9900k or 3800x

True, but I didn't say anything about AMD. The person I was responding to said you needed a "top end board" to run the 9900K at 5 GHz when that is patently false.
My bad. Should have read the thread deeper. I agree, $600 is crazy while adding nothing to the enthusiast experience.
 
I always invest in the "smart money", and if you can name a better $200 value than the 3600 in the past DECADE - I'm all ears.

It's basically a $200 8700k which is crazy when you think about it....

If it's for gaming I would say another good option would be I5-9400F that cost $150. Then get a budget or used Z390 or Z370 board. The Gigabyte Z390 UD can be found on sale new for $99 sometimes. So for gaming I would say 9400F is in that $200 value category you mention.
 
Behind in per-core gaming performance today, and will be behind in four years when AM4 is an afterthought.



This is meaningless. By the time PCIe 4.0 matters for gaming at all, AM4 CPUs will be obsolete for the purpose.


Results are often skewed, even at stock the intel parts run higher 1 core frequencies and AMD matched or beat similar priced parts at stock. If you are making a judgment on per core on frequency parity then its equal, in some instances AMD wins, others intel wins but the margin is 5% or less. In 4 years I assume AMD will be making faster CPU's sure but there are people in 2019 using sandy bridge from 2010 so i guess your argument doesn't hold sway.

Nvidia talked about having a PCIE 4 card out by 2020/21, in interim PCIE 4 Storage devices are really sweet, in general utility I would rather buy one than a 2080ti as nothing makes a PC feel fast like insanely fast storage devices.
 
Results are often skewed, even at stock the intel parts run higher 1 core frequencies and AMD matched or beat similar priced parts at stock. If you are making a judgment on per core on frequency parity then its equal, in some instances AMD wins, others intel wins but the margin is 5% or less.

I'm talking solely about gaming.

In 4 years I assume AMD will be making faster CPU's sure

And you assume that Intel won't be, or if not, what is your point?

there are people in 2019 using sandy bridge from 2010 so i guess your argument doesn't hold sway.

This doesn't relate to my argument at all.

Nvidia talked about having a PCIE 4 card out by 2020/21

And?

in interim PCIE 4 Storage devices are really sweet

If you play benchmarks...

in general utility I would rather buy one than a 2080ti as nothing makes a PC feel fast like insanely fast storage devices.

Your PC won't 'feel' any faster with a PCIe 4.0 SSD over a PCIe 3.0 SSD. In fact, since Optane is not yet available in PCIe 3.0, using a PCIe 4.0 SSD would verifiably make your system feel slower than it could be.

Of course, for which biased reason you compared a GPU to SSDs I care not to speculate toward.
 
No it's not - This is the point I'm trying to get across, and have been trying to for about 2-3 pages.

The 8700k is a more mature platform, the bugs have generally been worked out of the system. The 3600 is still effectively in the "teething" stage. There are issues, they are being addressed, but they're not there yet.

It may take Nvidia a month or two to sort out their issues, and that may mean more "random WHEA errors".

AGESA fixes for destiny and Linux may come out soon, or be a few weeks/months out, no one in the public knows.

On that note, I pity the Linux users who migrated on week 1 of release who that bug affected.

I cannot deal with unknowns about when things will be fixed, time is money for me, and time to fix means less money for me. Whether this matters to you is another thing.

I don't get these "time is money" arguments from people thinking about investing in any new platform.
 
I don't get these "time is money" arguments from people thinking about investing in any new platform.

They're people that, if actually making money of their hardware, should be buying stuff from an OEM with support, and using business or workstation-class hardware.
 
Behind in per-core gaming performance today, and will be behind in four years when AM4 is an afterthought.
For similar prices (being generous here) I'll take the extra cores in four years time as being a bit better then what Intel is offering in games today.
Stupid green head EMOJI.
 
Lots of NOOBS in the thread. Welcome to the [H]. Your input is welcome :)
Hopefully your not prone to silly EMOJI's.
 
For similar prices (being generous here) I'll take the extra cores in four years time as being a bit better then what Intel is offering in games today.
Stupid green head EMOJI.

In four years?

Maybe. If you were running a decently overclocking 2600K, the faster RAM that was available, a stable board, and a modern GPU, you're still likely doing great for most common games. Yes, you're watching your settings and yes you're watching your background usage, but you're for damn sure still in the game.

