2017-18 Intel vs AMD which is better?

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JoseJones

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2017-18 Intel vs AMD which is better?

I am still not sure which to go with, Intel or AMD ... I like to game but I do a lot of work on my PC as well so, I need/want the best of both worlds - best bang for the buck.

I'd to be able to game in 4k at 144fps, stream, and run a business ... render to create videos & DVDs, assorted websites & forum work, Adobe CS artwork, assorted media, etc, etc.

I was set to switch to Intel's 270 platform but waited to give Ryzen & Vega a chance - I'm in a catch-22; the 7700 Kaby Lake 4-core beats Ryzen 1700x 8-core in some games. How is a 4-core CPU beating an 8-core CPU? What's up with that and all those Ryzen optimizations - why did AMD wait for a decade to finally decide that it was time to start optimizing? How long, really, will that take? Are those ram issues fixed yet? Plus, AMD is not really cheaper for the system I am considering:

Ryzen 1700x
Samsung 960 Pro 512g
3200 ram
HDMI 2.1
Volta 16g

Intel has it's cons as well of course such as prices and how they appear to have been sand-bagging the last several years with measly 5% performance increases but, at least Intel is already optimized.

2017-18 Intel vs AMD which is better?

When will we see PCIe 4.0 support on motherboards?

; (
 
Don't worry about PCI-E 4. It seems like you're not wanting to wait until Icelake, which is my current guess.

Coffee Lake won't be too long. You might hang on for that.
 
I don't believe AMD can beat Intel in raw performance in the near future. However, AMD's performance and pricing makes the value argument for AMD an extremely strong one, unlike the Bulldozer gen where performance was just so far behind that value was only justifiable in limited scenarios.
 
Yeah, it appears I'll be waiting until Christmas time or early 2018 to be able to get what I want. I'm still unclear on Intel or AMD tho.

A friend and I were discussing this issue with PCIe 4.0 and figured - it would be helpful if we knew how much of the PCI bandwidth was being used so, it would be helpful to have a graph like in task manager to be able to monitor how much of the PCI bandwidth is being consumed - we don't know if we are using 45% or 95% of the total bandwidth. Maybe we should be able to monitor that? - just saying.

Yeah, it just makes sense at this point in time to be able to monitor how much of the PCI bandwidth we are using. The charts are not helpful at all to the average person - how ya suppose to take the chart below and the specs for your system and really figure out your bandwidth usage?


pcie-bw-table.jpg


http://techreport.com/news/32064/pcie-4-0-specification-finally-out-with-16-gt-s-on-tap
 
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AMD scores 2164 points higher than Intel in DeathFromBelow points.

Not really sure what you want. Intel chips can clock higher, which gives them a bit of an edge in games. AMD crushes Intel in value for multithreaded workloads. None of the things mentioned so far explain why exactly you're concerned about PCI-E bandwith. If you're wanting to RAID M.2 drives or something you'll want AMD's Threadripper.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
AMD scores 2164 points higher than Intel in DeathFromBelow points.

Not really sure what you want. Intel chips can clock higher, which gives them a bit of an edge in games. AMD crushes Intel in value for multithreaded workloads. None of the things mentioned so far explain why exactly you're concerned about PCI-E bandwith. If you're wanting to RAID M.2 drives or something you'll want AMD's Threadripper.
Click to expand...

I suppose my interest in PCIe bandwidth is simply for future-proof purposes - if PCIe 4.0 support is coming out soon on motherboards I'll wait for it but, it PCIe 4.0 isn't coming out until like 2019 or after then, I don't think it's worth the wait. I am in dire need of a new system and need the absolute best bang for the buck all the way around - including all those "optimizations" AMD finally decided to do something about after like 10 years.

I'm in a pickle or catch-22 and I bet a lot of others are too ... Intel has the far better optimizations for gaming and far better more accurate node sizes (14nm Intel = about 20nm AMD even tho they continue to claim 14nm) but, it's only 4 cores and leaves a lot to be desired for the multi-threaded performance that I need, don't care about Optane. AMD has the better multi-threaded performance but, I do worry about piss poor optimizations - I'm concerned about constant glitches and hang-ups ... things just not working properly.
 
