i7 4770K/ 4790K Owners what Ryzen did you upgrade to?

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SpongeBob

The Contraceptive Under the Sea
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So the current gen of Ryzen has been out for a while now. I'm curious what your thoughts are on the upgrade and was it worth it or do you regret not waiting for next gen DDR5 system?

I'm considering an upgrade to something like a 2700/3600 but what's keeping me from pulling the trigger is DDR5, coming out this or next year potentially and it's significantly faster than DDR4. I kinda wonder if the i7 to Ryzen upgrade feels significant because DDR3 wasn't super amazing so I should hold off.

Thanks
 
SpongeBob said:
So the current gen of Ryzen has been out for a while now. I'm curious what your thoughts are on the upgrade and was it worth it or do you regret not waiting for next gen DDR5 system?

I'm considering an upgrade to something like a 2700/3600 but what's keeping me from pulling the trigger is DDR5, coming out this or next year potentially and it's significantly faster than DDR4. I kinda wonder if the i7 to Ryzen upgrade feels significant because DDR3 wasn't super amazing so I should hold off.

Thanks
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If you're considering a 2700 or 3600 then you have a budget in mind/bang for the buck type of upgrade, otherwise you'd go 3900x/3950x. With that in mind, waiting for DDR5 wouldn't really make sense. The memory itself is going to be quite expensive not only because it's so new but because there will be manufacturing/inventory hurdles with this whole Covid19 stuff going on.The motherboards will also be expensive for the same reasons. The CPU's will be new and not discounted at all. Unless you're prepared to spend quite a bit more than the upgrade you're eyeing currently, its a non-starter unless the plan is to pickup a 2nd hand 2700/3600 for even less from those going the DDR5 route. Then there's the big question of real-world benefits of more bandwidth in the tasks you intend to perform on the machine.
 
I'm still interesting in the real world benefits and real experiences people have had going from the i7 47XX to Ryzen. I really hate to spend the cash for only an incremental upgrade.
 
SpongeBob said:
I'm still interesting in the real world benefits and real experiences people have had going from the i7 47XX to Ryzen. I really hate to spend the cash for only an incremental upgrade.
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I'm happily sitting on an i5 4690k (same gen as your i7), but I want to know just like you. If the upgrade is meh, I don't want to spend the money on the board/cpu/ram.
 
SpongeBob said:
I'm still interesting in the real world benefits and real experiences people have had going from the i7 47XX to Ryzen. I really hate to spend the cash for only an incremental upgrade.
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This largely depends on what you're going to do with the machine. I went from a 3770k @ 4.4GHz to a 3900x and the difference ranges from unnoticeable, to night/day depending on the task at hand.
 
RamonGTP said:
This largely depends on what you're going to do with the machine. I went from a 3770k @ 4.4GHz to a 3900x and the difference ranges from unnoticeable, to night/day depending on the task at hand.
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Since you have examples, care to give some? From unnoticeable to night/day?
 
auntjemima said:
Since you have examples, care to give some? From unnoticeable to night/day?
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Office apps, unnoticeable

Web page loading, marginally "snappier" (could be due to M.2 PCIe gen 4 ssd vs SATA3 ssd)

Games, pretty variable. Older games that were already pushing well over 100 fps or games heavily GPU bound, little to no difference. Games that need a decent CPU along with GPU like BF:V or COD:MW there's a noticeable difference. Significant improvement in BF:V, particularly the minimum FPS bit less drastic of a difference in COD:MW

Video editing/encoding/transcoding, night and day.
 
I'd mostly agree with Ramon; I went from an i7-4790k at stock speeds to a 3700X desktop and 3600X HTPC gaming rig (with my old R9 390). The workstation for day to day stuff isn't a lot different, but overall the system feels faster and multitasks way better. I do photography, and it seems like certain edits go a lot faster on the Ryzen. I used to start having a lot of trouble doing certain stuff with the 4790k and watching Netflix at the same time. Netflix would just stop until the edit was done and then resume. I don't have that any more, but a good part of that went away switching to Linux. My desktop runs OpenSuSE, but I migrated before I upgraded hardware.

I don't play the same games I used to on my HTPC, but I do think it is faster.

If it were something where the upgrade was a financial concern, I would have been perfectly fine to stick with the 4790k, maybe just built a HTPC. I had a huge upgrade itch, and I am quite happy for the upgrade. If you do video editing or 3D rendering you'll probably see a bigger jump (Quick Sync notwithstanding).
 
I haven't upgraded myself but I did build a new machine for a friend who went from a 4770 non-K to a Ryzen 9 3900X.
He doesn't game, does mainly graphics work, but does do video editing and encoding. His day to day work doesn't feel much different to him but rendering is 3-4x faster with the 3900X.
 
Yeah, if you have Haswell overclocked to 4.4 ghz, then you're not going to see much single-threaded performance improvement going 3800X (they turbo to the exact same speeds.). At best, Zen 2 is 10% better than Haswell per-clock.

Because I use emulators a lot, I'm waiting for Zen 3 to upgrade my older systems. My 4790k really needs a 30% performance increased to make this worthwhile (and I'll also double core count!)

Or if Zen 3 disappoints I can always wait for DDR5. I have no pressing need to encode vast quantities of video anymore, so the Handbrake speedup would only matter around Christmas.

I'm also waiting for AMD to release desktop Zen 2 APUs, as AV1 has hit Youtube with a vengeance. I'd like to have somethign solid to upgrade my always-on media server so I can keep up with the new demands of 1080p 60 on Youtube, My i3 2100t is getting long-in-the-tooth, but Zen+ 35w isn't powerful enough to justify.
 