And that's more than four years.

When we're talking about gaming performance today, we're talking about pushing the most demanding games currently available to the limit, and we're talking about how that performance might scale going forward. What we see is that a CPU like the 9900K scales better.

We should also be critical concerning the pace of multithreaded development in games. Only in the last year or so has a measurable (as in, benchmarkable) need for more than four cores become present, and that's only in a subset of modern games. Today, six cores are more than enough and eight cores are the right kind of overkill.

But twelve, and it's slower in games today? If your purpose is top-end gaming? The rule is buy Ryzen because most people aren't going for top-end gaming, but if they are, the choice is pretty clear.
 
No. If you have the same clock, AMD would be marginally faster, at 5ghz the 9900k is faster than the 4.5-4.6ghz chips AMD has out now, except where more cores are present and used.

AMD could release a 5ghz chip and stomp all over Intel at that speed.

The issue is that AVX2 on the 9900k by default drops the clock speed by 300mhz, to 4.3ghz. There it can’t compete with AMD at 4.5. Clock it up to 4.8/9ghz and it will outdo the 3700x chips (and probably the better chips too)

More power at idle is a big deal. Most computers spend a lot of time idling.

If I wanted to sling mud, I’d talk about:
  • Destiny 2
  • Linux
  • Nvidia whea
  • Ryzen’s vr incompatibilities (vive)
  • Scheduler issues
  • Ram compatibility (including latency)
  • Issues with the clock of the infinity fabric
  • Issues with PBO not working properly
  • Sata issues
  • Incompatibilities with soundcards and some other peripheral cards
  • Incomplete ECC implementation
  • Linux compilation issues
  • Revision issues (some things were fixed and no one spoke about them) - consumers didn’t know which to get
  • Random software incompatibilities (Adobe during the last year)
  • Temperature reporting problems
  • Over reliance on AGESA to fix things (which means putting a lot of pressure on motherboard manufacturers to release bios updates)
Google any of these things in the context of Ryzen for further info.

I like AMD, I really do. I always have, since the 386dx40. I want AMD to “surpass” intel.

I have faith they will fix all of these things.
Ok.. so after a lot of googling, I find most of that list has nothing to do with AMD, and all to do with other manufacturers and developers, with the exception of like 2 things... And a few things don't even make sense. ECC was up to mb manufacturers to support, and isn't supported by any Intel desktop CPU... So.. ? Didn't Intel have a bunch of sata issues on their chipsets not long ago too? And I havent heard anything about them lately. Scheduler issues was a M$ thing, Linux has worked fine since the first ryzen, Microsoft didn't feel it was a priority. If you're going to ramble off a list and suggest people look it up at least make them relevant to your argument.
 
Ok.. so after a lot of googling, I find most of that list has nothing to do with AMD, and all to do with other manufacturers and developers, with the exception of like 2 things... And a few things don't even make sense. ECC was up to mb manufacturers to support, and isn't supported by any Intel desktop CPU... So.. ? Didn't Intel have a bunch of sata issues on their chipsets not long ago too? And I havent heard anything about them lately. Scheduler issues was a M$ thing, Linux has worked fine since the first ryzen, Microsoft didn't feel it was a priority. If you're going to ramble off a list and suggest people look it up at least make them relevant to your argument.

AMD's processors, that is, the CPU and GPU dies, have typically been solid at least since the K6.

It's everything around them that has had issues, to this day. You can point out the occasional Intel or Nvidia (or whoever) slipup, but you won't show them having issues every single time. Sometimes minor, sometimes catastrophic, and buyers should always beware.

And look at the list you quoted again. Some are absolutely AMD issues, but all are related and all are issues that AMD could have addressed beforehand. Further, most issues with products from other manufacturers should have been avoided because these were the products that AMD is making CPUs to work with.
 
Didn't Intel have a bunch of sata issues on their chipsets not long ago too?

I believe it was the P67 chipset that they replaced with Z68 thus starting the Z moniker.

Did bring Sandybridge with it though, so that kinda offsets the bad ;)
 
I think it was P67 that had the SATA controller issue. Intel believed it would eventually fail prematurely. Later P67's had a different stepping of the chipset that wouldn't do this. The Z68 chipset is the one that introduced storage caching and support for iGPU's and QuickSync.
 
