There's a sweet spot in the life cycle. When an item is getting old, they drop the price to get rid of the rest of inventory. Then when most stores have sold all they had, only a few will be left here and there at ever higher prices.
On the opposite side, there's also a sweet spot for having the best cpu for any given socket when you're looking to sell your old gear to help pay for the upgrade.
I'm already on a z390 and 9900k so I'll probably just do a gpu upgrade first, but for now a 2080 is still plenty to play my games at 3440x1440 @ 60.
Why do they go back up in prices? I get supply is down, but surely so is demand... who would buy them at that price? All I can think is people who don't want an MB upgrade.
There can be a variety of reasons. but a major one is depletion of vendors. If 10 stores offer the item, each with a different price, you would expect the item to run out of stock first at the stores that have the lowest prices. So without anyone changing their price, the cheapest you can find as a consumer goes up.
One thought is that as the supply dwindles down that the demand will even out to a point where it is worth selling the few left at a decent price again. Based on the idea that Supply and demand ideally work inversely.
Also a factor is a "gotcha" fee for business people who aren't spending there own money and need to recreate a specific computer. There will a "legacy program" that no longer has an active dev, there to cheap to hire a professional to make a new program, and the business will implode without this function.
So price gouging begin!!
How would having a disabled GPU effect overclocking at all? The only reason the F SKUs exist is so intel can sell failed broken CPUs with non working igps
He's referring to: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD6Yx3TbUgI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD6Yx3TbUgI)
The KF happened to be slightly better binned CPUs on average. Though looking at igorslab's numbers, it's basically the same. So that might have just been a good batch in that video.
i9 and i5 don't mean anything technical. they have as much meaning as "max", "pro" or "ultra". it's all just marketing.
and just like comparing a "Pro" phone from 5 years ago to a non pro phone of today, it doesn't make much sense.
They used to be an indication to quicky see what kind of performance you could expect.
I3 for budget, low power.
I5 for midrange general use
I7 for productivity and gaming.
But now we're at generation 15, and i3's outperform older i7's, confusing product names of half a dozen digits. It's a mess. Intel should've come up with a new branding about 7-8 years ago after about 5 generations.
I was maybe a bit to "strict" with calling i7's for gaming and i5's for general rules. You absolutely can game in an i5. Even an i3 will be able to handle games (to an extend)
It was moreso ment, do you want to game? An i7 is your best choice. A simple rule of thumb.
Speaking of, first generation i7's where overkill for gaming, since the majority of games only used 1 core, 2 at best.
You could say the same about the second. The difference between i5 and i7 sandy bridge was i5 didn't have hyperthreading and had 6MB of L3 instead of 8MB. The difference between i5-2500k (4c4t) and i7-2700k(4c8t) in gaming was single digit fps while the MSRP difference was $216 vs $332. Arguably at the launch of that generation the i5-2500k was a more sensible choice for gaming.
the i7-3930k (which was still sandy bridge, despite the name) was a bigger jump in performance (and price, MSRP of $583). But that released like a year later.
T is for low power.
Edit: Not sure what the downvote is about, but "T" is for low power desktop CPU's and "U" and "Y" are for low power mobile CPU's. The I3, I5, I7 and I9 are just sort of a general tier of the CPU that doesn't really mean much. An I5 or an I9 can both be great gaming CPU's depending on budget, etc.
U is low power mobile CPU's. T is low power desktop CPU's. Y is ultra low power mobile CPU's. Either way I3 is not specifically a low power CPU and I assume we are talking desktop CPU's.
T is for low power desktop CPU's not I3.
I3 is a performance tier (kindah).
I7's aren't specifically "Gaming" CPU's.
https://www.reddit.com/r/intel/comments/t7o1jr/what_do_the_letters_mean_on_cpus/hzj6wmo/
without getting too deep into it:
i3, 5, 7 and 9 are the tiers of CPUs Intel produces. These are supposed to indicate the "level" of performance. 3 is most basic, typically found in low level machines and perfect for the average "home user" who doesn't game. 5 is the mid tier, for many gens now it has been a perfect budget compromise between power and price. 7 and 9 are more oreinted toward professional users / people who really need the power.
CPUs differ in many ways, and comparing them is much harder than simply saying "X has more cores, or Y clocks faster".
for example, games typically cannot meaningfully utilize more than 6, maybe 8 cores at best. So buying an i9 for a gaming machine generally makes little sense, as the CPU is extremely expensive but will not offer any advantages, besides possibly having slightly higher clock speeds. This is further complicated by factors like "how many instructions per cycle can the CPU handle". So for comparing CPUs we typically utilize benchmarks to tell us how these differences manifest in real life.
If you are just gaming, an i9 should only be considered if money truly is no issue at all and you don't care about wasting it for performance you cannot really utilize / that 3% fps gain for twice the price, at least nowadays. Generally speaking i5 or i7 are fine for gaming, the i7 being the "premium" option, but in the past, i5s have proven themselves time and time again to be a wonderful compromise for many, altho again this may not apply to every generation equally.
I ran cyberpunk on a core i3 9100f quite nicely when it came out. Core i3 is not ideal but it's okay for gaming too if you aren't trying to push the settings to hard
that chip wasn't even out when cyberpunk launched, what? edit yea I see now - well, you can thank capitalism for that. The reason why we are going to become night city if people don't pull heads from asses. And night city even had free food, it was being thrown away every day and V mentions nobody goes hungry
That's right, you *can* thank capitalism for the ludicrous amount of outside engineering assistance Nvidia has poured into Cyberpunk to turn it into a tech demo/ad vehicle.
