Upgrading From an i7-8700K or i7-9700K in 2026: What Is Actually Worth It
The 8700K and 9700K were the gaming kings of 2018. Seven years on, here is exactly how far behind they are — and the three upgrade paths that actually make sense.
The short version
The Intel Core i7-8700K and Intel Core i7-9700K were the fastest gaming CPUs money could buy in 2018. In 2026 they still boot anything, but the gap to modern silicon is no longer subtle: a $167 Intel Core i5-12400F beats both of them in every benchmark we track, and the socket they live on — LGA1151 v2 — is a dead end. There is no drop-in upgrade. When you move, you move platforms.
Where a 8700K or 9700K still holds up
- 1440p and 4K gaming with a mid-range GPU. At GPU-bound settings the CPU deficit shrinks; paired with anything up to an RTX 4060 Ti, both chips still deliver playable, mostly smooth results.
- Esports titles. Counter-Strike 2 and the like still run in the hundreds of frames.
- Office, media, single-app work. Six or eight Coffee Lake cores at 4.7–4.9GHz remain perfectly responsive in daily use.
What has aged badly is everything with modern streaming engines: open-world games hitch on asset decompression these CPUs must do in software, background tasks steal whole cores, and the 1% lows fall apart long before average frame rates do. The i7-8700K keeps twelve threads against the i7-9700K's eight — see our full spec-by-spec comparison — which is why the older chip sometimes ages more gracefully in thread-hungry games.
The numbers, honestly
| CPU | Cores/threads | Geekbench 6 (single/multi) | Cinebench R23 multi | Inno Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intel Core i7-8700K (2017) | 6/12 | 1,560 / 6,800 | 9,200 | 36 |
| Intel Core i7-9700K (2018) | 8/8 | 1,680 / 7,000 | 9,700 | 38 |
| Intel Core i5-12400F ($167) | 6/12 | 2,100 / 9,400 | 11,900 | 47 |
| Intel Core i5-13600K ($319) | 14/20 | 2,750 / 15,500 | 24,000 | 67 |
| AMD Ryzen 5 7600 ($229) | 6/12 | 2,650 / 12,600 | 14,700 | 60 |
| AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D ($479) | 8/16 | 3,150 / 18,500 | 19,500 | 78 |
Read the single-core column first: that is the one games feel. A modern budget chip carries roughly 30–35% more single-thread speed than a 9700K, and the mid-range parts carry 60–70% more. Prices are launch MSRPs — the used market runs cheaper. A note on memory: DDR4 B660/B760 boards let the budget path reuse your existing RAM, while every AMD AM5 board requires DDR5 — that single difference explains most of the price gap between paths one and two.
The three upgrade paths
1. The budget swap (~$350 all-in)
An Intel Core i5-12400F on a DDR4 B660 or B760 board — the rare platform jump where your existing 32GB of DDR4 carries straight over, and LGA1151 coolers usually fit LGA1700 with a bracket. This is the smallest spend that makes the upgrade feel unmistakable: every benchmark up 30–70%, platform gains (PCIe 4.0, NVMe boot without workarounds) included.
2. The value platform (~$550 all-in)
An AMD Ryzen 5 7600 on a B650 board with 32GB of DDR5. It costs more up front than the Intel path because DDR5 is mandatory, but AM5 is a living socket — AMD has committed to it beyond 2027, which means the next CPU upgrade after this one is a drop-in again. That is exactly the escape hatch LGA1151 owners never got.
3. The endgame gaming build (~$800 all-in)
An AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D on the same B650-class platform. Its 96MB of stacked cache produces the best gaming performance available at any price — our gaming sub-score puts it at 92/100 against the 9700K's 40 — and it turns the platform question into a decade-scale decision rather than a stopgap.
The sidegrade trap
The used market is full of tempting-looking middle steps: an Intel Core i9-9900K for your existing board, or a cheap Intel Core i7-10700K with an LGA1200 motherboard. Run the numbers before spending. The 9900K is the one legitimate drop-in — eight hyperthreaded cores on the socket you already own — but it commands collector-grade used prices for performance a $167 modern chip beats. And LGA1200 is just a different dead socket: money spent getting onto it buys you the same no-upgrade-path problem you are escaping. Our data puts the 10700K at an Inno Score of 43 — ahead of your 9700K by five points, behind an i5-13600K by twenty-four.
One genuinely useful note for sellers: because so many people stay on these platforms, working 8700K/9700K chips and Z370/Z390 boards hold their used value unusually well. Selling the old platform typically funds a third of the budget path.
When not to upgrade
If you play at 4K with a GPU below the RTX 4070 class, spend on the graphics card first; the CPU is not your bottleneck. And if the machine is a second PC or a home server, an eight-thread 9700K still earns its power draw. The upgrade case is strongest for high-refresh 1080p/1440p gaming and for anyone whose workflow finally outgrew eight threads.