9900k computer, the difference on my preliminary tests are around 40% up to 70%.
Running 5Ghz on all cores right now, Hot and loud :wink:

The 9900k is a different beast altogether. A huge budget jump, not only in price of chip but MB too. Unless buying one of the most expensive z390 boards the VRM’s simply won’t power the extra OC potential of the chip you’ve paid for. It will appear stable but run intel tune and some kind of throttling will reveal itself.

I went for the i7 9700k (£370) and put my money in NVMe instead (easily the biggest leap in current PC technology), lightning fast load times and sound library browsing. Saving on a lower priced z390 board, which meant DVI/VGA ports for my monitors (more savings, no graphics card) and, I wasn’t paying extra for the heat inducing LED’s or top tier Pro Grade Audio (always disabled anyways) that come on the flagship boards.

Quietness and Sound load times were my 2 main factors. All for under £1000.

A bit of off-topic question here, but you guys seem to know a lot about PC’s,
I am thinking of buying a new PC for my home-studio.
In my current PC i have installed an ssd W10 Education Cdrive.
Is it possible to transfer this drive into a new computer and just continue my studio work?
I read a lot about the problems to transfer a windows drive and i would be very disappointed when i had to install all my software from scratch.
I just recently upgraded my W7 for this reason because i read that you had a bigger chance with W10 for this matter.

Thanks!

I’ve never looked into it! I always want a clean fresh install on a new build, even if using an old drive.

I would install fresh on a new NVMe drive. Once it’s set up, copy the project folder/sound archive across from your old SSD, format your old SSD to get rid of the old windows (frees up space), copy your projects and archive back onto it, use it as back up.

We used to partition drives for this reason. Turn 1 drive into 2. When reinstalling the system half, all your data would be safe on the other. No need for all the copying back and forth. I no longer do this, re installation used to be a regular thing.

The installation process will be super quick on the NVMe. Copying from an SSD won’t take too long either.

Thanks.
It is not only a matter of speed/time, but the amount of (R.S.I. mouse-)work to install, authorise and make settings of a whole bunch of software that is killing me by the thought of a new computer.
So I thought why not just mount the SSD drive in a new computer.

You typically will have to get new drivers for a bunch of things which can be fine but it can also be a complete hassle.

In addition to that you’ll have a possible issue with your license, depending on what license you have. With Win 10 Pro I know for sure you can move it around as long as the license isn’t OEM. With an OEM license you might be stuck with one computer and have to buy an additional one.

So apart from the driver issue (where I agree that a new install would be better) you should look into the license of your Windows version and see how that works.

Thanks, I will look into that but I have my own license, so that should be no problem.

It’s not about owning your own license, it’s about what type of license it is.

I meant I have a bought(boxed they called it) version of Windows, not a OEM, pre-installed one.
So that part would be no problem, only the drivers of the new MB I guess.
I am planning to move my Graphics card and FW card to the new PC, because they work just fine with Cubase + W10.

Yes 9700k is worth the extra money. You’ll sure see some big performance difference compared to your older rig.

Glad I found this thread - something else to consider is that Intel has just announced that Z390 MBs will support up to 128GB RAM as long as you got the i7-9700K (not the i7-8700K). This helped me make my decision.

I didn’t know that about the MB… 128GB of RAM is insane.

With a kind of modern i7 somewhere around 4.5 and beyond I wouldnt upgrade either.
Time will tell if an 4.2GHz 12core will outperform a 4.5-5GHz 6 or 8 core.
With Vulkan and possible mGPU in mind it was wise to not bet on a 20-lane horse but consider something that can truely fire 2 x GPU and a bunch of NVME’s, all with their native speed w/o compromising other hardware in use.
This means either a WS class chipset from Intel or AMD.
I have now had 3 x Desktop style boards after a decade of WS parts and I wanna go back more sooner than later. Limitations everywhere you look.

I just built an i7 9700k based system ASUS ROG Strix Z390-F with 32GB 3200mhz RAM and GTX1080 video card and 2, 1TB SSDs… This cpu is amazing, low latency 96Khz no issue … cubase 10 pro works great on this configuration… all my projects work without an issue… lots of headroom…

The Intel Core i7-9700K is also rated with a base clock of 3.6GHz and can boost one its processor cores all the way to 4.9GHz. Comparatively, the Intel Core i7-8700K starts at a tick higher 3.7GHz base frequency, but can’t go nearly as fast with its maximum 4.7GHz boost clock.

I would go for i7-8700k for it’s hyper-threading feat, though some might not need it, it still a big plus for me having it and I’ve seen some tutorial that i7-8700k can also go to 5.0ghz if overclocked properly.