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I don't know about 'far better optimizations' on the Intel side. What happened was AMD's previous generation of chips had poor IPC. They could run at high clockspeeds but couldn't do as much work per clock cycle as Intel chips because of their small cores. For multithreaded workloads they were very good. You could get up to 8 integer cores on a chip for the cost of an i5, but they were so far behind on single threaded performance that a lot of people wrote them off. I had an FX-8320 and found it perfectly fine for 1080p gaming, but you really needed an Intel rig for a top end setup with multiple GPUs.

With Ryzen/Threadripper that's no longer really an issue. My Ryzen 1700X feels just as fast or better than the 4930k setup it replaced and it uses less power.
 
High Hz or VR -> Intel

60Hz -> AMD

That's the high level conclusion I came to.
 
AMD beat intel again with there new ryzen chips the new x299 is a joke to make it apperar is if its new\updated\better it isnt AMD is back after 15 yrs ya i know its been that long but AMD hands down is the clear winner with x399 when it comes out. NO im not a amd fan boy im running intel right now btw.....
 
There's a couple perspectives you can take - the state of things NOW, or the future state of things.

Now? AMD is the better multithreading chip, and isn't a slouch in any metric. PCI-E 3.0 is not even close to being the limiting factor for GPU applications. PCI-E lane count may matter to you if you're doing a shit-ton of NVMe SSD stuff, but otherwise isn't a big deal.

In the future? Near future looks pretty bright for AMD, even with Intel's pending reaction to Ryzen/Threadripper. Longer term, Intel should win; it's just numbers, and their R&D budget simply dwarfs AMD and they are almost always ahead on manufacturing tech as well since they own the most advanced fabs in the world.

All I want is for them to trade blows occasionally so Intel is forced to stay on its toes. If Bulldozer architecture had competitive IPC with Intel at release, it's incredibly likely that your common desktop i5 today would be 6 cores, and the i7 would be 8 cores. As it happened, Bulldozer was not competitive and Intel needed no more than 4 cores to maintain a healthy lead, and thus 4 cores is all we got. Just look at the history of CPU development - AMD was extremely competitive for the period of 1999 to roughly 2010 (first gen Athlon through the Phenom II X6 era) and in that period Intel evolved from the Pentium 3, to 4 (Netburst), gave up on Itanium as the 64-bit future thanks to AMD64, and eventually released the first of the Core architectures in 2006 and finally the Core i5-2500/i7-2600 in January of 2011. AMD's Bulldozer was released in October of 2011 and proved not to be up to the task to the i5 and i7 series, and until Ryzen that's how things have stood. And in the intervening time, what has Intel done? Was the i7-3770 better than the i7-2600? What about the i7-4790? The 6700? 7700? Sure, the 7700 is a better chip than the 2600 was, but it's not *that* much better for a six year difference in release date, and by comparison if you look at six years prior to the 2600 Intel's top chip was the Pentium D- two P4's bolted together. The 2600 is leaps and bounds better than the Pentium D, the 7700 is "meh" better than the 2600. We owe that evolution of performance to the battle between AMD and Intel, and I for one am glad to be back to it.
 
If you're in dire need of an upgrade there's no chance in hell pci-e 4.0 will be around for you in the near future. Honestly, I have a Fury Nitro and will likely get Vega for my 2500k system with PCI-E 2.0 and I don't think it will matter much at all in terms of performance. If you're using your machine for more than just gaming, get the 1700x.
 
Current PCI-E is *not* saturated heavily by current cards.

Additionally, even if that becomes the case, AMD has stated they intend to support the current AM4 platform and socket for a significant period of time - you are not going to find Intel's "Blink and you'll miss it" attitude to socket changes here, so it will be reasonable if you need PCI-E, to just replace the motherboard and not be locking yourself into a dying platform.

For that reason, plus the fact Ryzen is *more* than adequate for gaming right now, I say go Ryzen.

Most people worrying about Ryzen gaming performance are simply missing the point - Sure, the frames are a few percent lower than Intel. However, they're still far, FAR above playable framerates even on absolutely maximum settings in the majority of titles.

