Great for most application due to having 8 cores. Hyperthreading only increases performance in highly multi-threaded workloads like video editing. Background apps like discord or chrome usually only consumes 1% - 5% of the CPU so hyperthreading will not make a difference. In fact, (some) games are more dependent on latency than the actual performance of the cores. The 9700k has one of the lowest latency cores in a CPU so for gaming, the 9700k is excellent and should be more than enough to futureproof as games are only recently optimizing for 6 cores, leaving headroom for future games that can use 8 cores. Overall the 9700k is a great value for the price (but it depends on where you live) if you game frequently on your computer and do not wish to bottleneck the next GPU you put in your system, something that will happen on the 3700x or 3600 for example, due to having high latency between cores.—Nov '20