Help picking AMD CPU

T

TheForumTroll

Weaksauce
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I'm completely out of the loop on hardware these days so would someone mind giving me some advice on what would be a good upgrade? I'm thinking a boost in performance like ~50% (see link below for current specs) and the ability to upgrade CPU for as long as possible.

Usage is something like 60% gaming, 30% 3D (Rhino, Blender), 10% misc.
New CPU: AMD. I dislike Intel for philosophical/political/moral reasons
New motherboard: no specific needs in brand, size, connections, etc. except maybe "okay" support for overclocking
Price: No idea what 50% upgrade costs...


https://www.passmark.com/baselines/V9/display.php?id=123028004603

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Depending on how you think you will be able to get a budget for it, would look for the R9 3900x
Motherboards is what you want to wait for if the prices for X470 are dropping there might be something nice around $200.
That leaves you to pick up some good DDR4 ram if you can find deals that are supported by motherboard QVL above or equal to 3200mhz and preferably low latency (CL 14 3200 kit from G.skill allows you to overclock it) and stick to 2 sticks if you can (there are 16gb versions I think).

That should about cover your needs, if you are not sure about the amount of cores on the cpu just wait for the reviews to come in around the 7th of July this year .

Btw overclocking is not that important unless you go for silicon that has disabled cores and even then it is not something on this platform that is always better then the boosts the motherboard/cpu features allow.
 
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I had no idea Zen2 was coming. I will wait and see how the price and performance looks a month from now. Thank you!

SvenBent said:
Sorry for shameles plug.
but depending on your games you might want to look into my project mercury for gaming on Ryzen platform.
E.G. 23% fps boost in battlerite & 10% boost in CS:GO will help go a long way.
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I play a lot of different types of games so I will have a look. Thank you for the tip :)
 
I have a question. I have an X470 mobo MSI X470 Gaming M7 with an 2700X. I would like to upgrade to 3900X 12-core. Do I need the new X570, or will my current mobo work with Zen2?
 
Motley said:
I have a question. I have an X470 mobo MSI X470 Gaming M7 with an 2700X. I would like to upgrade to 3900X 12-core. Do I need the new X570, or will my current mobo work with Zen2?
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I would say yes, supposedly all the X470 motherboards are good for Ryzen 3000

AMD-socket-am4-motherboard-ryzen-compatibility-chart-1024x576.jpg
 
We need to wait for benchmarks and reviews first. At this point it looks like the 3600 or 3600x are the bang for the buck choices.
 
biggles said:
We need to wait for benchmarks and reviews first. At this point it looks like the 3600 or 3600x are the bang for the buck choices.
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The OP is clearly not someone who upgrades very often so for him it would pretty silly to go with the 3600x over the 3700x. Even the consoles will have 8 core/ 16 threads cpus next year plus the other stuff he uses his pc for will be better off on the 3700x.
 
I don't get everyone suggesting OP to go with an 8 core, 16 thread CPU. Considering OP's use case he would be much much better served by the Ryzen 9 3900X, the 12 core, 24 thread part (https://www.amd.com/en/product/8436) for very little extra money.

Recommendation pending actual benchmarks....
 
Calavaro said:
I don't get everyone suggesting OP to go with an 8 core, 16 thread CPU. Considering OP's use case he would be much much better served by the Ryzen 9 3900X, the 12 core, 24 thread part (https://www.amd.com/en/product/8436) for very little extra money.

Recommendation pending actual benchmarks....
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Who is "everyone"? I see everything from 6 core to 12 core being suggested so not sure what comments you are looking at. The only reason I said 3700x was because it would be better than the 3600x that the person I was replying to was mentioning.
 
misterbobby said:
Who is "everyone"? I see everything from 6 core to 12 core being suggested so not sure what comments you are looking at. The only reason I said 3700x was because it would be better than the 3600x that the person I was replying to was mentioning.
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I like the 12 core solution better if you are not going to upgrade that often lets say that around 5 years the landscape changed enough that were beyond 8 cores and things start to scale better. You would still have something valid , contemplating that were not going to see a fast track of processing technology manufacturing beyond 5nm any time soon.
 
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TheForumTroll said:
I'm completely out of the loop on hardware these days so would someone mind giving me some advice on what would be a good upgrade? I'm thinking a boost in performance like ~50% (see link below for current specs) and the ability to upgrade CPU for as long as possible.