If you're running a high refresh monitor then fair enough - but you're probably used to knocking the quality settings back a notch or two to take advantage of that anyway, even on intel - Or if it's an Esports title, you probably play with all settings on low anyway, for the sake of consistency and fewer visual sparklies to distract from the gameplay.


I say go Ryzen. At the very least you'll have an upgrade path to Ryzen 2, and possibly beyond. Intel on the other hand are going to take some time to get out of the hole they've dug themselves with this cycle of Z170, Z270, Z370 Socket 1151 weirdness.
 
Great comments and very helpful.

Yeah, I'm unclear how the PCIe lane thing works with the new platforms and with all the new NVMe stuff and I do not want to have to worry about not using this or that because that would mean that something else won't work now ... like on the z170 systems etc. Before I buy I just wanna know what all the pros, cons and limitations are so I have no disappointing surprises, know what I mean?

Plus, something else to keep in mind is that I do not have central air so, it can get up to 85-90F ambient temperatures inside so, I wondered if liquid cooling would be helpful but, it appears only for a few degrees so, a liquid cooling system does not seem worth the money to me? Maybe I could put a small air conditioner inside the case, LOL. I do not need all the eye candy lighting or eye candy liquid cooling - I just want a system that works like a charm.

Also, I'd like to be able to game in 4k at 144 - here's what the system I've been considering:

Ryzen 1700x
Samsung 960 Pro 512g
3200 ram
HDMI 2.1
Volta 16g or RX Vega 16g
 
Obviously all cooling is less effective if the ambient temperature is higher, but I was under the impression (possibly wrong) that liquid cooling would be affected more than air cooling. The in my head half-remembered explanation for this was that the temperature differential between a direct heatsink (which gets *really* hot) and warm air is still pretty significant, while the differential between a watercooling radiator and warm air will be less because the radiator gets nowhere near as warm as the direct heatsink, and this lower differential means the watercooling performance rapidly drops off. Perhaps someone more experienced than me can comment.

You were probably joking, but don't put an AC in the case. That way lie dragons. Or condensation. Or condensating dragons. Either way, don't do it. Feel free to AC the room though :)

Now then, for some of your other points I can comment. I've got a 1080 Ti now and use it to game at 4K@60, and I can tell you this - hitting 4K@144 would be a *hell* of a struggle. I'd need a 1080 Ti SLI setup for many games to hit that kind of framerate without compromising on the actual visual detail level. Obviously I could plug in a 4k@144 monitor and run at the refresh rate, or perhaps use GSync, but I don't think my framerate would actually get anywhere near 144 most of the time.
 
JoseJones said:
Great comments and very helpful.

Yeah, I'm unclear how the PCIe lane thing works with the new platforms and with all the new NVMe stuff and I do not want to have to worry about not using this or that because that would mean that something else won't work now ... like on the z170 systems etc. Before I buy I just wanna know what all the pros, cons and limitations are so I have no disappointing surprises, know what I mean?

Plus, something else to keep in mind is that I do not have central air so, it can get up to 85-90F ambient temperatures inside so, I wondered if liquid cooling would be helpful but, it appears only for a few degrees so, a liquid cooling system does not seem worth the money to me? Maybe I could put a small air conditioner inside the case, LOL. I do not need all the eye candy lighting or eye candy liquid cooling - I just want a system that works like a charm.

Also, I'd like to be able to game in 4k at 144 - here's what the system I've been considering:

Ryzen 1700x
Samsung 960 Pro 512g
3200 ram
HDMI 2.1
Volta 16g or RX Vega 16g
Click to expand...

I doubt even the next generation of GPUs will hit 4k 144hz on modern games. Games like CS:GO and Rocket League, sure, but that's a massive undertaking putting out that many frames. 4k 144hz monitors don't even really exist yet. If you're willing to turn settings down, maybe you'll get there on Volta or Vega. I think your expectations are a little too high honestly.
 
Perhaps I should keep my old system and just get a new GPU and wait for Navi?