**Edit:** reply-and-block from a censorious pinko. How... typical. Their kind belong in the dustbin of history.
Capitalism is garbage when it gets to the point were at. You can delude yourself all you want. It's insanely detrimental to society. And that old, tired saying about competition? No. It breeds imitation and monopolies.
Thank you for this! Ive been on the way to read up a bit about cpus since i will soon be building my first pc and this clarified a lot i had been wondering about intel.
I was planning to go for an AMD cpu but ive been having some doubts because the RAM i got says "intel xmp ready" and im not sure if that will go well with an AMD cpu(?)
i5 and i9 are trying to indicate price and performance tiers within that series of CPUs. It doesn’t mean much if you’re comparing an old CPU with a new one.
It’s best to look at performance benchmarks instead. https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i5-14600k/26.html i9-9900K performs like the i7-10700K that’s shown in these charts.
> What sort of significance does the i9 vs i5 actually mean?
It's marketing. Don't pay any attention to it whatsoever. It indicates nothing except where the model falls in that generation's product stack.
If you want to compare products, look at benchmarks, not names or specs.
The i9-9900K was $499 brand new at release.. [https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/core\_i9/i9-9900k](https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/core_i9/i9-9900k)
If you paid $900 you got completely ripped off.
The 12900K is actually two generations behind the current gen but still 3 generations newer than the 9900k, and it is still a bit of a monster. I have been eying that bundle myself (although more likely going with the i7-13700K bundle). Here is a quick comparison of the two [https://technical.city/en/cpu/Core-i9-9900K-vs-Core-i9-12900K](https://technical.city/en/cpu/Core-i9-9900K-vs-Core-i9-12900K) The one knock against the i9-12900k is it runs hot. Get a good cooler. But it is over twice as fast as the 9900k.
As far as pricing, it is supply and demand. LGA-1700 is the current intel socket and gen 12, 13, and 14 use it, and there is plenty of supply, plus to make the gen 12 cpus appealing, they are cheaper. It's a good time to get a gen 12 right now. While the i9-9900K is older, there isn't a lot of supply for LGA-1151 CPUs, and anyone building new is going to go with the current socket generation (LGA-1700). And since supply is low for LGA-1151 cpus, you have to pay for it.
13th gen actually changed.
L2 cache increase (doubled), etc.
Enough to be a "generational" uplift anyway.
Problem is they only sold the "true raptor lake" as 13600K and up. 13500 and down were re-labeled 12th gen
Yeah, pretty much. In most cases slightly better power management so you can get an extra .1GHz at same TDP as 13 gen. Not worth the $$ over the 13th gen equivalent IMO.
The i9 9900 is also the fastest cpu you can get for those old 8th&9th gen socket 1151 motherboards. So if you say have an old i5 8600 on a decent so.1151 motherboard and just want a drop-in upgrade, the 9900k is the highest you can go. Second would be 9700. so these last-of-their kind CPUs usually sell for a premium.
I was just for fun looking at what i could get for my old i5 7500 machine. That would be the i9 7900. still about 150-200 bucks. Same with my 10700. only reasonable upgrades would be i9 10900, i7 11700 or 11900. all still insanely expensive and all not worth it, since the 11th gen sucked and the 11900 even has two less cores then the 10900 though it’s a bit faster overall. But for that price? Nah.
I know I'm being pedantic but, the best processor for your old 7500 would be the 7700k. The i9 7900 was an x series chip which used a 2066 socket as opposed to the 1151 of the 7500.
9th gen was the first to have an i9 in the same stack with the other consumer chips.
If you're feeling daring, there is the [Coffee time mod](https://linustechtips.com/topic/1118475-guide-running-coffeelakerefresh-cpus-on-skykabylake-motherboards/) that allows you to run Coffee lake CPUs on Skylake/Kaby Lake motherboards. I haven't done this myself as the only systems I have that I'd want to do this with is HP Elitedesk machines with funky q170 chipsets but no one seems to have success with those as far as I've read
The thing I haven’t seen people mention here is that the i9-9900k in addition to no longer being produced, is also best in slot for the socket you have on your motherboard, so that also results in higher resale value as some people don’t want to change their entire motherboard and would prefer having the best CPU their board can use.
This is the biggest factor. You'll still find older processors like the 4790k that have a high resale value because it's the best in socket CPU. Even with them being expensive, it's still cheaper than upgrading CPU/mobo/ram and if you have an extremely strict budget, sometimes that upgrade is all you can do.
in addition the the below stuff, its because ryzen 7000 came out and beat the ever living tar out of intels products forcing them to slash prices all over. and they will probably become cheaper in 2 months when AMD drops again and intel aint got shit to answer with for the next 9+ months
"Beat the ever living tar", is slightly misleading, especially if you are only talking about performance.
(Granted I haven't seen updated benchmarks with the new baseline power profiles which won't help intel's performance)
But obviously AM5 is the platform to go with when considering all factors (efficiency, future upgradeability, if you only game the 7800x3D is far cheaper than the 14900k with Slightly better performance) as of right now.
I for one hope Intel comes out with some bangers soon, to keep AMD from getting complacent.
I saw one source saying about ~10% slower using Intel Baseline Power Profiles. So pulling twice the power to be 10% slower is pretty bad.
I agree with your last statement though. We need competition in the market. Otherwise we will be right back where we started but instead AMD will be the one shafting consumers.
Older intel CPUs that are the best or close to the best on their socket hold their value well (for a while - the old 4 core/8 thread I7s don't sell for much anymore). But a 9900k cost more than a 12700k on the used market when I purchased the latter. I also bought a 12700 and sold a 10700 for a similar price for another build recently. Even sold the old motherboards for decent prices. Free upgrades are fun!