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Didn't Intel recall those before launch, and some manufacturers were able to launch using PCIe-SATA bridges anyways? IIRC, it was the SATA3 controllers that were affected, while SATA2 was fine.
 
So Kajun614 what did you end up getting?


Dan_D Since you run the 2920xTR what are your thoughts on a refresh of those CPUs on 7nm? Right now at Microcenter I can buy a 2920x and board (Taichi, Auros pro, or Phantom Gaming) for less than a 3900x and board. 610 with the Taichi, 589 with Auros Pro, or 535 with the Phantom Gaming. Could be worth getting on that platform if we see some sweet new TR CPUs in a year or so.

Apologies for vearing of topic but TR4 has some deals man. Maybe not a gaming first build but damn.

I first got the 3900x but took it back and got the I9 -9900k
Honestly the 3900x felt jittery in some games...Like not smooth if that is a thing. Great doing benchmarks but I dont use benchmarks but what 1 day..
Microcenter gladly refunded as always and I got an I9-9900k and motherboard. Been running stuff all evening. Maybe I got lucky? it's Running @ 5G all core w/ 1.35v Temps after 20mins of 100% cpu pounding put the temps at 75c being the highest. (73-75 on each core were the max recorded) I'm thinking 5.1g is possible or more??
Gaming never pegs 100% cpu for sustained periods is my thinking.
Cooler is a 280mm AIO for what it's worth. It's 77deg in my game/office atm (HATE summer)
 
I first got the 3900x but took it back and got the I9 -9900k
Honestly the 3900x felt jittery in some games...Like not smooth if that is a thing. Great doing benchmarks but I dont use benchmarks but what 1 day..
Microcenter gladly refunded as always and I got an I9-9900k and motherboard. Been running stuff all evening. Maybe I got lucky? it's Running @ 5G all core w/ 1.35v Temps after 20mins of 100% cpu pounding put the temps at 75c being the highest. (73-75 on each core were the max recorded) I'm thinking 5.1g is possible or more??
Gaming never pegs 100% cpu for sustained periods is my thinking.
Cooler is a 280mm AIO for what it's worth. It's 77deg in my game/office atm (HATE summer)
No game is gonna tax a 3900x 100% either.

The Bios are buggy on some boards. Unfortunately, its like the companies didn't know these CPUs were coming, or something. That's the reality for now. Bummer.
 
Interesting. I wonder what was up with the 3900x then? Which board did you use? GPU?
I first got the 3900x but took it back and got the I9 -9900k
Honestly the 3900x felt jittery in some games...Like not smooth if that is a thing. Great doing benchmarks but I dont use benchmarks but what 1 day..
Microcenter gladly refunded as always and I got an I9-9900k and motherboard. Been running stuff all evening. Maybe I got lucky? it's Running @ 5G all core w/ 1.35v Temps after 20mins of 100% cpu pounding put the temps at 75c being the highest. (73-75 on each core were the max recorded) I'm thinking 5.1g is possible or more??
Gaming never pegs 100% cpu for sustained periods is my thinking.
Cooler is a 280mm AIO for what it's worth. It's 77deg in my game/office atm (HATE summer)
 
No game is gonna tax a 3900x 100% either.

The Bios are buggy on some boards. Unfortunately, its like the companies didn't know these CPUs were coming, or something. That's the reality for now. Bummer.

The blame is on AMD for not giving these guys the AGESA code and test samples earlier to test with.

The destiny 2 bug and most the other bugs are issues within the AGESA code provided by AMD as well - Not the board manufacturer's BIOS's.
 
So Kajun614 what did you end up getting?


Dan_D Since you run the 2920xTR what are your thoughts on a refresh of those CPUs on 7nm? Right now at Microcenter I can buy a 2920x and board (Taichi, Auros pro, or Phantom Gaming) for less than a 3900x and board. 610 with the Taichi, 589 with Auros Pro, or 535 with the Phantom Gaming. Could be worth getting on that platform if we see some sweet new TR CPUs in a year or so.

Apologies for vearing of topic but TR4 has some deals man. Maybe not a gaming first build but damn.

I have never really addressed this post, and forgot to post in response, but meant to. I think we are going to see the same thing we saw with Ryzen at 7nm. AMD will use every bit of the power and transistor budget from the process node shrink to add more cores and improve overall performance.
 