My current system:

MB: MSI 790FX-GD70
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955
RAM: 8g Mushkin 1600
GPU: Evga 760 SC 2g
PSU: Seasonic X-750w
HD: WD 500g
HD2: 3T SeaGate
EX.HD: WD Passport 1T

Case: Antec One Illusion w/fans
OS: Windows 10 Pro, 64-bit
Liteon 24x: iHAS324
Monitor: Asus VH222
 
Sorry for Hijacking the thread, though I don't want to spam up the forums.

How is the 'stability' of the X370 platform compared to Intel's Z270?

I didn't hear much good news after Kyle's Crosshair mobo literally died from OC'ing the memory.

I have no intention of doing any significant OC'ing (well, not RAM and CPU anyway), stability and quality of the platform are my main concerns here.
 
I don't have any personal experience with the Ryzen platform just yet, but if it was generally unstable on any kind of a large-scale basis I'm pretty sure we would have heard about it from various outlets by now.
 
There are a multitude of information available using search here. I challenge you to accept opinions only from people whom actually own zen and intel to give you honest assessments. Also just because a motherboard went bad during a review doesnt mean the cpu has anything to do with it. Thats akin to saying you wont buy a Samsung refrigerator because your engine in your car is leaking oil.
 
chenw said:
Sorry for Hijacking the thread, though I don't want to spam up the forums.

How is the 'stability' of the X370 platform compared to Intel's Z270?

I didn't hear much good news after Kyle's Crosshair mobo literally died from OC'ing the memory.

I have no intention of doing any significant OC'ing (well, not RAM and CPU anyway), stability and quality of the platform are my main concerns here.
Click to expand...

No worries, these are relevant questions are far as I'm concerned. I don't really plan to OC either and if I do it'll be later down the road more towards the end of it's life-span to keep up with newer gen but, I don't OC in hopes of longer life-span since I tend to keep my PC's or hand them down ... until they die. I just wanna know which is the better buy for 2017-18 - ie, less glitches and other assorted issues like optimization, memory etc.

It sounds like I may end up with a Ryzen 1700x and a Volta GPU - depending on price/performance. I will not get a Vega if all it can do is slightly better than a 1070.
 
tangoseal said:
There are a multitude of information available using search here. I challenge you to accept opinions only from people whom actually own zen and intel to give you honest assessments. Also just because a motherboard went bad during a review doesnt mean the cpu has anything to do with it. Thats akin to saying you wont buy a Samsung refrigerator because your engine in your car is leaking oil.
Click to expand...
That would have been an accurate analogy if I were comparing the reliability of a case fan to Ryzen, but in this case I wouldn't be able to run a Ryzen CPU properly if the motherboard problems lie within the chipset itself rather than just a bad motherboard sample from Asus.

All the information I have gathered on these forums have painted a bad picture with respect to the chipsets in general (everything B350 and below), and I was looking for confirmation of whether I was looking at those comments out of context or they just had bad samples, thus why I asked for the platform in general, not just the CPU. It's also no use to have a rock solid CPU running on a dodgey platform because you can't run one without the other.
 
I have no problems with mine. These forums are the epitomy of Intel fanaticism under every damn subtopic and I am not kidding. Make a comment about a coca cola in the Audio forums or talk about a new car you want to buy in the general anything gpes forums and someone from team Intel will brow beat you on why and how you suck and that you are an idiot for not getting a 7700k.

The am4 had a rough start but AMD has literally ironed all the wrinkles out for the most part. Now issues are seemimg to be case by case now. I must have gotten a good CH6. It runs perfect except my ram but after pumping 1.39v into it has flawlessly ran 3200 16GB now at 3.9ghz pstate with anything I can chunk at it.

OC a 1700/x to 3.9ghz and it is a little faster than 6900k in multithreaded. IPC is a wee bit lower due to the cache latencies and design of CCX and L3 cache being shared as one factor but makes ZERO difference on games and applications and day to day use.

This is NOT a repeat of Bulldozer in any way.

Essentially the 1700 or X or 1800X will blow your mind in multithreaded apps esp when the dollar is an added bonus. It may not be mind blowing in synthetics in the aingle core segment or IPC tests but in real world I havent seen a legitimate complaint honestly. They work wonderfully.