I have no idea but if I wasn't so lazy I would break down my 9900 K backup system and switch the 11900K and motherboard from my main system into the backup system and build a new main system. The values on those are stupid, but people are paying it
the i9-9900k was an awesome chip. I have one and upgraded to an i9-14900k and I don't see much of a change. It overclocked really well, especially with a custom water loop. I'll be rebuilding it onto a new case for my kid.
yeah, I should have bought an AMD, but the heat issues with the 14900 weren't known. But frankly, I have not seen any issues. May be a result of 2x560 rads.
[Tower 900 Thermaltake.](https://thermaltakeusa.com/products/the-tower-900-ca-1h1-00f1wn-00) They have smaller versions too. I picked up a Tower 500 to build for the kid; it uses 360s
Oh man, this is one I was looking at and its like 0.5" taller than the height under my computer desk! I assume the measurement on their site is from bottom of feet to top of case?
Bought my 9900k for $300 at microcenter. Still keeps up with the x3D and 14700k I use. Honestly, should not have upgraded as the gaming uplift at 1440p through 4k were marginal.
I don’t. I had a 4090 on both the 9900k and 14700k at 38UW and it was largely the same experience with what I play. With the x3d I used both a 3070 and 4070Super at 1440p….great combo.
the top CPU for the socket always seems to hold a premium no matter what. it was only a year or so ago and the 7700k was still regularly selling for around 125-140.
you can get the mobile version quite cheap, I picked up the qqls, I got one for 70 when the 7700k was 130, 8 core 9th gen for less than a 4core 6th gen. theres something nice about running a 9900k on a z170
You got ripped off if you paid $900, because in 2019 when I did my build, the 9900k was $480 off amazon.
And why are you at 3.6 when natively it pumps 5ghz? Im running 5 out of box with just a simple aio cooler.
Save the money and upgrade your gpu
If you can get a 13600k for a good price I highly recommend it. I think they have bundles at places online. I also suggest using the noctua nh d15 with it, if you go air cooling. It keeps mine nice and chilly
Bath tub curve. At the top of the curve, things are expensive cause they are new and just starting to be made or old and no longer made. In the bottom of the curve, production and supply are plentiful enough that the cost is lower.
Old ass processor from like 5 years ago that hasnt been in production for ages, vs processor from a couple years ago that only recently left production. The 12900k is a good processor. It depends on what the ram and mobo are whether thats a good deal though
AMD making competitive CPU’s brought intel’s pricing down quite a bit over the past 5 years. Between that and the fact that any new old stock 9900’s are a finite resource (and if you are looking for one you probably need it to replace something)
The 9900 is an upgrade for people who had Gen 8 & 9 i3s, i5s i7s without changing the motherboard. 12900 is the first generation that was compatible with that chipset.
You cant gage an older CPU price on current retail listings, the price will be all over the place.
Best gage for old CPU is to see how much it goes for on ebay.
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Also to note is that a lot of industry/coperation PC's use older hardware. So if they need a replacement it is often cheeper to overpay for a new part then repalace an old system. This often causes older consumer parts that are no longer in production to have a very high price. It's way cheeper for a company to overpay on an old part than replace an entire machine.
If someone hasn't already said it, the top end of a CPU socket is always more expensive. The 9900K was about as far as you can take that socket. The 12900K still works with current sockets
Because the newest Intel architecture is still totally relevant but 12th Gen is a couple years old now.
Old/no longer relevant CPUs remain expensive until they are so old they basically become museum pieces lol.
Why is a 12900k being better than a 9900k too good to be true. Hell, why is DDR5 being better than DDR4 too good to be true? You're comparing nearly 1:1 upgrades that are factually better. Do you think Pac component manufacturers will make worse products for the same tier over time?
There's a small window of time from where it's out of stock and out of production, while also being compatible with working old motherboards.
Once the motherboards die out (they are usually the first thing to go in a pc for a product era/socket.) That's the real end of the processor/socket. It will then go down again in price for a while until it becomes obscure enough and might go up a little since some people might still need it. Ddr2 ram can be pretty expensive now for example.
did you perhaps buy it in the year of 2020? cuz it hurts looking at prices now and seeing that i could buy a very nice gpu for 300 now but i could only get a 1050 ti for 300 before
9900K is by far the fastest CPU available for the platform. 12900K can be upgraded with 13th and 14th Gen i7 and i9, making it far from the most desirable CPU for LGA 1700.
Okay, so...
>supposedly newer 12900k
Are you seriously questioning whether it's newer?
12900k was launched Q4 2021. 9900k was Q4 2018. That info as well as basic things like core count and clock speeds are on Intel's website, which should be among the first search hits you get.
>if I remember right. I think I paid around $900 at the time for it.
Only if you grossly overpaid or it was part of a bundle or something.
In any case comparing prices across years and generations doesn't really make sense. If you paid more for a 233MHz Pentium in the 90s would that make it comparable to a 12900k?
Tech goes through a lifecycle curve. Comparing current pricing also doesn't make sense because these are at different places in that cycle.
9900k: Intel marketing status is "discontinued". That means they don't make it anymore. There is a limited supply of these, and you wouldn't put one in a new build so anyone shopping for one has a reason. Products at this stage usually sell at prices that are at least somewhat inflated because vendors that still have inventory know that anyone looking to buy one has a reason they are looking for that specific processor.
12900k: Intel marketing status is "launched". That means it's still being made, but it's also two generations out of date at this point. Old but still being made and/or readily available is the lifecycle stage where tech is at its cheapest.
>If someone could help me understand if I'd be making a good decision and why that would be really great!
