CPU Clock Speed, Nanometers, and Upgrade Windows

[Odd_Fox]

My build is purely gaming focused and I am hoping to get some insight on whether my upgrade window is essentially now, or sometime later this year. The 7nm manufacturing process by amd is fantastic and I love that they're taking it to intel, but for gaming clock speed is still king and so we've essentially had our reigning cpu champ since october of 2018 when the i7 9700k was launched. Leaks suggest intel's upcoming 14nm refresh pushes 5.3 ghz, a modest increase over what is possible now with oc, but it's their 10nm process later this year that makes me wonder if I should wait. Surely intel cannot be blind to the fact that gaming is one of its few remaining strongsuits, and the 10 nm process should have the thermal headroom to see a jump in clockspeed. I'm curious to hear fellow system builder's thoughts on how you're thinking about your upgrade window.

 

[MultiDoc]

I’m not an expert but at this time my guess is that in the future more games will start taking advantage of multi core - multi threads and also intel by all accounts has (at the moment at least) been left in the dust.
Cants suggest when it’s the best time to upgrade, and don’t think such thing exists. Just go ahead depending on your personal needs. I’m already gathering parts for my next build and for the first time in 20+ years I’m going AMD.

 

[rfarmer]

I am currently running a 8700k and saw no need for the expense of upgrading to 9th gen Intel, AMD did temp me but I am now waiting for 4th gen Ryzen. After seeing the huge gains AMD has made with this generation I believe 4th gen will see an even bigger boost in clock speeds and continue to close the gap. I have been using Intel since my 2500k and honestly I am done with the forced motherboard upgrades and need to run Z boards in order to OC, unless things drastically change I will be an AMD fanboy from now on.

 

[Odd_Fox]

Hmm, well I like the idea of seeing how Tiger Lake vs Zen 3 goes and making a decision then. Although forestalling performance now for potential gains in the future is not my personal modus operandi, I’m definitely open to an amd chipset that could come along and trump what intel has on offer (for gaming).