As far as live streaming I have seen nothing but amazing claims to the smoothness and power these thinga deliver in game streaming. Wanted to address that since you brought that up.

Is intel better? Hrrmm no and that is based on price as the major factor.

As far as b350... if your going to get an matx or atx board just spend the noneu and get a 370. Skip the 350. The reason is that the 370 boards are going to have generay beefier builds even if you never OC you will get a higher dirability and more stable power deliveru i.e. chokes and mosfets and caps resistors etc...
 
Given the original posters use case I don't see any reason to purchase a 7700K over a Ryzen. I'd pick the Ryzen -- I currently own a Intel 4770k and will likely be upgrading to a Ryzen myself.

Four or Eight cores might not matter that much right now - but it might in 3-4 years --- Plus AM4 socket will be supported through 2020 giving you an upgrade path. The Intel 1151 socket is probably already leapfrogged by the newer x299 and so z270 or z170 may not see any future new CPU products. (if history holds merit). If going Intel, I'd be more intersted in the X99 or X299 myself than the z270. The X99 has CPU upgrade options up to 10 core, or even higher if you go Xeon - and they'll be CHEAP on eBay in a couple years. The X299 will be supported for the next 2-3 years by Intel, and yes there are some kinks now - like the VRM flaw -- but the second gen of motherboards should be onpoint -- and not that much more than the z270 option. (plus x299 gives you options for Xeon processors in a few years when their are fire sale prices for broad core count CPUs on eBay).
 
Volta and Vega - AMD Has a Mountain to Climb


Jun 7, 2017 You're beaten, Intel


Jul 4, 2017 Poor Vega
 
I owned several mainstream platforms from a 1700/B350 motherboard to an 6700k/Z170 and 7700k/Z270 boards. I couldn't tell the difference in real world usage scenarios. It wasn't like one felt "snappier" or anything while navigating around or opening programs/windows. I played through several games and never felt like either platform was letting me down.
 
Archaea said:
Given the original posters use case I don't see any reason to purchase a 7700K over a Ryzen. I'd pick the Ryzen -- I currently own a Intel 4770k and will likely be upgrading to a Ryzen myself.

Four or Eight cores might not matter that much right now - but it might in 3-4 years --- Plus AM4 socket will be supported through 2020 giving you an upgrade path. The Intel 1151 socket is probably already leapfrogged by the newer x299 and so z270 or z170 may not see any future new CPU products. (if history holds merit). If going Intel, I'd be more intersted in the X99 or X299 myself than the z270. The X99 has CPU upgrade options up to 10 core, or even higher if you go Xeon - and they'll be CHEAP on eBay in a couple years. The X299 will be supported for the next 2-3 years by Intel, and yes there are some kinks now - like the VRM flaw -- but the second gen of motherboards should be onpoint -- and not that much more than the z270 option. (plus x299 gives you options for Xeon processors in a few years when their are fire sale prices for broad core count CPUs on eBay).
Click to expand...

Right on the money. I was hoping for a Coffee Lake drop in replacement for my 7700k, but no dice. I'm still miffed by the fact that early samples ran on Z270 and Z270 and Z370 are identical, but Intel won't open up Coffee Lake for Z270. Complete money grab.
 
I hadn't seen this video before - he tests PCIe bandwidth on PCIe 1, 2 & 3.0 showing how little each new PCIe upgrade does almost nothing for gamers - SPOILER ALERT - going from PCIe 1.0 to 3.0 gained only about 5 fps on average. Perhaps that's partly why these new technologies are coming - CCIX, GEN-Z, OpenCAPI

So there's no reason to believe PCIe 4.0 or PCIe 5.0 will be any different - although, the testing in this video does not include anything from AMD - so it would be cool to see a new updated test (HINT HINT) with a Samsung 960 and a Ryzen 1700x system. I do wish we could monitor our PCIe bandwidth usage like we do our CPU, GPU, temps etc.