Ok.. so after a lot of googling, I find most of that list has nothing to do with AMD, and all to do with other manufacturers and developers, with the exception of like 2 things... And a few things don't even make sense. ECC was up to mb manufacturers to support, and isn't supported by any Intel desktop CPU... So.. ? Didn't Intel have a bunch of sata issues on their chipsets not long ago too? And I havent heard anything about them lately. Scheduler issues was a M$ thing, Linux has worked fine since the first ryzen, Microsoft didn't feel it was a priority. If you're going to ramble off a list and suggest people look it up at least make them relevant to your argument.

They are relevant. Support for something like a processor (like this) series is not simply a single company "support" thing. You need a whole ecosystem to support it.
You need externals such as:
  • Windows (Microsoft)
  • Linux
  • AAA games and producers
  • Common productivity software (Adobe, Autocad, etc) - especially if your performance is there.
  • Common graphics cards (Nvidia/AMD)
  • Motherboard manufacturers/bios support
Internals need to be right too:
  • AGESA/microcode
  • Drivers
  • No glaring errors (Eg FDIV, random crashing etc)

Ultimately it isn't about laying the blame, and pointing fingers, it's about making sure it works, no matter who is to blame.

If a team fails, everyone wants to point fingers at the person in the team who let them all down, but the fact of the matter is that the team as a whole failed. In this case, you have to remember that the team hasn't failed, they're just playing a new game that they haven't yet and are still learning the ropes. Whether this suits your use case or not is up to you.

AMD have generally executed beautifully considering their track record, power to them for doing so, and well done to Dr. Su for leading them to do it. This is however new tech, and there are going to be bugs. That's a reality of life.
 
AMD Ryzen and it's chiplets or whatever it's called, look, that CPU needs work, we are still a few generations away from it potentially truly matching Intel. Rome was not build in a day.

AMD Ryzen and AMD video cards as far as I am concern are a budget oriented brand and should be treated as such. There is a reason why they are cheaper.

All of the new Ryzen motherboards are having issues of some sort and not scoring the best in reviews. Memory is still an issue. Not my words but those of actual owners on Newegg and Amazon.

Ryzen is playing the one card they have and that's the "more cores" .... but real gamers are not falling for that one trick pony. And if AMD was so good, which they aren't, they would be leading Intel in gaming and single core performance.

9900K's can OC to 4.8Ghz to 5.0Ghz plus. Look at the reviews, they are out there, AMD doesn't come close to Intel in gaming performance. a 4.8Ghz Intel 9900K across all cores is an absolute gaming beast. Ryzen, not so much.

I think it's incredibly funny that all of a sudden, all you gamers are no longer gamers but guys who run multi-core benchmarks and productivity apps now .... really? You've been sold a lie and I am dying laughing.

For literally the same money you could have had a nVidia RTX 2070 Super and an Intel 9900K that would run circles around anything AMD is trying to do. I feel very sad at all the kids that rushed out to get AMD Ryzen. It's simply not the best choice if you're a gamer.
 
AMD Ryzen and it's chiplets or whatever it's called, look, that CPU needs work, we are still a few generations away from it potentially truly matching Intel. Rome was not build in a day.

AMD Ryzen and AMD video cards as far as I am concern are a budget oriented brand and should be treated as such. There is a reason why they are cheaper.

I think it's incredibly funny that all of a sudden, all you gamers are no longer gamers but guys who run multi-core benchmarks and productivity apps now .... really? You've been sold a lie and I am dying laughing.

I'm both a gamer and a multi-core productivity user? I code, I render. Laugh it up fuzzball, it's a reality. I play all sorts of games, from FPS through to ARPGs and RTSes.

The difference in gaming performance between the two company's chips is marginal, especially at high resolution. Productivity wise, when Ryzen works (as mentioned), they stomp all over intel at the same price. It is good hardware. The infrastructure/ecosystem side however needs work, and will get it, this just takes time.
 
AMD Ryzen and it's chiplets or whatever it's called, look, that CPU needs work, we are still a few generations away from it potentially truly matching Intel. Rome was not build in a day.

AMD Ryzen and AMD video cards as far as I am concern are a budget oriented brand and should be treated as such. There is a reason why they are cheaper.

