I currently have an Intel Core i9-12900K with DDR4 memory and a compatible motherboard. I can buy a Core i7-14700KF for £290 and am wondering whether that would be a worthwhile upgrade. I mainly use my PC for esports gaming and programming. My current graphics card is an RTX 2080, but I plan to replace it with an RTX 5080 and move from 1080p to 1440p gaming. Would the processor upgrade provide a noticeable improvement, or would the money be better spent elsewhere?
1 Answer
It probably isn’t a good-value upgrade. The 12th-, 13th-, and 14th-generation chips are fairly close in performance for most gaming workloads, and your 12900K is already a powerful processor. Unless you specifically need the 14700KF’s additional cores for heavily threaded programming or another workload, you’d likely notice a bigger benefit from putting the £290 toward the RTX 5080, a better monitor, or other peripherals. You could also try tuning or overclocking the 12900K first.
I’m currently gaming at 1080p, but I’m planning to move to 1440p when I upgrade the graphics card.