Comparing upgrades: i9 10900k vs i9 9900k vs i9 10900kf – Is it worth it?
Comparing upgrades: i9 10900k vs i9 9900k vs i9 10900kf – Is it worth it?
I bought the RTX 3090 mostly for Skyrim and Fallout New Vegas because of the 4K texture mods I installed. On mod forums they warn that if the game hits the VRAM limit it crashes. I also saw many FPS drops with my current EVGA GX 1080 Ti, so I thought the RTX 3090 was a solid pick and I hoped to get all the settings optimized for each game. Isn't the RTX 3090 mainly for gaming?
They probably wouldn't have upgraded from 10GB to 24GB of VRAM just for a modest performance increase if it was a gaming card. The jump from 2080 to 2080Ti was straightforward, while 3090 is a high-end card—you could play, but your reasoning seems off. You were after the powerful card, so you went for it. It's fine with that. Keep the logic in mind and consider it for the 10900K. Have fun with it!
I guess I’ll keep going with the i9 9900k style instead of the 3090...
It's disappointing that modded material is required just to inject some energy into Skyrim. I truly wish they begin fresh with ES6, enabling them to deliver a quality experience comparable to AAA titles rather than something that resembles a budget indie project from a garage. DirectX 9 offers limited capabilities, and even DirectX 11 wasn't widely available until three years before its release.
I’ve worked with Fallout New Vegas modding and a bit of Skyrim tuning. Performance drops and crashes usually stem from the game engine itself, not your hardware. Getting these engines to run smoothly requires significant effort. The 3090 won’t boost performance much, if at all. For these titles, single-thread CPU efficiency is crucial—opt for an R5 5600X or R9 5900X instead.
Absolutely nailed it! I was wondering if it’ll end up like a Fallout 76 situation, though I haven’t played that game myself. I was thinking about how many details would be involved—like 16 times the complexity. Toddhoward had similar thoughts too; he mentioned scripts running nonstop and needing near-maximum settings to even play Fallout 3 or Vegas smoothly. But it’s definitely the engine power that matters. Plus, forums say Skyrim, Fallout, and others perform better with faster single-threaded performance. Bethesda really knows how to optimize! Maybe I’ll consider an R9 5900X after reading more.
It's doable, but I wouldn't. We're both dealing with 9900K. I'm running at 5Ghz all the way through the core. I intend to swap it out and install direct die cooling with liquid metal this weekend—maybe tweak it a bit if things stay cool. I'll probably hold off on upgrading my CPU until DDR5 becomes standard.
I possess both models. The i9 10900k performs better in gaming compared to the i9 9900k with its 5GHz all-core overclock. It’s more than just a decent upgrade. The i9 10900k surpasses them even further with a 5.3 or 5.3GHz boost, though heat management becomes challenging even with a 360mm AIO. My i9 9900k behaves almost like an i7 8086k, offering two more cores. The i9 10900k stands apart entirely. I’ve repeatedly attempted to achieve full-core speeds of 5 and 5.1GHz to beat the stock CPU, but without success. With the Intel power cap disabled via TVB boosts, the stock model still outperforms. That seems unusual. At 5.3GHz all cores, the CPU handles games smoothly and achieves Cinebench R15 and R20 scores without trouble, though thermal throttling appears in Time Spy tests. I’m considering a push-pull configuration to resolve this, but heat—not stability—remains the main concern. At stock speeds, it stays under 70°C, even for Cinebench R20 without AVX adjustments. If Ryzen processors hadn’t emerged, I’d have recommended the i9 10900k; they do, which is why I chose it. With this year’s Windows updates, some games rely on Havok physics. Skyrim SE, VR, Fallout 4, and Space Engineers run without crashes when I skip my overclocks, but I’d need to trim content for smooth performance. I wanted a CPU matching the speed of an i7 8086k with a 5GHz boost, without needing any overclocking. In that regard, the i9 10900k proved highly effective. Next year I plan to build a Ryzen system just to test if extra IPC lets me add more enemies in Skyrim SE and Fallout 4. If games prioritize frequency over raw speed, it won’t work.