You are only half right. Ryzen isn't cheaper. The top end Ryzen 9 3900X is $50 more than Intel's Core i9 9900K. Performance wise, Ryzen is faster at anything multi-threaded. Gaming is the only area where Intel has a clear advantage. Even then, it's minimal most of the time. You'd have to be at 1080P and play at lower details for it to really matter as far as I am concerned. CPU wise, Ryzen "doesn't need work." It's platform does. That's for sure.

The only reason I'm not typing this on a Ryzen 9 3900X righ tnow is due to that work. I can handle most of the crap, but the fact I can't play Destiny 2 on Ryzen is a no go for me at present.

All of the new Ryzen motherboards are having issues of some sort and not scoring the best in reviews. Memory is still an issue. Not my words but those of actual owners on Newegg and Amazon.

You really need to take the reviews on Amazon and Newegg with a grain of salt. These are people who bought something and probably have a sample size of one. They are only vocal because they are having problems. The people who aren't, probably haven't said anything. I've seen a few issues with X570, but based on what I've dealt with personally, X570 isn't that bad. I've played games on it and never saw those WHEA errors on it so far. As for RAM, I'll agree that X570 isn't the best for compatibility. However, that's more on the board vendors than AMD specifically. I've seen BIOS updates break memory compatibility with a given set of RAM after the upgrade. I've never seen that on the Intel side.

Ryzen is playing the one card they have and that's the "more cores" .... but real gamers are not falling for that one trick pony. And if AMD was so good, which they aren't, they would be leading Intel in gaming and single core performance.

What a myopic viewpoint. Listen, there is more to computing performance than gaming. Streamers need cores, anyone who works with VM's, and people who do any type of content creation can benefit from Ryzen's advantages. This was shown time and time again in every professional review I've looked at, including my own testing. Ryzen, IPC wise is sometimes better than Intel right now. Intel's major single-threaded performance advantage comes down to raw clock speed. Just about any garden variety Core i9 9900K can do 5.0GHz on an AIO. AMD is functionally 400MHz slower at best single core and even further behind on all core boost clocks or manual overclocks. There Intel's advantage is 700MHz+. Yet, that massive difference in clock speed doesn't translate to that much of a lead for Intel in most cases. The Ryzen 3000 series is pretty damn good. Yeah, Intel's faster at gaming. I'm gaming these days at 3440x1440 or 3840x2160. The difference at these resolutions isn't huge.

9900K's can OC to 4.8Ghz to 5.0Ghz plus. Look at the reviews, they are out there, AMD doesn't come close to Intel in gaming performance. a 4.8Ghz Intel 9900K across all cores is an absolute gaming beast. Ryzen, not so much.

I don't think we have been looking at the same data. I think you are also over stating Intel's gaming performance advantages.

I think it's incredibly funny that all of a sudden, all you gamers are no longer gamers but guys who run multi-core benchmarks and productivity apps now .... really? You've been sold a lie and I am dying laughing.

For literally the same money you could have had a nVidia RTX 2070 Super and an Intel 9900K that would run circles around anything AMD is trying to do. I feel very sad at all the kids that rushed out to get AMD Ryzen. It's simply not the best choice if you're a gamer.

Well now, let's evaluate this. Graphics card wise, I'll agree with you. Navi has to have its prices slashed to the bone before it competes. Even then, it loses to the RTX 2070 Super, which is pretty far down the ladder of graphics cards options and that's the best AMD can do. On the processor side, if money is no object I'd agree. If it is, AMD is quite competitive. The 3800X is awesome for the money, plus you have inexpensive X470 motherboards to choose from as well. The 3600 is a bargain and super popular for good reason.
 
Ryzen is lower cost, per core/thread. 3900X is $30-$50 more than a 9900k, but you get 4 more cores and an adequate cooler. You can't even get 12 cores from Intel.
3800x costs less than a 9900k and 3700x costs less than a 9700k and has twice the threads, due to SMT. Which the 9700k does not have. Both 8 core Zen 2 come with adequate coolers. Intel only wins a fair amount in games. And a couple of compression benchmarks, which may not even scale to actual workloads. The 3700x is an extremely good value.

And Intel can't even touch the value of a 3600. They need to drop the price of the 8700K and non K
And if you can catch the deals, 2700 can be an insane value. They were $150 for a couple of days.