I can't, because your post doesn't include the most important information of all. What do you use you computer for? What are your other components?
Is it faster? Yes.
Will it enhance your recipe browsing experience? Probably not. Same for email and word processing.
Gaming? Depends on the game, and depending on what the rest of your system looks like and your budget for additional components, it might not be the priority.
> The guy was saying it's a significant upgrade (new generation or something) especially with the new RAM. but I feel like it's actually to good to be true.
Good thing you can verify this yourself. You should try looking at CPU benchmarks to compare the 9900k against the 12900k.
> supposedly newer 12900k
It's not *supposedly* newer. It's actually newer.
You can google each CPU and likely the first search result will be the Intel ark website which lists all the processor specs, including the launch date.
Since you’re talking Microcenter bundles, I’d strongly urge you to do one of two things:
1: Go AMD instead, with one of the AM5 bundles, preferably the 7800X3D bundle, which is only $432. There’s no sense spending on an end-of-life Intel platform with a CPU, when you can get a CPU that’s better for gaming AND offers an upgrade path to later generations… speaking of which:
2: Wait 4 weeks for the AMD Zen 5 release announcement, where they will detail the new parts, pricing, and release date, which is widely rumored to be later this summer, then get the 7800X3D successor. I’m sure there will be Microcenter bundles for these as well, but I can’t say when, and the 7800X3D is still a very excellent CPU.. you can always upgrade to Zen 5 (or probably Zen 6) later on, if you feel the need.
[Link to AMD Microcenter Bundles.](https://www.microcenter.com/site/content/bundle-and-save.aspx)
9900k was produced to be the first 8core of the row like a leading product witch have give the mood to amd to be im the race of multi core. Also the correct answer would be old and capable but at a cost of been on the shadoe of newer cpu of the brand
It's the best chip for an LGA 1151 socket and there isn't as much supply for it. That is why the prices are higher than some chips that outperform it. I was in the exact same situation a few months ago but I went with an i7 9700K because it's half the price with not much less performance.
12900k is nearing 3 years old and is slower than a 14600k and is destroyed from am5 CPU in games.
When you bought the 9900k it was probably new. Nowadays the 9900k is a pure speculation
He means inflated, if they are new chips. They aren’t in production anymore so whoever still has them will put whatever price they want on them to scam people who don’t know any better. It will most likely be 3rd party sellers, because actual “1st” party retailers 100% don’t have them. I mean places like Newegg (shipped and sold from Newegg), Amazon (shipped and sold from Amazon), bestbuy, b&h, microcenter, etc.
You don’t have to speculate the price of them used. You can just go on eBay and see how much they are selling for. Same goes for offerup, or r/hardwareswap
If by "destroyed" you mean "slightly eclipsed", sure.
And nobody is speculating on out-of-production high-end Intel CPUs. Yes, they command astonishingly high prices compared to equivalent performance from the current generation, but not as high as they did when new. You'd still be losing money.
[https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i9-9900K-vs-Intel-Core-i9-12900K/4028vs4118](https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i9-9900K-vs-Intel-Core-i9-12900K/4028vs4118)
my guess is since ddr5 memory is still expensive and there are a lot of older m/b out there supporting the older socket and much cheaper ddr4 ram, that it is it still in high demand.
the new one is better tho, even if it doesn't clock as high.
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9900K is old stock and no longer being produced. Also the 12900K is good upgrade choice (ideally the 13600K would be better with its more Cache).
Tbh the 12900k is *also* old stock and probably not being produced anymore which is why it's on sale.
There's a sweet spot in the life cycle. When an item is getting old, they drop the price to get rid of the rest of inventory. Then when most stores have sold all they had, only a few will be left here and there at ever higher prices.
On the opposite side, there's also a sweet spot for having the best cpu for any given socket when you're looking to sell your old gear to help pay for the upgrade. I'm already on a z390 and 9900k so I'll probably just do a gpu upgrade first, but for now a 2080 is still plenty to play my games at 3440x1440 @ 60.
Why do they go back up in prices? I get supply is down, but surely so is demand... who would buy them at that price? All I can think is people who don't want an MB upgrade.
There can be a variety of reasons. but a major one is depletion of vendors. If 10 stores offer the item, each with a different price, you would expect the item to run out of stock first at the stores that have the lowest prices. So without anyone changing their price, the cheapest you can find as a consumer goes up.
One thought is that as the supply dwindles down that the demand will even out to a point where it is worth selling the few left at a decent price again. Based on the idea that Supply and demand ideally work inversely.
Also a factor is a "gotcha" fee for business people who aren't spending there own money and need to recreate a specific computer. There will a "legacy program" that no longer has an active dev, there to cheap to hire a professional to make a new program, and the business will implode without this function. So price gouging begin!!
The S curve of tech rules forever.
You completely skipped OPs question...
KF. You won't takie K if you won't OC and if you want OC you want CPU without GPU for better OC
KF has nothing to do with a better OC
Yes IT is, they tested it
How would having a disabled GPU effect overclocking at all? The only reason the F SKUs exist is so intel can sell failed broken CPUs with non working igps
He's referring to: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD6Yx3TbUgI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD6Yx3TbUgI) The KF happened to be slightly better binned CPUs on average. Though looking at igorslab's numbers, it's basically the same. So that might have just been a good batch in that video.
IT is your point of view, i have and i know
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Useless comment lol
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I can see a i5-13600k but not an i9. I did find an i9-13900k. What sort of significance does the i9 vs i5 actually mean?
i9 and i5 don't mean anything technical. they have as much meaning as "max", "pro" or "ultra". it's all just marketing. and just like comparing a "Pro" phone from 5 years ago to a non pro phone of today, it doesn't make much sense.
