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

RedRizla
Honored Visionary
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. 


45 REPLIES 45

RuneSR2
Grand Champion
For gaming, it seems it doesn't matter for now - I'm still with Intel for compatibility, also for the mainboard chipsets. 

i7 9700k may be a tiny bit faster in games - probably because games don't efficiently support so many cores...

https://www.anandtech.com/print/15043/the-amd-ryzen-9-3950x-review-16-cores-on-7nm-with-pcie-40

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
Visionary
Yea once you hit a certain threshold of cpu power it seems to become pretty irrelevant for gaming unless you're going for high fps on 1080p with low settings anyway. GPU bottlenecks before CPU does on graphical games and high resolution stuff like VR. That said, AMD outperforms Intel these days on most non gaming tasks. I find the 3950x to be overpriced personally. Can't say I could justify buying it over a 3900x.

RedRizla
Honored Visionary
@RuneSR2 @pyroth309
I just saw that intel are bringing out the intel 10900KF, but it still has 14nm and I was hoping for 7nm. I currently have a Skylake 6700 and a Geforce 2080ti. Do you think it's best if I just go with a i7 9700k for my upgrade given the intel 10900KF, is only going to have about 10% better performance in games.

RuneSR2
Grand Champion
I've not seen any game (ok, I don't play RTS with thousands of units) where I can't get 90 fps using my i7 7700K (4.5 Ghz). I've seen a few games recommending 8700K, but I still got solid 90+ fps. 

Unless you need cpu for certain and very specific tasks, you may end up wasting a lot of money going for the lastest and on-paper greatest processors. 

RTX 3080 Ti might be interesting - personally I got no reason to care for cpus right now. 

But I just reinstalled Diablo III on my office rig, and the Q6600 from 2008 is actually starting to feel a bit slow - because although I get same performance using 800x600 Low or 2048x1536 Ultra - it's no longer 85 fps, lol. 

PS. I actually bought a pancake game yesterday - I'm so proud of myself  😄 - but I think it'll run just fine with my Q6600 (quad-core, 2,4 GHz):

https://youtu.be/owbKz1qcnUI

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

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    • OS: Windows 7
    • Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 | AMD Phenom II X4 965
    • Memory: 4 GB RAM
    • Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 | AMD Radeon HD 6670
    • Storage: 8 GB available space

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"

RedRizla
Honored Visionary
@RuneSR2 - But do you reckon my i7 6700k might be bottle necking my 2080ti? I'm also looking at getting a 3080ti when that's available, but I'm just curious to know if my i7 6700k will ruin the Geforce 3080ti performance in some way.

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

RedRizla said:

@RuneSR2 - But do you reckon my i7 6700k might be bottle necking my 2080ti? I'm also looking at getting a 3080ti when that's available, but I'm just curious to know if my i7 6700k will ruin the Geforce 3080ti performance in some way.


That'll probably depend a lot on the game. I don't think your 6700K will be bottlenecking anything using CV1 or Reverb. But if you're into 144 or 240 Hz pancake gaming, then maybe. 

If you increase res and get same performance - you're cpu may be the bottleneck. If you increase res and get reduced performance, the gpu is probably the bottleneck. 

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"

RedRizla
Honored Visionary

RuneSR2 said:


RedRizla said:

@RuneSR2 - But do you reckon my i7 6700k might be bottle necking my 2080ti? I'm also looking at getting a 3080ti when that's available, but I'm just curious to know if my i7 6700k will ruin the Geforce 3080ti performance in some way.


That'll probably depend a lot on the game. I don't think your 6700K will be bottlenecking anything using CV1 or Reverb. But if you're into 144 or 240 Hz pancake gaming, then maybe. 

If you increase res and get same performance - you're cpu may be the bottleneck. If you increase res and get reduced performance, the gpu is probably the bottleneck. 



How could I try this? I game on my Samsung TV at 2k sometimes because I have an option to play games at 120Hz in 2k on this Samsung TV. However, I can only play at 60Hz in 4K because this Samsung TV doesn't do 120HZ at 4k.

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

RedRizla said:


RuneSR2 said:


RedRizla said:

@RuneSR2 - But do you reckon my i7 6700k might be bottle necking my 2080ti? I'm also looking at getting a 3080ti when that's available, but I'm just curious to know if my i7 6700k will ruin the Geforce 3080ti performance in some way.


That'll probably depend a lot on the game. I don't think your 6700K will be bottlenecking anything using CV1 or Reverb. But if you're into 144 or 240 Hz pancake gaming, then maybe. 

If you increase res and get same performance - you're cpu may be the bottleneck. If you increase res and get reduced performance, the gpu is probably the bottleneck. 



How could I try this? I game on my Samsung TV at 2k sometimes because I have an option to play games at 120Hz in 2k on this Samsung TV. However, I can only play at 60Hz in 4K because this Samsung TV doesn't do 120HZ at 4k.


Maybe you can use a program like fraps to measure fps. And maybe you can compare 2K 60 fps vs. 4K 60 fps? 

If you're cpu bottlenecked, you may get let's say 38 fps in both 2K and 4K. But if you get like solid 60 fps in 2K and maybe 40 fps in 4K, then you may need that 3080 Ti. 

If you turn off vsync, Hz should no longer matter. 

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
Grand Champion
BTW - made these tests in august 2003 - they're as hot as ever  B)

This is how to see when you're gpu bottlenecked - as res increases fps decrease:





- and this is how it looks when you're cpu bottlenecked - fps are the same no matter the res:





Note - these are actual benchmark numbers using a Radeon 9700 Pro and Athlon XP 2100+. 

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"