*I do need to point out, Quicksync is pretty cool. And even though dedicated GPUs should be able to do things better, some software makes good use of Quicksync and it remains an interesting piece of the pie. Kudos to Intel for that.
 
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Just about any garden variety Core i9 9900K can do 5.0GHz on an AIO. AMD is functionally 400MHz slower at best single core and even further behind on all core boost clocks or manual overclocks. There Intel's advantage is 700MHz+. Yet, that massive difference in clock speed doesn't translate to that much of a lead for Intel in most cases. T

I agree with nearly all your points.. This is the one I take issue with.. most will do 4.8ghz with AVX, squeezing 5ghz out of the 9900k with AVX can push power/heat way up..
 
I want to spend as little as possible to push 160fps low quality at 1440p, I’m playing shooters.
$100 ish for a 2600 is great, the sole reason I have an amd build right now.

Want a Kubernetes home lab?
Ryzen is good as long as your experiments don’t require more than 1 nvme drive.
It becomes a x570 contemplation if you really need the iops.
Ram density, I’d rather use an x299 box.

I think streaming has really pushed people to use their gaming box toward simpler creation workflows.
It’s just that next step now that YouTube is old hat making little $.
Simple in that edited content quality took a backseat to live stream stability and stream quality.
Arguably streamers are spending more on cameras than their builds.

I question a white box build for work, and mixing business with personal.
Here’s a 2014 16gb i7 Mac mini I kept when new gear cycled in.
I don’t know what your work issued gear looks like, but unless it’s racked somewhere it usually isn’t that interesting in my work.
I geeked out with a guy today you’d never suspect was into building boxes given who he is.
We still aren’t using white boxes for work.


419725AD-9303-47AD-8F3B-B9CDF70C483B.jpeg
 
AMD Ryzen and it's chiplets or whatever it's called, look, that CPU needs work, we are still a few generations away from it potentially truly matching Intel. Rome was not build in a day.

AMD Ryzen and AMD video cards as far as I am concern are a budget oriented brand and should be treated as such. There is a reason why they are cheaper.

All of the new Ryzen motherboards are having issues of some sort and not scoring the best in reviews. Memory is still an issue. Not my words but those of actual owners on Newegg and Amazon.

Ryzen is playing the one card they have and that's the "more cores" .... but real gamers are not falling for that one trick pony. And if AMD was so good, which they aren't, they would be leading Intel in gaming and single core performance.

9900K's can OC to 4.8Ghz to 5.0Ghz plus. Look at the reviews, they are out there, AMD doesn't come close to Intel in gaming performance. a 4.8Ghz Intel 9900K across all cores is an absolute gaming beast. Ryzen, not so much.

I think it's incredibly funny that all of a sudden, all you gamers are no longer gamers but guys who run multi-core benchmarks and productivity apps now .... really? You've been sold a lie and I am dying laughing.

For literally the same money you could have had a nVidia RTX 2070 Super and an Intel 9900K that would run circles around anything AMD is trying to do. I feel very sad at all the kids that rushed out to get AMD Ryzen. It's simply not the best choice if you're a gamer.

This gaming argument is really getting tired. It really needs to be stated like this:

The 9900k is better at gaming*.



*When specifically gaming at 1080p or lower res and low quality settings to specifically max out on high fps monitors. The majority of "gamers" will absolutely never see this difference.

This category of "gamer" is so incredibly niche that they're not even worth taking into account imo.
 
I question a white box build for work, and mixing business with personal.

We still aren’t using white boxes for work.

Where to begin with this? If you are a sole trader or small 2-3 person shop, white boxes are ok.
 
Ryzen is lower cost, per core/thread. 3900X is $30-$50 more than a 9900k, but you get 4 more cores and an adequate cooler. You can't even get 12 cores from Intel.
3800x costs less than a 9900k and 3700x costs less than a 9700k and has twice the threads, due to SMT. Which the 9700k does not have. Both 8 core Zen 2 come with adequate coolers. Intel only wins a fair amount in games. And a couple of compression benchmarks, which may not even scale to actual workloads. The 3700x is an extremely good value.

And Intel can't even touch the value of a 3600. They need to drop the price of the 8700K and non K
And if you can catch the deals, 2700 can be an insane value. They were $150 for a couple of days.

No. “Intel can’t touch the value” is wrong. It’s correct when AMD works. Intel is much better value when AMD doesn’t work.