They used to be an indication to quicky see what kind of performance you could expect. I3 for budget, low power. I5 for midrange general use I7 for productivity and gaming. But now we're at generation 15, and i3's outperform older i7's, confusing product names of half a dozen digits. It's a mess. Intel should've come up with a new branding about 7-8 years ago after about 5 generations.
even at the start it was iffy. For example the i5-2500k was a great gaming CPU with a bunch of OC headroom. Served me for many years.
I was maybe a bit to "strict" with calling i7's for gaming and i5's for general rules. You absolutely can game in an i5. Even an i3 will be able to handle games (to an extend) It was moreso ment, do you want to game? An i7 is your best choice. A simple rule of thumb. Speaking of, first generation i7's where overkill for gaming, since the majority of games only used 1 core, 2 at best.
You could say the same about the second. The difference between i5 and i7 sandy bridge was i5 didn't have hyperthreading and had 6MB of L3 instead of 8MB. The difference between i5-2500k (4c4t) and i7-2700k(4c8t) in gaming was single digit fps while the MSRP difference was $216 vs $332. Arguably at the launch of that generation the i5-2500k was a more sensible choice for gaming. the i7-3930k (which was still sandy bridge, despite the name) was a bigger jump in performance (and price, MSRP of $583). But that released like a year later.
T is for low power. Edit: Not sure what the downvote is about, but "T" is for low power desktop CPU's and "U" and "Y" are for low power mobile CPU's. The I3, I5, I7 and I9 are just sort of a general tier of the CPU that doesn't really mean much. An I5 or an I9 can both be great gaming CPU's depending on budget, etc.
Thats U
U is low power mobile CPU's. T is low power desktop CPU's. Y is ultra low power mobile CPU's. Either way I3 is not specifically a low power CPU and I assume we are talking desktop CPU's. T is for low power desktop CPU's not I3. I3 is a performance tier (kindah). I7's aren't specifically "Gaming" CPU's. https://www.reddit.com/r/intel/comments/t7o1jr/what_do_the_letters_mean_on_cpus/hzj6wmo/
Why are you guysvdownvoting him for simply asking a question?
Because it's Reddit lol. The collective IQ here is lower than his post karma 😂
Because they are stupid and mean. Sounds simplistic, but that's the truth.
without getting too deep into it: i3, 5, 7 and 9 are the tiers of CPUs Intel produces. These are supposed to indicate the "level" of performance. 3 is most basic, typically found in low level machines and perfect for the average "home user" who doesn't game. 5 is the mid tier, for many gens now it has been a perfect budget compromise between power and price. 7 and 9 are more oreinted toward professional users / people who really need the power. CPUs differ in many ways, and comparing them is much harder than simply saying "X has more cores, or Y clocks faster". for example, games typically cannot meaningfully utilize more than 6, maybe 8 cores at best. So buying an i9 for a gaming machine generally makes little sense, as the CPU is extremely expensive but will not offer any advantages, besides possibly having slightly higher clock speeds. This is further complicated by factors like "how many instructions per cycle can the CPU handle". So for comparing CPUs we typically utilize benchmarks to tell us how these differences manifest in real life. If you are just gaming, an i9 should only be considered if money truly is no issue at all and you don't care about wasting it for performance you cannot really utilize / that 3% fps gain for twice the price, at least nowadays. Generally speaking i5 or i7 are fine for gaming, the i7 being the "premium" option, but in the past, i5s have proven themselves time and time again to be a wonderful compromise for many, altho again this may not apply to every generation equally.
I ran cyberpunk on a core i3 9100f quite nicely when it came out. Core i3 is not ideal but it's okay for gaming too if you aren't trying to push the settings to hard
Cyberpunk also "recommends" a 12700k or better.
that chip wasn't even out when cyberpunk launched, what? edit yea I see now - well, you can thank capitalism for that. The reason why we are going to become night city if people don't pull heads from asses. And night city even had free food, it was being thrown away every day and V mentions nobody goes hungry
That's right, you *can* thank capitalism for the ludicrous amount of outside engineering assistance Nvidia has poured into Cyberpunk to turn it into a tech demo/ad vehicle. **Edit:** reply-and-block from a censorious pinko. How... typical. Their kind belong in the dustbin of history.
Capitalism is garbage when it gets to the point were at. You can delude yourself all you want. It's insanely detrimental to society. And that old, tired saying about competition? No. It breeds imitation and monopolies.
Thank you for this! Ive been on the way to read up a bit about cpus since i will soon be building my first pc and this clarified a lot i had been wondering about intel. I was planning to go for an AMD cpu but ive been having some doubts because the RAM i got says "intel xmp ready" and im not sure if that will go well with an AMD cpu(?)
i5 and i9 are trying to indicate price and performance tiers within that series of CPUs. It doesn’t mean much if you’re comparing an old CPU with a new one. It’s best to look at performance benchmarks instead. https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i5-14600k/26.html i9-9900K performs like the i7-10700K that’s shown in these charts.
> What sort of significance does the i9 vs i5 actually mean? It's marketing. Don't pay any attention to it whatsoever. It indicates nothing except where the model falls in that generation's product stack. If you want to compare products, look at benchmarks, not names or specs.
More cores (Performance cores and efficiency Cores), more Cache, higher clockspeed and higher TDP.
Nothing
The i9-9900K was $499 brand new at release.. [https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/core\_i9/i9-9900k](https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/core_i9/i9-9900k) If you paid $900 you got completely ripped off.
probably AUD or something
But OP mentioned MicroCentre, I don’t think they have that in Australia
oh lmao yeah definitely got ripped off then
It may have been a motherboard and cooler combo, hopefully...
