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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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    RattyUK1096940
    Inspiring
    May 2, 2020

    RedRizla said:

    @bigmike20vt - I'm was comparing the highend intel and AMD Cpu's. I'm haven't looked at the pricing for the mid range Cpu's, so AMD night come out top when it comes to pricing in that range.


    AMD do pretty much come out on top in the midrange (I7 / Ryzen 7) series, not by a massive amount but still worth considering.
    I'd only suggest that the 'benefit' to AMD currently is that upgrading from the previous generation to current doesn't require a motherboard with a different socket. I can go from my G2 Ryzen 7 to a G3 Ryzen 9 just by swapping CPU and nothing else :)

    PC info: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X - Sapphire 7900XTX - 32GB DDR4 4000 - 3 NVMe + 3SATA SSD - Quest 2 & 3
    kojack
    kojack
    Honored Contributor
    May 2, 2020
    My next CPU will probably be a Threadripper 3970X. I'm currently on a Threadripper 1950X.
    I could go for a 3990X, but it's 128 threads are problematic for multithreaded software, Windows requires extra effort to handle more than 64 hardware threads at once. Plus the 3970X has a higher base clock.
    $3539au is a bit high for just a cpu, but 32 cores / 64 threads would be nice.

    Author: Oculus Monitor , Auto Oculus Touch , Forum Dark Mode , Phantom Touch Remover , X-Plane Fixer Hardware: Threadripper 1950x, MSI Gaming Trio 2080TI, Asrock X399 Taich Headsets: Wrap 1200VR, DK1, DK2, CV1, Rift-S, GearVR, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Reverb G2, Quest 3
    RuneSR2
    RuneSR2
    Honored Contributor
    May 2, 2020

    ohgrant said:




    With Intel I get the feeling that I can sleep better at night and don't have to worry about anything, lol. 

    I might consider AMD, but only when they dominate clearly when it comes to gaming performance and most (Steam high-end) users have an  AMD cpu. Right now I'd feel like a beta tester using a Ryzen cpu ;)




     Fair enough, I'm glad you're sleeping well. Perhaps consider that both the PlayStation and X-box use AMD exclusively, I just can't see AMD as the underdog in the gaming category  


    Maybe I should mention that I have been using AMD for many years - especially back when Athlon XP and Athlon 64 were the fastest cpus - I've also used different (ATi) Radeon video cards for many years, when Radeon cards had the best performance (like when Half-Life 2 arrived). Maybe I did get somewhat burned back then - well, my AMD rigs generally worked fine (in fact I still have my Athlon 64 3500+, it's still working), just not as perfect as using Intel and Nvidia. Over the years, using Intel and Nvidia, my rigs have had  close to no problems - including drivers, ram and mainboards. 
    Personally I would not have problems using Ryzen if I was sure to gain maybe 25 - 50% more fps in a game compared to using a similarly priced Intel cpu (I only care for game performance). And power consumption should of course also be similar or lower. Same goes for AMD vs. Nvidia video cards. I do think it's interesting what video card AMD can make in the fight against 3080 Ti - seems like AMD has problems reducing power consumption, but let's see what happens later this year. 
    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"
    bigmike20vt
    Honored Contributor
    May 2, 2020
    Yeah I forgot about thread title ;). So sure for gaming if you go top of the line  intel has an edge because they still dominate in single threaded performance ,(but less than they used to) so for pure gaming in general if you go top end intel still win. AMD shine however where multiple cores benefit more.

    Just for gaming tho I would never go top end tbh. It's just wasted money you are far better buying a faster GPU or if you have that already then put it towards a holiday when lockdown ends

    Fiat Coupe, gone. 350Z gone. Dirty nappies, no sleep & practical transport incoming. Thank goodness for VR :)
    pyroth309
    Up and Coming
    May 3, 2020

    bigmike20vt said:

    Yeah I forgot about thread title ;). So sure for gaming if you go top of the line  intel has an edge because they still dominate in single threaded performance ,(but less than they used to) so for pure gaming in general if you go top end intel still win. AMD shine however where multiple cores benefit more.