When AMD works you get more bang for buck, by a large margin.

When it doesn’t it’s not fit for purpose.

Not knowing when it won’t work for productivity or when you have a minefield of motherboards is playing roulette with your income when time is money,
 
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The 9900k is better at gaming*.



*When specifically gaming at 1080p or lower res and low quality settings to specifically max out on high fps monitors. The majority of "gamers" will absolutely never see this difference.

Not really- it's better for gaming if the game is more CPU dependent. That means lowered settings, yes, but also older games, many competitive games, and current games that are more stressful will run better when newer GPUs are release, which is important because enthusiasts by and large upgrade GPUs more often than CPUs.
 
No. “Intel can’t touch the value” is wrong. It’s correct when AMD works. Intel is much better value when AMD doesn’t work.

When AMD works you get more bang for buck, by a large margin.

When it doesn’t it’s not fit for purpose.

Not knowing when it won’t work for productivity or when you have a minefield of motherboards, when time is money, is playing roulette with your income.


I have to agree with this. When I was younger and gaming and overlocking were my only real uses on the PC I always went with the cutting edge. If I had to tinker with issues or work around bugs it didn't bother me. Roll back about 20 years ago when the PC market was being stormed by Athlon, platform issues were fairly common. Limited motherboard support, third party chipset issues (VIA KT133 PCI issues anyone?), AMD 760 chipset issues with AGP, the list went on. None were deal breakers for me at the time. I enjoyed troubleshooting and spending hours on the forums sharing work around ideas. Fast forward 20 years and my needs have changed. I still primarily game, but I don't have time to niggle with platform issues.

Just like AMD Ahtlon days, I suspect in time the Ryzen platform issues will be straightened out. Third parties will begin focusing on AMD Ryzen compatibilities. The platform will improve. Ryzen 2 is such a strong CPU it will command this to happen. That's all good news for AMD.

However, until that's worked out, I'd still take the 9900k, a solid AIO cooler, and a mid end 390 board like the Hero XI and call it a day. Plug n play. But that's because I value platform stability and functionality out of the gate. YMMV.
 
Not really- it's better for gaming if the game is more CPU dependent. That means lowered settings, yes, but also older games, many competitive games, and current games that are more stressful will run better when newer GPUs are release, which is important because enthusiasts by and large upgrade GPUs more often than CPUs.
It still will not affect your ability to hit 60 fps, which is where the vast majority are gaming at. It just seems really disingenuous to flatly say "the 9900k is better at gaming" when in reality it's a very narrow scope of the gaming segment where it really makes a difference.

If you fall within the scope? Fair enough, but it's far from an across the board truth.
 
It still will not affect your ability to hit 60 fps, which is where the vast majority are gaming at.

Even as most are running 1080p60, a CPU-intensive game that would run below 60FPS will run faster on Intel.

Further, a common enthusiast target is 1440p144. Here, both CPU and GPU are needed to push frames out.

It just seems really disingenuous to flatly say "the 9900k is better at gaming" when in reality it's a very narrow scope of the gaming segment where it really makes a difference.

In the scope that one is spending that kind of money for gaming period- a 9900K or 3900X each cost more than a console!- it's absolutely within the scope.


Now, in both cases, 'faster' doesn't really cover it. The part that I see that you're getting at, and where I'm going to agree with you, is in terms of 'faster by how much'. The difference isn't huge and that's a large part where recommendations fall. You'll see me both stating 'Intel is faster for gaming' and 'you're best off with an AMD CPU unless you do this or that...' at the same time, because both are true. Don't take 'faster' as a quip or as an argument to not consider alternatives.
 
From a price performance perspective, things are interesting enough to sway you in either direction. If you go all out, AMD is potentially more expensive if you buy the highest end motherboard. From Intel, that stops around $550. From AMD that reaches $700. Processor wise, the Ryzen 9 3900X is more expensive than the Intel Core i9 9900K. On the low side, AMD every time. A good mid-range B450 or X470 motherboard paired with a 3600 can't be beat in the Intel camp. Intel's Core i5 9600K is faster, but definitely more expensive than the 3600. It's platform is also more expensive. In the middle, there are plenty of options which allow you to do either a Ryzen 7 3800X or an Intel Core i9 9900K. AMD also has options for the 3700X, etc. which has been pointed out as basically being able to do what the 3800X does for less.