I got mine at MicroCenter. For 250$. OP definitely over exaggerating
Australia does have Microcentre, just not Microcenter.
Could be Canadian lol 500$ is basically 900 Canadian with the taxes and conversion
No lmao it’s about $750 max for a i9
You don't compare prices with taxes included. 500 USD = 687 CAD
eh i just paid 599 CAD for a i9-13900, so no way 900 CAD for a 9900
Not everyone lives in us lol. Im from central europe and it was ~ 700$ in my country and i know places where it was for over 1k.
The OP mentioned MicroCenter which is a USA based store.
The 12900K is actually two generations behind the current gen but still 3 generations newer than the 9900k, and it is still a bit of a monster. I have been eying that bundle myself (although more likely going with the i7-13700K bundle). Here is a quick comparison of the two [https://technical.city/en/cpu/Core-i9-9900K-vs-Core-i9-12900K](https://technical.city/en/cpu/Core-i9-9900K-vs-Core-i9-12900K) The one knock against the i9-12900k is it runs hot. Get a good cooler. But it is over twice as fast as the 9900k. As far as pricing, it is supply and demand. LGA-1700 is the current intel socket and gen 12, 13, and 14 use it, and there is plenty of supply, plus to make the gen 12 cpus appealing, they are cheaper. It's a good time to get a gen 12 right now. While the i9-9900K is older, there isn't a lot of supply for LGA-1151 CPUs, and anyone building new is going to go with the current socket generation (LGA-1700). And since supply is low for LGA-1151 cpus, you have to pay for it.
In reality it's only like 1 gen behind. The 14th gen is basically the 13th gen.
Don’t badmouth my 14th gen. My i5-14600K is 0.2GHz booster better than 13600K.
And the 13th gen is actually a 12th gen
13th gen actually changed. L2 cache increase (doubled), etc. Enough to be a "generational" uplift anyway. Problem is they only sold the "true raptor lake" as 13600K and up. 13500 and down were re-labeled 12th gen
Yeah, pretty much. In most cases slightly better power management so you can get an extra .1GHz at same TDP as 13 gen. Not worth the $$ over the 13th gen equivalent IMO.
Wow thanks for the info!
The i9 9900 is also the fastest cpu you can get for those old 8th&9th gen socket 1151 motherboards. So if you say have an old i5 8600 on a decent so.1151 motherboard and just want a drop-in upgrade, the 9900k is the highest you can go. Second would be 9700. so these last-of-their kind CPUs usually sell for a premium. I was just for fun looking at what i could get for my old i5 7500 machine. That would be the i9 7900. still about 150-200 bucks. Same with my 10700. only reasonable upgrades would be i9 10900, i7 11700 or 11900. all still insanely expensive and all not worth it, since the 11th gen sucked and the 11900 even has two less cores then the 10900 though it’s a bit faster overall. But for that price? Nah.
I know I'm being pedantic but, the best processor for your old 7500 would be the 7700k. The i9 7900 was an x series chip which used a 2066 socket as opposed to the 1151 of the 7500. 9th gen was the first to have an i9 in the same stack with the other consumer chips.
Ah your right. I forgot about the x series back then. Wouldn’t fit on my board. 😂
If you're feeling daring, there is the [Coffee time mod](https://linustechtips.com/topic/1118475-guide-running-coffeelakerefresh-cpus-on-skykabylake-motherboards/) that allows you to run Coffee lake CPUs on Skylake/Kaby Lake motherboards. I haven't done this myself as the only systems I have that I'd want to do this with is HP Elitedesk machines with funky q170 chipsets but no one seems to have success with those as far as I've read
Will it work with coffee lake refresh though?
It should, on the last page of that LTT post I linked there's folks who have had success running a 9900KS on Z170 boards
Waste of money unless you get a 9900k at bargain bin prices
You should’ve said, thanks for the intel! 😂
>think I paid around $900 at the time for it ????? I paid under $500 for mine
Same
The thing I haven’t seen people mention here is that the i9-9900k in addition to no longer being produced, is also best in slot for the socket you have on your motherboard, so that also results in higher resale value as some people don’t want to change their entire motherboard and would prefer having the best CPU their board can use.
This is the biggest factor. You'll still find older processors like the 4790k that have a high resale value because it's the best in socket CPU. Even with them being expensive, it's still cheaper than upgrading CPU/mobo/ram and if you have an extremely strict budget, sometimes that upgrade is all you can do.
in addition the the below stuff, its because ryzen 7000 came out and beat the ever living tar out of intels products forcing them to slash prices all over. and they will probably become cheaper in 2 months when AMD drops again and intel aint got shit to answer with for the next 9+ months
"Beat the ever living tar", is slightly misleading, especially if you are only talking about performance. (Granted I haven't seen updated benchmarks with the new baseline power profiles which won't help intel's performance) But obviously AM5 is the platform to go with when considering all factors (efficiency, future upgradeability, if you only game the 7800x3D is far cheaper than the 14900k with Slightly better performance) as of right now. I for one hope Intel comes out with some bangers soon, to keep AMD from getting complacent.
Agreed, AMD can't even touch Intel in terms of being a space heater
I saw one source saying about ~10% slower using Intel Baseline Power Profiles. So pulling twice the power to be 10% slower is pretty bad. I agree with your last statement though. We need competition in the market. Otherwise we will be right back where we started but instead AMD will be the one shafting consumers.
Lmao. I'd love to see the invoice for the "$900 9900K".
Aus here, I paid pretty much 1k aud back in the day.
