portupgrade(1) | portmaster(8) -- which is more effective for large upgrade?

[Chris H]

Greetings,
 I haven't upgraded my tree(s) for awhile. My last attempt to rebuild after an updating
src && ports, resulted in nearly installing the entire ports tree, which is why I've
waited so long. Try as I might, I've had great difficulty finding something that will
_only_ upgrade what I already have installed, _and_ respect the "options" used during the
original make && make install, or those options expressed in make.conf.
As portupgrade(1) && portmaster(8) appear to be the most used in this scenario,
I'm soliciting opinions on which of these works best, or if there is something else to
better manage this situation. Is there such a thing as a FreeBSD upgrade "easy button"?

Thank you for all your consideration.

--chris