For example: If you go X570 and don't want a questionable board, you'll spend a bit more than you will for Intel's Z390 options. The money that you'd spend on a mid-range Z390 will get you a great board in a Z390 or an X470 motherboard. Again, you have enough maneuverability in this range to make either processor choice work for about the same money. I'd give this a $50 latitude in either direction, which I think for a whole system build isn't that significant.

All of that said, right now there is an early adopter tax on the AMD side and I am not talking about a financial cost. Rather, the platform maturity is far worse than what we have generally seen from Intel. Right now, the AGESA code isn't quite there. We have broken Linux distros and at least one known game that simply do not work on the Ryzen 3000 series at present. Memory compatibility sucks, but that's been the case on the AMD side for some time. There are also the WHEA errors on Ryzen systems using NVIDIA GPU's. I haven't experienced this myself, but plenty of people have.

Intel systems aren't as good about memory compatibility as I hear some people say on the forums. Trust me, I probably have a wider range of experience with this as I have different boards cross my bench every week or so. I've had to try upwards of a dozen different RAM kits on boards from both camps to find RAM that works. Generally, this is a fight on the AMD side and I have to try one or two kits from Intel to make it work. Naturally, going to four chips gets you more physical RAM at a lower price and this is one area where Intel shines. It's platform is mature today. You only gain PCIe 4.0 on the AMD side and surprisingly, there are a couple advantages to doing that but you have to invest in additional hardware, be it storage or network to benefit from that.

If you want to make your choice easier, there are a few things to consider. They are priced close enough, that you can go either way. Intel offers better gaming performance, but those differences aren't that big. Going AMD does lose some performance and whether or not this matters to you will depend on a few factors such as resolution, specific games, etc. If you have specific games that do have a greater gap in performance then there is your answer. If not, it doesn't make much difference. Do you just want to build the system and not have to mess with it after its built? Right now, that isn't likely going to be Ryzen. There are too many issues at present to guarantee that. If you don't mind dealing with some potential issues, then Ryzen has a lot to offer. PCIe Gen 4.0, platform longevity, etc.

If your a streamer, I think AMD has an advantage, but if you make your living on that, then AMD's probably not the direction you want to go today. If your using your machine to make a living, then AMD is probably not the way to go right now either. In 3-6 months? AMD may be worth considering. Until then, Intel is the way to go due to its platform maturity. Some of you content creator types may want to chime in, but I have a feeling that if your PC is a somewhat serious workstation, you might be on HEDT anyway and this is a moot point. AMD's Ryzen 9 3900X and 3950X sound like a good way to get HEDT performance at mainstream pricing, but unfortunately, there are too many issues to recommend that route at present.

I'm not sure this post will be helpful, but there are tons of ways of looking at this. Hopefully, one or more of these points helps someone figure out what they need to do. Whether its wait, or build now with one solution or another. Personally? I do use my machine to make money. However, I have more access to hardware and additional machines than most, so reliability of that machine isn't necessarily paramount. I also have the ability to try before I buy, so that helps. That said, what I do professionally can be done off an 8c/16t Intel as I did for the last 4.5 years. My Threadripper has been somewhat disappointing on the gaming front, so I'm contemplating the very same choice as all of you. Intel or AMD?

For me, the motherboard is a non-issue. I have options for both. The problem is that I play Destiny 2, so Ryzen is out until they fix it. I have to buy whatever CPU goes in my rig as the ones I get for free are tied up with the test bench. I have three choices of CPU, all within $50 of each other. I want to wait for the Destiny 2 fix for Ryzen. I'm getting impatient, which may ultimately sway me into the Intel camp.

One more parting thought: I do not like spending money on mechanical spinners, and frankly, I don't need that much space these days. So I have a ton of existing 2TB hard drives and I like to put them in a RAID. On that front, AMD's platform sucks for that. I can't stand the RAID XPert software in Windows. It's damn near unusable. Intel's iRST is FAR better. On the BIOS front, it's not too bad either direction, but AMD boards can be a bit trickier to configure for this at times. Loading the storage drivers on the AMD side can be a pain, but once your past that its a non-issue. Still, Intel's controllers are far more flexible in terms of available stripe sizes etc. but, AMD's StoreMI is pretty awesome though I do not use it myself.
 
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