Our friends from down below ( down under ) stepped of the beaten path while researching the impact on " average " systems and gaming.

In a heated battle they pitted the intel 10400F, the r5 5600x and the r5 3600 against each other all with their hands on the rx 6800 ( i belief the gpu is comparable to either the 3060Ti or the 3070 .. not sure about that one )

In short, for 1440p or 4k resolutions it actually makes no difference if you use either cpu or even a 10900k so do yourself a favor .... don't waste any money unless you have good reasons.... e.g. have a montly income that should make you ashamed if you bought cheap

link for the video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSxuiWih_Z8

It always depends on what you use your computer for and which games you play. I agree the Core i5-10400F is half decent and much cheaper than the Ryzen 5 5600X. Costing a third according to my quick search.

One more point: If you are like me and keep your system for a long time and just change the graphics card 1--3 times before getting a new motherboard and processor, it makes sense to pay a little more and get something that will last you two more years.

Techspot's recent article highlighted this perfectly with the Ryzen 3600 vs 5600X vs Intel i5-10400F, tested a dozen games each at 1080p vs 1440p vs 4k:-
https://www.techspot.com/review/2185-amd-zen-3-ryzen-5600-versus/

I don't know why AMD's chips are so expensive at the moment, and I never thought I'd see the day where Intel had ended up the better value for money brand, but right now UK pricing is like £73 i3-10100F (4C/8T) vs £128 i5-10400F (6C/12T) vs £180 Ryzen 3600 (6C/12T) vs £280 i7-10700F (8C/16T) vs £300 Ryzen 5600X (6C/12T). If you game at 1440p (or you simply have a 60-75Hz monitor which has the same capping effect as on some 1440p/4k charts), the money is definitely better spent on more GPU than more CPU.

Doesn't this also depend on how often people upgrade their cpu/mobo? I've been looking at the 5600x for an upgrade as my current low-end system is a decade old, and whatever I get is going to be unchanged for another decade (2030+). So even though I may not need what the 5600x offers NOW, I think I'll be well glad of it many years from now.

How often are people getting new cpus?

The i7 920, which cost me about 500 something euro's and lasted about 11 years is about as good as an example as any other i guess... i do wonder if the math still works if you only look at pricings. In my current setup i spend 500 euro's in total for motherboard and cpu ( 320 i5 10600k 180 mobo ) could this mean i will only go as far as 7 years with this setup? Not to mention Moore's Law ?!

If memory serves, it should land comfortably between the 3070 and 3080.

I agree with what most people have become aware of at this point one way or another - most games, including modern titles, are GPU intensive and will work just fine even with a Sandy Bridge quad-core with HT.

Upgrading your CPU should not be driven by your gaming needs unless you're noticing serious performance losses or want to get competitive gaming framerates.

CPU bottlenecks can happen but they are not as prevalent as most people think, and certainly not wide spread, as how the CPU and GPU are used very much depends on the type of game/application you are running.

Depends: with AMD the upgrades are more convenient, usually their chipsests are compatible with future CPUs instead of intel that force you to upgrade the motherboard + CPU combo.
It's better to factor in the price of the new mainboard when planning an upgrade an intel CPU unless you go for the same gen with higher specs.

Don't go to cheap though, i said this before but the r5 2600 was really to weak for my needs, this showed in intensive builders such as cities : skylines but also in larger open world titles and some strategy games/4x games on harder difficulty settings. I used the same 2060super with both the ryzen 5 2600 and the i5 10600k with very different results

still, the newer 6 core cpu's seem to be all good for anything atm

for myself i probably will be trying a top tier cpu probably next year when it becomes available to non droids for reasonable pricings to see for myself if that will indeed allow for even a more advanced strategy/4x experience

Fair enough. City builders and Anno-like games are indeed known to be CPU intensive. I was mostly arguing for getting a near-top tier per-core performer (not necessarily a core-count performer as well) and sticking with it for a decade ;). And will probably still be fine for a long time. I'm still on a Kaby Lake i7 and I've still to run across anything that would make me want to upgrade any time soon, excluding all the hype and marketing to which I'm mostly impervious.

Many people seem to forget that when faced with the option of what to get in terms of a new CPU, you also have a 0 cost option - stick with what you have if it's still fine. I'm not referring to your particular situation here, but I've known people who threw out a Coffee Lake i9 for one of the new Ryzen CPUs, and that's just mad in my book when considering only gaming.

hah yea, somehow it is hard to not fall for the hype, and especially if your surrounded with people who can afford ( or pretend ) such purchases, under the guise of work ( graphic designers etc ) that is a very wrong crowd to be in, or the younger ones of course :)

for the dedicated gamer with a small budget the right purchase becomes even more important, not to mention that it really is most of the time disappointing what your new purchase brings also since there will be always that game where your new hardware just seems to fail.

but yea, if you are able to get past your own expectations pc world can be nice

This has been true for a lot of time. The same argument was made with AMD FX processors, or later with the 1st gen Ryzen. For playing games, CPU's just need to be good enough.
Modern OS's and games are made to be limited by the GPU or any artificial ways (vsync, frame cap etc), any other "limit" usually means crashes, stutter or fps instability.
While benchmarkers often test a range of applications, the big audience only look at gaming tests, this is not a great idea, specially when benchmarkers often only test AAA (graphic intensive) titles only with top-tier components. Only recently, some of them start testing non-K Intel parts with proper memory. Mainstream gaming CPU benchmarks have been wrong for decade (despite what some people calling for this been bullied by fanboys).

I'm currently building a ~700€ pc for a kid and in the lower end, there's nothing but Intel. there is not a good priced Ryzen chip, except maybe at the high end. For any budget-limited build thre's no choice but the i3-10100f and i5-10400f, Ryzen chips need to be cut 25-50% in price to even be considered.

Then, there's the ego factor. I've bought the R5 1600Af for 100€ and the recent batch are 120€, over pricing seems to be common with AMD these days.

Fun story: I'ven been using a old computer that I was given, phenom x4 960T, HD6950 2Gb and 4Gb ddr3. Successfully unlocked the phenom to 6 cores and without overclock I can run a plethora or recent games on this computer.
Even if single core speed is extremelly slow games like Shadow Tactics run on maximum settings at 120+fps with the load well distributed by the whole 6 cores. Guess well Unity is quite good at spreading the load.
While not the most intensive game, many modern and fun games run very well on very weak CPU's. Browsing is fine but other tasks like file compression (coupled with a old and slow HDD) is painfull to watch.

If I understood this correctly, is that why many GPU intensive games work with Intel HD Graphics in pcs with lots of Ram?
It's kinda weird, but I have a Home notebook that can run games that requires 4gb ~ 6gb VRAM. Sometimes it surprises me. The CPU is only 1,7 Ghz in that one.

^This.

it seems like most games are designed to run on almost anything made in the last 7 years at 1080p.

its when you want to future proof your system for the next 7 years you want a 6-8 core system. this would afford you the cores to manage complex ai modeling, the game and its assets, and the os. the gpu is the most difficult component to keep updated since 5k and 8k will get cheaper unless some disaster goes down