AMD here I come?

Segfault

Weaksauce
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Oct 27, 2018
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I had some AMD processors in past, 486 and if I recall correctly, I had a K-5 also. It has been Intel ever since. My current i7-7700K is aging and I was wondering if there is some AMD CPU which can outperform it significantly without breaking the bank. The only CPU-heavy task I need it for is video processing, not even encoding, I have an hardware encoder for that. I started my research on this subject, but so far haven't got any conclusive results. Too many AMD processors out there to choose from, and availability seems to be another factor.
Therefore, trying to avoid reinventing the bicycle, I'm asking for advice. Is it time for me to upgrade or I better stay with my current i7 and wait a year or two?
Thanks for any insight!
 
It really depends on why you feel the need to upgrade. I upgraded from a 7700k@5Ghz to the 3700x last year and gaming performance with a 2080ti was pretty much a wash 99% of the time. The 5000 series should be faster but if you're not on a high-end GPU or if you play at 1440p or above it likely won't change much.
 
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Thanks, that's what I suspected. It would be nice to cut the processing time, say, from 2 hours to one, but it seems although it is possible it would cost more than I'm willing to pay. In other words, it would take me out from best bang for buck range.
 
If it helps, just a few months ago I was using a 3770K that I ran between 4600-4800. Honestly.. it was fine. It was still fast.. but my 5600x on B550.. its ridiculous. I would love to buy a GPU to go with it :D
 
I would really like to go AMD, but due to plain stupid PCIe lane idiocy on the motherboards, it is pretty much impossible for me unless I go with a Threadripper setup.

Only 24 PCIe lanes from the CPU and 16 from the chipset compared to Intel X58/x79/x99 which has 40 on the CPU and 8 on the chipset.

Both the AMD and Intel platforms have the PCIe lanes set up insanely stupid though.

Oh... you want to use the m.2 slot.... well that will completely disable your PCIe 8x slot... or.. you want to use this x4 slot.. well that will disable your x1 slot and maybe some USB and SATA as well.

And then when stuff like that happens, there are some PCIe lanes just not available to use at all.

Can't I just get a board that has everything working when I am using a video card, an x8 card, an x4 card and an x1 card? How hard is that?

Now I am stuck with an x99 workstation board that has PCIe switches so I can actually use the cards I need to use.

So if you do switch, look at a bunch of boards to find one that has the PCIe lanes / slots and devices that use PCIe will work with what you want to use.
 
Therefore, trying to avoid reinventing the bicycle, I'm asking for advice. Is it time for me to upgrade or I better stay with my current i7 and wait a year or two?
If you can wait, it's better.
In the end of this year and beginning of next Intel and AMD going to show their new platforms with DDR5.
 
I went from 7700 to 5600 (now a 5900). With a 3090, the 7700 scored 144 fps in vermintide 2 @ 1440p, I get 205 fps in the benchmark now. If you are cpu limited, the 5k series will be a boost. If you are GPU limited for your apps, you won't notice much of a difference.

I was able to add in a 2nd m.2 without sacrificing sata/usb slots on my x570. Anything more than a few dozen devices and 8 sata + m.2 + additional pcie cards and you are better served with a higher end board for threadripper/x99 intel he desktop mobo.
 
The box is headless, there is no GPU load in its traditional meaning (it has no GUI installed). As I wrote in initial post, I need CPU power only, for video processing. Not sure how well FPS reflects CPU performance ... ?
 
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The box is headless, there is no GPU load in its traditional meaning (it has no GUI installed). As I wrote in initial post, I need CPU power only, for video processing. Not sure how well FPS reflects CPU performance ... ?

They are definitely faster for video encoding depending on what software you use. Techspot's review of the 5800x has comparisons with the 7700k in it:
https://www.techspot.com/review/2134-amd-ryzen-5800x/

I mention the 5800x because it's easily the most in stock 5xxx CPU.
 
As I wrote in my initial post, I use a hardware encoder. CPU power is needed for video processing, not encoding. Thanks anyway.
 
The ipc of the 5k series really dwarfs the 7700k by a lot. I was running 5.0ghz on mine, the fps jump in vermintide 2 shows how much more cpu performance is available vs the 7700k as the GPU was the same. Vermintide runs its ai component off cpu. So from a pure ipc perspective, even with a frequency deficit, the 5k series really shines.
 
The ipc of the 5k series really dwarfs the 7700k by a lot. I was running 5.0ghz on mine, the fps jump in vermintide 2 shows how much more cpu performance is available vs the 7700k as the GPU was the same. Vermintide runs its ai component off cpu. So from a pure ipc perspective, even with a frequency deficit, the 5k series really shines.

Vermintide 2 scales, at least from 4 to 6 core counts. I don't know anything beyond that. I looked for some recent benchies but didn't find any. I don't have the game, so I can't test it myself.
 
Well, all I can say is that the performance leap is pretty incredible compared to the OC'ed 4790K I was running before. (Specs in my sig line below) Fire up Cinebench 23 and run it on your system - both single core and multicore. Then compare that to what you see an AMD 5000 series CPU of your choice performing at and determine if the performance leap in percentages is enough for you to take the plunge. Both the 5600x and 5800x CPUs seem to be much easier to get now... I would imagine that the others won't be all that far behind now as to availability...
 
Wow just did exactly that.
R23 result.png
 
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