Usage is something like 60% gaming, 30% 3D (Rhino, Blender), 10% misc.
New CPU: AMD. I dislike Intel for philosophical/political/moral reasons
New motherboard: no specific needs in brand, size, connections, etc. except maybe "okay" support for overclocking
Price: No idea what 50% upgrade costs...


https://www.passmark.com/baselines/V9/display.php?id=123028004603

View attachment 168655
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CPU:
I would wait for independent reviews of the R7 3700X (8c/16t, $329) and see if it can get up to the 3800X which is 8c/16t at $400 but factory clocked slightly higher. AMD has a tendency to have lower-end CPUs able to match their higher-end CPUs.
The 12-core R9 3900X could be an option as well, but bumps the cost up to $500. Not needed for gaming, but will likely help your other projects.
MoBo:
Then a decent X470 motherboard with a good VRM. MSI Gaming Carbon would be a decent choice, and should handle up to 12c CPU with a respectable overclock.
The only reasons to get one of the $200 and (waaaaay) up X570 is the PCIe 4.0 and VRM. For graphics/games, we don't need PCIe4. Even a Titan doesn't come close to maxing out 16 lanes of PCIe 3 yet. The only other use for it is ridiculously high-speed SSD's, which won't give any noticeable performance increase except for people transferring huge files. As for the VRM, just don't get a crappy VRM on an X470, and you'll be fine, as TDP has largely stayed the same even though core count has increased.
RAM:
If you get 3xxx series CPU, get 32GB (2x16) of 3600Mhz DDR4. Spend the extra money on the higher frequency, as AMD chips have noticeable improvements with better RAM, and 3xxx CPUs are supposed to handle 3600Mhz with no problem. 2 sticks is better than 4, especially for overclocking or tweaking in most cases.

As for graphics card, look at a used Vega 56 or a 1070ti for around $200 if you can find them. GPUs are insanely expensive this time around, and don't make a ton of sense at their current price-point, even the upcoming AMD offerings. If you MUST get new, the upcoming 2070 Super at $500, or even the 2060 Super at $430. Depends if your rendering prefers AMD or Nvidia, but the upcoming Radeon cards just don't seem to be priced competitively considering they lack anything like the Tensor and RT cores, which Tensor can be used for stuff other than "gimmicky" Ray-Tracing.
 
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Nside said:
CPU:
I would wait for independent reviews of the R7 3700X (8c/16t, $329) and see if it can get up to the 3800X which is 8c/16t at $400 but factory clocked slightly higher. AMD has a tendency to have lower-end CPUs able to match their higher-end CPUs.
The 12-core R9 3900X could be an option as well, but bumps the cost up to $500. Not needed for gaming, but will likely help your other projects.
MoBo:
Then a decent X470 motherboard with a good VRM. MSI Gaming Carbon would be a decent choice, and should handle up to 12c CPU with a respectable overclock.
The only reasons to get one of the $200 and (waaaaay) up X570 is the PCIe 4.0 and VRM. For graphics/games, we don't need PCIe4. Even a Titan doesn't come close to maxing out 16 lanes of PCIe 3 yet. The only other use for it is ridiculously high-speed SSD's, which won't give any noticeable performance increase except for people transferring huge files. As for the VRM, just don't get a crappy VRM on an X470, and you'll be fine, as TDP has largely stayed the same even though core count has increased.
RAM:
If you get 3xxx series CPU, get 32GB (2x16) of 3600Mhz DDR4. Spend the extra money on the higher frequency, as AMD chips have noticeable improvements with better RAM, and 3xxx CPUs are supposed to handle 3600Mhz with no problem. 2 sticks is better than 4, especially for overclocking or tweaking in most cases.

As for graphics card, look at a used Vega 56 or a 1070ti for around $200 if you can find them. GPUs are insanely expensive this time around, and don't make a ton of sense at their current price-point, even the upcoming AMD offerings. If you MUST get new, the upcoming 2070 Super at $500, or even the 2060 Super at $430. Depends if your rendering prefers AMD or Nvidia, but the upcoming Radeon cards just don't seem to be priced competitively considering they lack anything like the Tensor and RT cores, which Tensor can be used for stuff other than "gimmicky" Ray-Tracing.
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I would normally agree about the RAM, but AMD had some slides showing that all dat extra cache made a bigger difference than going from slower to faster RAM. I'll be upgrading and I'm torn between 3200 and 3600. The price difference right now is significant.
 
Randall Stephens said:
I would normally agree about the RAM, but AMD had some slides showing that all dat extra cache made a bigger difference than going from slower to faster RAM. I'll be upgrading and I'm torn between 3200 and 3600. The price difference right now is significant.
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DDR4 36000 is about $80 right now, for 16GB. That's only about $10 - $15 more than 3200. That should be a no-brainer. It could go even lower, according to recent news about DRAM pricing.
 
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