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Fazz
Honored Contributor
May 1, 2020
Question

Why are people praising AMD Ryzen 9 3950X over the i7900k?

At first I thought people were praising the AMD Ryzen 3950x due to it's price and since I'm looking to build another computer I thought I was in for a bargain. That is until I checked the price of the AMD Ryzen 9 3950x and saw it's £689. So why all the rave for AMD Cpu's? The Intel i7 9700k has better performance in games and it's cheaper at £570. 


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    pyroth309
    Up and Coming
    May 1, 2020
    Looking at some benchmarks online, going from an 6700k to a i9 9900k gets about a 10% bump in score with a 2080TI. I doubt it translates to 10% more fps though but it might depending on the game.
    jab
    Participant
    May 1, 2020
    The bottleneck in VR games are usually bandwidth/resolution related. Meaning VR games can use a better GPU more efficiently without needing a stronger CPU. Very similar effect as with 4K gaming. Only game I can think of that will push the CPU is probably Boneworks.
    RuneSR2
    RuneSR2
    Honored Contributor
    May 1, 2020

    pyroth309 said:

    Looking at some benchmarks online, going from an 6700k to a i9 9900k gets about a 10% bump in score with a 2080TI. I doubt it translates to 10% more fps though but it might depending on the game.


    Yup, you can easily spend a lot of money on new cpu + mainboard + ram and end up with a close to non-existing difference due to vsync. But when you know what to look for, it's very easy to find out if a particular game is performing badly due to cpu or gpu. 

    So far I've had no problems getting a constant 90 fps in Alyx - pretty sure that won't change in 120 Hz either, but I have not checked the whole game, lol. 
    Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD "Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"
    RuneSR2
    RuneSR2
    Honored Contributor
    May 1, 2020
    Also you may find some interesting numbers here:



    - low-res gaming to avoid cpu results being bottlenecked by the gpu. 

    And 9700K is about 3% faster than 8700K. More here: 

    https://forums.oculusvr.com/community/discussion/78426/amd-ryzen-9-3900x-vs-rysen-7-3700x-and-intel-i9-9900k-i7-9700k-i7-8700k-and-i7-7700k
    Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD "Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"
    pyroth309
    Up and Coming
    May 1, 2020
    Yea if you're just trying to push a lot of frames with minimal graphics then CPU is quite important. The CPU is still the master and has to process the frames. When you crank graphics/resolution the GPU has to work hard and becomes the bottleneck..which is the ideal situation. The way to fix that is to get a better GPU lol.
    FazzAuthor
    Honored Contributor
    May 1, 2020
    I though AMD were supposed to be the company that did things cheap, so I have to agree that the AMD MD Ryzen 3950x, doesn't even appear worth it. I think I'll stick with what I've got for now after reading the comments and if the Geforce 3080ti is 50% the performance of a Geforce 2080ti, then I'll get that when it arrives. I think the 50% performance increase is mainly to do with RTX side of things though and it's only going to be around 20% performance increase in other things in which case I won't bother.
    pyroth309
    Up and Coming
    May 1, 2020

    RedRizla said:

    I though AMD were supposed to be the company that did things cheap, so I have to agree that the AMD MD Ryzen 3950x, doesn't even appear worth it. I think I'll stick with what I've got for now after reading the comments and if the Geforce 3080ti is 50% the performance of a Geforce 2080ti, then I'll get that when it arrives. I think the 50% performance increase is mainly to do with RTX side of things though and it's only going to be around 20% performance increase in other things in which case I won't bother.



    That was before they took more than 50% of the market lol. The 3950x is a nice CPU with 16 cores and 32 threads which lets it compete with multicore monsters multiple times its price....but for gaming that's not very helpful or useful. Most games are still quite poor at utilizing multiple cores.

    With the power being rumored in the 3080TI (8192 cuda cores lol) you may run into a CPU bottleneck but we won't know until it arrives. If I had a 2080Ti with your cpu, though I wouldn't bother upgrading personally...especially if you're planning to go for a 3080ti and then I'd do both.
    RuneSR2
    RuneSR2
    Honored Contributor
    May 1, 2020
    Also worth remembering is that we'll always have a bottleneck - and it will be either the gpu or the cpu which decides our maximum frames per second in any given game or app. 

    Maybe I can find some games where my 7700K can't do 144 fps with the Index, but it's my impression that my performance in VR games - and most pancake games in 2K res - are limited by my GTX 1080. I think my 7700K will be able to achieve 90 fps in most VR game for many years to come - especially those made for PS4 due to the more limited polygon processing capabilities of the consoles. Maybe PS5 will change that, maybe not... 
    Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD "Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"
    RuneSR2
    RuneSR2
    Honored Contributor
    May 1, 2020

    RedRizla said:

    I though AMD were supposed to be the company that did things cheap 



    Only when they're the underdog and forced to sell cheap cpus - I still remember the Athlon (XP/64) prices in early 2000, when AMD dominated their prices went up really fast. I guess AMD is now trying to cover 15 years of losses, lol. 
    Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD "Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"
    oldgamergazza
    Inspiring
    May 2, 2020
    My 7700k at 4.8ghz bottlenecks my RTX2080 in a few vr games using a Valve Index.
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