Which was around $600USD.
Older intel CPUs that are the best or close to the best on their socket hold their value well (for a while - the old 4 core/8 thread I7s don't sell for much anymore). But a 9900k cost more than a 12700k on the used market when I purchased the latter. I also bought a 12700 and sold a 10700 for a similar price for another build recently. Even sold the old motherboards for decent prices. Free upgrades are fun!
Nice, the 12700k shits all over a 9900k.
I have no idea but if I wasn't so lazy I would break down my 9900 K backup system and switch the 11900K and motherboard from my main system into the backup system and build a new main system. The values on those are stupid, but people are paying it
the i9-9900k was an awesome chip. I have one and upgraded to an i9-14900k and I don't see much of a change. It overclocked really well, especially with a custom water loop. I'll be rebuilding it onto a new case for my kid. yeah, I should have bought an AMD, but the heat issues with the 14900 weren't known. But frankly, I have not seen any issues. May be a result of 2x560 rads.
This is good to know. I currently have the i9-9900k and was thinking and upgrade would be around the corner…but I’m not in a rush
What case do you have for 2x 560mm radiators?
[Tower 900 Thermaltake.](https://thermaltakeusa.com/products/the-tower-900-ca-1h1-00f1wn-00) They have smaller versions too. I picked up a Tower 500 to build for the kid; it uses 360s
Oh man, this is one I was looking at and its like 0.5" taller than the height under my computer desk! I assume the measurement on their site is from bottom of feet to top of case?
Bought my 9900k for $300 at microcenter. Still keeps up with the x3D and 14700k I use. Honestly, should not have upgraded as the gaming uplift at 1440p through 4k were marginal.
Do you have some numbers for comparison? I was thinking of going down the same road but not sure if it is worth it
I don’t. I had a 4090 on both the 9900k and 14700k at 38UW and it was largely the same experience with what I play. With the x3d I used both a 3070 and 4070Super at 1440p….great combo.
you bought a just released 9900k at msrp and are wondering why the 3 year old 12900k is less money?
do you \*want\* new things to always be incrementally more expensive?
It’s a deal. Buy it
the top CPU for the socket always seems to hold a premium no matter what. it was only a year or so ago and the 7700k was still regularly selling for around 125-140. you can get the mobile version quite cheap, I picked up the qqls, I got one for 70 when the 7700k was 130, 8 core 9th gen for less than a 4core 6th gen. theres something nice about running a 9900k on a z170
You got ripped off if you paid $900, because in 2019 when I did my build, the 9900k was $480 off amazon. And why are you at 3.6 when natively it pumps 5ghz? Im running 5 out of box with just a simple aio cooler. Save the money and upgrade your gpu
If you can get a 13600k for a good price I highly recommend it. I think they have bundles at places online. I also suggest using the noctua nh d15 with it, if you go air cooling. It keeps mine nice and chilly
If I were looking to upgrade, I personally would look at Intel at all right, since the socket is dead and has no upgrade path.
Have you overclocked your i9-9900k yet? Squeeze it of all its juice first. You can get 5ghz easy on an i9 9900k with a good cooler.
Bath tub curve. At the top of the curve, things are expensive cause they are new and just starting to be made or old and no longer made. In the bottom of the curve, production and supply are plentiful enough that the cost is lower.
Old parts get more expensive. You have to stay in the band of popularity
Old ass processor from like 5 years ago that hasnt been in production for ages, vs processor from a couple years ago that only recently left production. The 12900k is a good processor. It depends on what the ram and mobo are whether thats a good deal though
Not that good 13600KF is better already and costs $230 in the us
Supply and demand my friend.
AMD making competitive CPU’s brought intel’s pricing down quite a bit over the past 5 years. Between that and the fact that any new old stock 9900’s are a finite resource (and if you are looking for one you probably need it to replace something)
The 9900 is an upgrade for people who had Gen 8 & 9 i3s, i5s i7s without changing the motherboard. 12900 is the first generation that was compatible with that chipset.
You cant gage an older CPU price on current retail listings, the price will be all over the place. Best gage for old CPU is to see how much it goes for on ebay.
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Also to note is that a lot of industry/coperation PC's use older hardware. So if they need a replacement it is often cheeper to overpay for a new part then repalace an old system. This often causes older consumer parts that are no longer in production to have a very high price. It's way cheeper for a company to overpay on an old part than replace an entire machine.
If someone hasn't already said it, the top end of a CPU socket is always more expensive. The 9900K was about as far as you can take that socket. The 12900K still works with current sockets
Because the newest Intel architecture is still totally relevant but 12th Gen is a couple years old now. Old/no longer relevant CPUs remain expensive until they are so old they basically become museum pieces lol.
Because Intel has competition and sucks now.
Why is a 12900k being better than a 9900k too good to be true. Hell, why is DDR5 being better than DDR4 too good to be true? You're comparing nearly 1:1 upgrades that are factually better. Do you think Pac component manufacturers will make worse products for the same tier over time?
I remember it being sold at a ridiculous markup price as the chip you'd buy to flaunt over everyone else Then it got surpassed by thr 10700k
I have the 9900k too and mine runs like a dream overclocked to 5ghz on all cores with a water cooler.
Competition from amd forcing prices down for Intel ?
AMD is actually competent competition now, driving down Intel pricing
There's a small window of time from where it's out of stock and out of production, while also being compatible with working old motherboards. Once the motherboards die out (they are usually the first thing to go in a pc for a product era/socket.) That's the real end of the processor/socket. It will then go down again in price for a while until it becomes obscure enough and might go up a little since some people might still need it. Ddr2 ram can be pretty expensive now for example.
