Base clock is meaningless now. HT performance depends on the application (sometimes HT cores mean only a few percents of improvement or performance decrease - i

Base clock is meaningless now. HT performance depends on the application (sometimes HT cores mean only a few percents of improvement or performance decrease - it depends on what the "main" core does, as they share resources). The new 9700K is not something I would upgrade to (from 8700K), but it's surely the way to go if you upgrade from an older system and you stick with Intel.