    Just for gaming tho I would never go top end tbh. It's just wasted money you are far better buying a faster GPU or if you have that already then put it towards a holiday when lockdown ends




    Yea exactly, unless there was some old niche title that is CPU heavy that you plan to play primarily. It's a shame game engines and developers haven't gotten better at using multiple cores. Even the ones that support it tend to load up a single core more than the others and do a bad job distributing the load.
    OmegaM4N
    Honored Contributor
    May 3, 2020



    RedRizla said:





    I'd support the underdog if they weren't more expensive than the top dog  :D


    So I would need to do more research if I was actually planning to upgrade so i could be wrong but the little I have followed is that the Ryzen 3700x takes some beating in the gaming bang for your buck 
    Sure for benchmarking willy waving it may fall short, but I am not sure you would gain any actual noticeable improvement when it comes to gaming experience over spending more.   I think I have seen that chip before things went silly recently for the bright side of £250

    Like I said I am hoping I can eek another GPU generation out of my 5820k. I got lucky. I was gonna buy a 4 core i7 but my 6 core CE up In a 2015 black Friday bundle I could not. refuse . At the time the extra 2 cores didn't really help me but I think it has come into its own the last few years.


    I bought my i7 4770 Haswell core in 2014 with the Mobo and 16 gig memory combo, and over those 6 years the only thing to change has been the GPU, which has been a GTX1080 for 2 years now, and i have not really had any real issues with games, BUT!, in saying that i don't monitor stuff like FPS as i got that monkey off my back in the the late 2000s as i spent far too many years tearing the PC apart if temps were not to my liking of FPS dropped a few frames, and was not enjoying PC gaming at all because of it, so dumped the lot, and now i install, fire up and enjoy the game, and if it is really starting to chug along i just fire OTT and disable AWS, same on steamVR, and back to gaming, love it, i have F4VR and SkyrimVR modded up the wazzo, far too much for my setup to even dream of running at a sustained high FPR, but pop on OTT, disable aws, lock to 45fps, and away you go, great stuff......but i suspose when you have come from a time when games were loaded from cassette and you were getting 1 to 5 fps in games, everything above that is a win. lol

    CV1/Vive-knuckles)/Dell Vr Visor/Go/Quest II/ PSVR/PSVR 2.
    RattyUK1096940
    Inspiring
    May 3, 2020

    OmegaM4N said:

    ...but i suspose when you have come from a time when games were loaded from cassette and you were getting 1 to 5 fps in games, everything above that is a win. lol



    Ah, the Voodoo FX card that could run Doom! at 30FPS...  Those were the days :)
    Like @RuneSR2 I used AMD processors (and Radeon GPU's - even in Crossfire!) until the Intel core CPU's hit and performance went up and power use down.
    Now 'in a happy place' with my setup, although I think I may go 3rd Gen AMD soon.

    PC info: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X - Sapphire 7900XTX - 32GB DDR4 4000 - 3 NVMe + 3SATA SSD - Quest 2 & 3
    FazzAuthor
    Honored Contributor
    May 4, 2020
    I had an AMD Athlon back in 2002 and it served me well. I think I switched to Intel after hearing they could withstand higher temperatures if I'm not mistaken. I'm not sure if AMD are as good as Intel now when it comes to high temps, I haven't checked.
    pyroth309
    Up and Coming
    May 4, 2020

    RattyUK said:


    OmegaM4N said:

    ...but i suspose when you have come from a time when games were loaded from cassette and you were getting 1 to 5 fps in games, everything above that is a win. lol



    Ah, the Voodoo FX card that could run Doom! at 30FPS...  Those were the days :)
    Like @RuneSR2 I used AMD processors (and Radeon GPU's - even in Crossfire!) until the Intel core CPU's hit and performance went up and power use down.
    Now 'in a happy place' with my setup, although I think I may go 3rd Gen AMD soon.




    Yea I've used several AMD processors myself back in the day. Until Ryzen they've not given me a reason to look at them in several years but I have a feeling with Zen 3 I'm going to go back to AMD. I think Intel will still be the fastest single core speed but it should be closer. Everything else will strongly favor AMD.

    GPU is still a big disparity but it looks like AMD is finally pushing forward to compete on the top end and is rapidly closing the gap. RDNA 2 and 3 should be interesting to see how how they matchup.
    RattyUK1096940
    Inspiring
    May 4, 2020

    RedRizla said:

    I had an AMD Athlon back in 2002 and it served me well. I think I switched to Intel after hearing they could withstand higher temperatures if I'm not mistaken. I'm not sure if AMD are as good as Intel now when it comes to high temps, I haven't checked.


    I think (think being the main word!) they are pretty much at parity now, or at least not as noticable as the 'old days', as efficient cooling is also getting much easier I think it would take some special effort to get thermal damage if no setup errors were made.
    We appear to be in the happy times re: AMD v Intel once more, where performance isn't too disparate, nor power consumption.
    Both are good, I don't have a foot in any particular camp really :)
    PC info: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X - Sapphire 7900XTX - 32GB DDR4 4000 - 3 NVMe + 3SATA SSD - Quest 2 & 3
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