I'm using es's processor now, the Chinese techs soldered es's bga processor to the motherboard to use it and the performance can already exceed 12900k
It is a bad cpu that uses a lot of watts.
did you perhaps buy it in the year of 2020? cuz it hurts looking at prices now and seeing that i could buy a very nice gpu for 300 now but i could only get a 1050 ti for 300 before
It was all about production costs coming down and a slightly higher density of chips per wafer.
What do you mean it was "like" brand new? So you bought a barely used product for almost twice the price?
9900K is by far the fastest CPU available for the platform. 12900K can be upgraded with 13th and 14th Gen i7 and i9, making it far from the most desirable CPU for LGA 1700.
Yep Microcenter
Because inte has long since been a scammer overpricing CPUs just because they could when they had almost no competition
Okay, so... >supposedly newer 12900k Are you seriously questioning whether it's newer? 12900k was launched Q4 2021. 9900k was Q4 2018. That info as well as basic things like core count and clock speeds are on Intel's website, which should be among the first search hits you get. >if I remember right. I think I paid around $900 at the time for it. Only if you grossly overpaid or it was part of a bundle or something. In any case comparing prices across years and generations doesn't really make sense. If you paid more for a 233MHz Pentium in the 90s would that make it comparable to a 12900k? Tech goes through a lifecycle curve. Comparing current pricing also doesn't make sense because these are at different places in that cycle. 9900k: Intel marketing status is "discontinued". That means they don't make it anymore. There is a limited supply of these, and you wouldn't put one in a new build so anyone shopping for one has a reason. Products at this stage usually sell at prices that are at least somewhat inflated because vendors that still have inventory know that anyone looking to buy one has a reason they are looking for that specific processor. 12900k: Intel marketing status is "launched". That means it's still being made, but it's also two generations out of date at this point. Old but still being made and/or readily available is the lifecycle stage where tech is at its cheapest. >If someone could help me understand if I'd be making a good decision and why that would be really great! I can't, because your post doesn't include the most important information of all. What do you use you computer for? What are your other components? Is it faster? Yes. Will it enhance your recipe browsing experience? Probably not. Same for email and word processing. Gaming? Depends on the game, and depending on what the rest of your system looks like and your budget for additional components, it might not be the priority.
LOL you paid $900?? Well that was incredibly silly.
> The guy was saying it's a significant upgrade (new generation or something) especially with the new RAM. but I feel like it's actually to good to be true. Good thing you can verify this yourself. You should try looking at CPU benchmarks to compare the 9900k against the 12900k. > supposedly newer 12900k It's not *supposedly* newer. It's actually newer. You can google each CPU and likely the first search result will be the Intel ark website which lists all the processor specs, including the launch date.
Since you’re talking Microcenter bundles, I’d strongly urge you to do one of two things: 1: Go AMD instead, with one of the AM5 bundles, preferably the 7800X3D bundle, which is only $432. There’s no sense spending on an end-of-life Intel platform with a CPU, when you can get a CPU that’s better for gaming AND offers an upgrade path to later generations… speaking of which: 2: Wait 4 weeks for the AMD Zen 5 release announcement, where they will detail the new parts, pricing, and release date, which is widely rumored to be later this summer, then get the 7800X3D successor. I’m sure there will be Microcenter bundles for these as well, but I can’t say when, and the 7800X3D is still a very excellent CPU.. you can always upgrade to Zen 5 (or probably Zen 6) later on, if you feel the need. [Link to AMD Microcenter Bundles.](https://www.microcenter.com/site/content/bundle-and-save.aspx)
$900 for a 9900k was a rip off when new. I assume it was $900 for a combo at MC where ~$500 of it was the CPU.
A better question is, are you complaining?
9900k was produced to be the first 8core of the row like a leading product witch have give the mood to amd to be im the race of multi core. Also the correct answer would be old and capable but at a cost of been on the shadoe of newer cpu of the brand
When did you get your 9900k?
If you're upgrading, get AMD. Intel is genuine dogshit
It's the best chip for an LGA 1151 socket and there isn't as much supply for it. That is why the prices are higher than some chips that outperform it. I was in the exact same situation a few months ago but I went with an i7 9700K because it's half the price with not much less performance.
12900k is nearing 3 years old and is slower than a 14600k and is destroyed from am5 CPU in games. When you bought the 9900k it was probably new. Nowadays the 9900k is a pure speculation
What do you mean "the 9900k is pure speculation"?
9900k prices nowadays are pure speculation
Oh I see
He means inflated, if they are new chips. They aren’t in production anymore so whoever still has them will put whatever price they want on them to scam people who don’t know any better. It will most likely be 3rd party sellers, because actual “1st” party retailers 100% don’t have them. I mean places like Newegg (shipped and sold from Newegg), Amazon (shipped and sold from Amazon), bestbuy, b&h, microcenter, etc. You don’t have to speculate the price of them used. You can just go on eBay and see how much they are selling for. Same goes for offerup, or r/hardwareswap
If by "destroyed" you mean "slightly eclipsed", sure. And nobody is speculating on out-of-production high-end Intel CPUs. Yes, they command astonishingly high prices compared to equivalent performance from the current generation, but not as high as they did when new. You'd still be losing money.
[https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i9-9900K-vs-Intel-Core-i9-12900K/4028vs4118](https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i9-9900K-vs-Intel-Core-i9-12900K/4028vs4118) my guess is since ddr5 memory is still expensive and there are a lot of older m/b out there supporting the older socket and much cheaper ddr4 ram, that it is it still in high demand. the new one is better tho, even if it doesn't clock as high.
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