Is this a good buy?

[R18Civic]

I’m running a 1070ti with my original 1st-gen i7-920 Nehalem and run modern games on mid-high settings @ 60+ FPS. I seriously doubt that i3 will bottleneck a 1660.

Well searches online are showing a serious bottleneck. I'd prefer an i5 or i7. I9 is pretty much overkill for gaming.

 

[gathermewool]

What do they consider a bottleneck? 1-2 less fps?

Are you in a rush to purchase? Maybe wait for the prices for what you really want comes down or when you’ve saved up some more.

 

[gathermewool]

From this comparison between my ancient i7 and your prospective i3: i7 vs i3

Intel’s Core i3-9100F is a quad-core 9th generation Coffee Lake desktop processor. It features base / boost clocks of 3.6 / 4.2 GHz, 6 MB of cache, a 65W TDP and it ships with a cooler. Gamers should pair the 9100F with a Z390 motherboard and unlock higher XMP RAM speeds. This will deliver up to a 15% fps boost which is well worth it considering that many Z390 boards are available for around $100 USD (here is one of the builds from our EFps test lab). The 9100F has great single core performance coupled with a strong memory sub system. This enables it to deliver excellent all round performance, easily holding its own against far pricier CPUs for the majority of use cases. The heavily hyped 12 threaded 6 core Ryzen 3600, paired with a 2060S, barely pulls ahead in any of the top five games. [Oct '19 CPUPro]

Im curious to know more about this CPU being a bottleneck issue.

Finally, something I forgot to mention earlier, is that the GPU can always be upgraded in the future way easier than the CPU. Your though of getting a way-less-power 1050 isn’t totally misguided, though it really depends on the kinds of games you want to play and how much you’re willing to sacrifice. I feel as if the 1050 is too much of a compromise, unless all you want to do is play some older games on mid-low settings.

 

[R18Civic]

From this comparison between my ancient i7 and your prospective i3: i7 vs i3



Im curious to know more about this CPU being a bottleneck issue.

Finally, something I forgot to mention earlier, is that the GPU can always be upgraded in the future way easier than the CPU. Your though of getting a way-less-power 1050 isn’t totally misguided, though it really depends on the kinds of games you want to play and how much you’re willing to sacrifice. I feel as if the 1050 is too much of a compromise, unless all you want to do is play some older games on mid-low settings.

Core i3-9100F & GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER | Bottleneck calculator | PC Builds

Check out will Intel Core i3-9100F & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER work without bottleneck issues.

pc-builds.com

.

 

[gathermewool]

I just did mine and the result is 100% bottleneck!

Your processor is too weak for this graphic card on 1080p resolution

I’ll have to do some more reading.

I guess I don’t understand the practical consequence of CPU bottlenecking, because my setup still runs newer games on 1080-1440p on mid-high settings (never ultra of course) without ever dipping below 30 FPS, with an average usually greater than 60, depending on the game.

The FPS and performance I’m seeing appear appropriate for a non-bottlenecked 1070ti...

 

[KrisZ]

I would not rely on any of these bottleneck calculators. It's easy to get caught up with numbers and lots of tech sites like to throw the word "bottleneck"around a lot. It sure convinces people into buying more expensive hardware then they originally planned.

Here is a video testing the newest I3. At 8:00 minute mark they post game benchmarks paired with a 2080ti. It sure bottlenecks when compared against faster CPUs, but it still maintains high FPS averages. I hardly doubt it will bottleneck a 1660 card.
If your future plans, however, are to upgrade the graphic card, then I would look into an i5 10600k. I think it's around $280 at the moment.

 

[nyumski]

i3 9100F
1660 Super 6gb
8gb DDR4 2400mhz ram
1tb 7200 RPM HDD

$699.99

And will the i3 bottleneck the 1660 super?

the processor because of the i3 is only 2 core with 4 threads, is not sufficient to leverage the RAM resources.
also with the storage, the HDD will be the bottleneck due to the speed of load of the software.
so i think you need to change the storage first then the processor

 

[R18Civic]

Well I just got a call from my personal injury lawyer and he said allstate offered me 36k and some change. Says he doesn't think he can get me much more than that if we take it to court.

Im gonna think about it over the weekend after getting some opinions but I'm pretty sure if I take it to court I'll end up losing money since as soon as paperwork is files his cut automatically jumps up to 40% plus costs of the case.

He says I'll pocket about 18k which is more than enough for a rtx 3080 laptop with a 1tb ssd and 16gigs of ram. Not looking for 4k or anything fancy.

That should also be plenty to get my car painted and pay off the debt collectors that came after me after I got arrested and committed to a state mental hospital.

TL;DR Version Im going with either an Lenovo or Asus RTX 3080 gaming laptop.

 

[R18Civic]

Well I made a compromise.

I didnt think it was wise to pay another 1-1.5k for just a GPU upgrade. Settled for a Max-Q RTX 3070.

I don't really need anything much beefier than this anyways. The only upcoming game I was looking forward to is Battlefield 2042 but with the announcement of no Single Player I've decided to pass.

I can net 100+ - 200+ FPS in BF5 and BF4 respectively.

 

[ka9mnx]

$700 is a little steep for any i3.