PCI Express, A Matter of Bandwidth! (Dec 1, 2016)

 
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I'm not sure why you're so hung up on the PCI-E bandwidth. Never has it ever been a limiting factor for GPUs only when used with the current technology. A GTX 1080 cannot even saturate PCI-E 3.0 8X. So until we're seeing single GPUs that are more than 100% faster than a GTX 1080 TI, it's nothing to worry about. And when we DO see GPUs that fast, do you really think you'll be using PCI-E 3.0?
 
I wouldn't call the b350 a "bad" chipset either. I've got a R7 1700 overclocked to 3.8GHz with 16G of DDR4-3200 on an Asus Prime b350-Plus with absolutely no problems whatsoever. It's 12 hour Prime95 (small FFT w/AVX) stable, and the only reason that number isn't higher is because I got tired of waiting around to play with the machine. I will admit that the VRMs on this particular build are liquid cooled (I luv u Koolance). This system is used for games and CPU-driven video encodes and is an absolute monster at it.

My wife is running an R5 1600x at stock clocks with DDR4-3000 on another Asus Prime b350-Plus board, and the board itself is all air-cooled. Again, no problems to speak of whatsoever. This system is used for games and college schoolwork.

The reason for picking this particular board in both instances is that we are running some Auzentech soundcards for native Dolby Digital 5.1 output, and needed the regular PCI slots this board offers. If there had been any X370 board with PCI slots, I'd have gotten one of those instead, but there aren't... Bottom line is that I have not been let down by the b350 in any way.

My only recommendation for memory is to make sure that the RAM you are looking at is on the board's QVL OR that the RAM is advertised as working with Ryzen (NewEgg does this). Note: Both of my systems are using 2x8G in dual-channel for 16G total. I have heard that there were some problems with RAM at higher speeds when using all 4 slots, but am unsure if this is still an issue.
 
Also, about liquid cooling vs Air cooling. The advantage of liquid cooling vs air-cooling is that it moves the heat away from the CPU more quickly than an air cooler can (and frequently more quietly). As neither standard liquid cooling nor standard air cooling feature any sort of refrigeration, it is impossible for your CPU temperatures to be reduced below ambient room temperature. Impossible. The lower temperatures you see using liquid cooling vs air cooling in most comparisons is merely the heat being more effectively moved to the radiator. If the fluid becomes heat saturated and the radiator is insufficent in size or airflow to cool that fluid down, then you will experience higher temps, but you will NEVER get it below ambient room temp once the system has warmed up.
 
FlawleZ said:
I'm not sure why you're so hung up on the PCI-E bandwidth. Never has it ever been a limiting factor for GPUs only when used with the current technology. A GTX 1080 cannot even saturate PCI-E 3.0 8X. So until we're seeing single GPUs that are more than 100% faster than a GTX 1080 TI, it's nothing to worry about. And when we DO see GPUs that fast, do you really think you'll be using PCI-E 3.0?
Click to expand...

Where have you been for the last several years? Several PC websites confirm it's time for PCIe 4.0:

"Officials of PCI-SIG, an industry group that controls the specification, talked about their fourth-generation plans more than five years ago and said version 4.0 would likely arrive by 2015"

It's about a lot more than just bandwidth ... there are also lanes - such as for NVMe ssd's and other things that share the PCIe bandwidth. There's also a future proof factor.

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/new-pci-express-4-0-delay-may-empower-next-gen-alternatives/
 
JoseJones said:
Where have you been for the last several years? Several PC websites confirm it's time for PCIe 4.0:

"Officials of PCI-SIG, an industry group that controls the specification, talked about their fourth-generation plans more than five years ago and said version 4.0 would likely arrive by 2015"

It's about a lot more than just bandwidth ... there are also lanes - such as for NVMe ssd's and other things that share the PCIe bandwidth. There's also a future proof factor.

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/new-pci-express-4-0-delay-may-empower-next-gen-alternatives/
Click to expand...

You misunderstand. I'm not saying technology shouldn't move forward. What I'm saying is, GPUs do not even come close to utilizing the bandwidth available through PCIe 3.0. Sure, if you run multiple SSD in RAID you can saturate the PCIe 3.0 bus, but we're talking GPUs. Also, its computer hardware. There's no such thing as future proof.
 
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