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I have a 4770K at 4.2, a 2600X, a 2700X and a 3700X, and I have used my 1070TI on all of them so I guess I should be in a decent position to answer this.

For most tasks, you won't see much of a difference. The Ryzen systems are mostly SLIGHTLY snappier, but only slightly.

For older games, you won't see much difference between systems either. One outlier is Starcraft 2, where 4v4 games would play nicely on the 3700X while the framerate would start going down on the 4770K. If I won the silicon lottery and the chip would clock to 4.8, that may be a different story.

For newer AAA games, the 4770K had some frame drops that the 2700X and the 3700X don't. (Wasn't able to test the 2600X much since that machine doesn't see much gaming.)

I game at 1080p and even at 60hz, this is noticeable in games like The Division 2. The 4770K will hitch and drop a frame here and there, but for the MOST part, the game is still mostly smooth.

Is it worth the upgrade? This is a 'value' question, but for me -- not so much if you are on a budget. I just happened to need more cores for VM work, and some more PCs.

Can you 'feel' the difference? Yes.
 
RamonGTP said:
Games, pretty variable. Older games that were already pushing well over 100 fps or games heavily GPU bound, little to no difference. Games that need a decent CPU along with GPU like BF:V or COD:MW there's a noticeable difference. Significant improvement in BF:V, particularly the minimum FPS bit less drastic of a difference in COD:MW

Video editing/encoding/transcoding, night and day.
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I'd also add, in those games that hit both the CPU and GPU, the combination of the 3900x using substantially more power and it being able to push my 1080Ti to 100% utilization the entire time equates to a lot more heat being dumped into the room. On a brisk night, gaming on the 3770k would make the room go from cool to a quite comfortable warm. The 3900x ups the ante and makes it uncomfortably warm without cracking the window wide open. On a warmer but not hot day, I pretty much have to run the AC to maintain comfort while gaming.
 
I'm still running a 4790k.. ,

I've been tempted to upgrade pc for past 6 months, but since I usually just game,benchmark and browse forums on
pc... I'm just trying to wait for next gen pc desktop cpu/gpus….

I've had this pc for 5 years and have that itch to upgrade though....

patiently waiting until my patience runs out or current pc breaks …...
 
For most basic productivity we're well past diminishing returns. My work laptop is a Latitude E7250 with an i5-5300U and 8GB of RAM. With an SSD, I can do all kinds of stuff from 2D CAD and web meetings to all the email and office documents you can think of without any real issue.
 
ncjoe said:
I'm still running a 4790k.. ,

I've been tempted to upgrade pc for past 6 months, but since I usually just game,benchmark and browse forums on
pc... I'm just trying to wait for next gen pc desktop cpu/gpus….

I've had this pc for 5 years and have that itch to upgrade though....

patiently waiting until my patience runs out or current pc breaks …...
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New consoles are 8 core so you will see almost all new games coming out will take advantage of that. By the end of this year and into the next it will be nice to have a 6-8+ core CPU. I've got an 8700K right now and most stuff I play does not stress it much, it's still typically GPU limited even with a 2080 ti.
 
Furious_Styles said:
New consoles are 8 core so you will see almost all new games coming out will take advantage of that. By the end of this year and into the next it will be nice to have a 6-8+ core CPU. I've got an 8700K right now and most stuff I play does not stress it much, it's still typically GPU limited even with a 2080 ti.
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The current consoles are also 8 cores and 4c/8t CPU's have been handling those games just fine over the last 7 years. While I agree that looking forward you'll want as high of a core count as you can budget for, console specifications don't always translate over.
 
I was in this EXACT situation: running an i7-4790k/z87 and felt the desire to upgrade. I went with a Ryzen 3700x/x570. It's a bit snappier, but I honestly can't point to a definite % of improvement.

I mentioned it, in passing, here: https://hardforum.com/threads/intel...sors-including-5-3ghz.1991154/post-1044555593

The i7-4790k wasn't failing...it was the oldest in my rotation and I had the spare resources to upgrade one machine, so it got the call. The 4790k cooler, mobo, cpu, and a gpu are sitting in a box waiting for a decision. I may replace my bulldozer (see sig), but I'd rather not. It's in a difficult to access HTPC case (Silverstone Grandia GD05 https://silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=241) and is adequate for my purpose. Just too much pita to swap out the bulldozer. So, I may buy a case and psu and send it on to a family member. It's still a very good cpu.
 
mda said:
For newer AAA games, the 4770K had some frame drops that the 2700X and the 3700X don't. (Wasn't able to test the 2600X much since that machine doesn't see much gaming.)

I game at 1080p and even at 60hz, this is noticeable in games like The Division 2. The 4770K will hitch and drop a frame here and there, but for the MOST part, the game is still mostly smooth.
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I play primarily newer games these days. How much of a difference do you see in the 2700 vs the 3700? On paper it looks like the 3600 would be the bee's knees for gaming but if there is little to no difference between the 2700 and 3700 I'm very curious.
 
SpongeBob said:
I play primarily newer games these days. How much of a difference do you see in the 2700 vs the 3700? On paper it looks like the 3600 would be the bee's knees for gaming but if there is little to no difference between the 2700 and 3700 I'm very curious.
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It depends on resolution and specific games. The higher the resolution, the less difference the CPU makes (generally speaking).

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-ryzen-7-3700x/15.html

In their game test suite at 1080p, the 2700x is about 7% slower than the 3700x and likewise the 9900k is some 7% faster than the 3700x for perspective
 
I was still using my i7-4790K until March 30th 2020 (i7-4790K 16GB DDR3) I upgraded to the Ryzen 7 3700X 32GB DDR4. I just have to figure out why the board (Gigabyte Aorus Elite X570) takes so long to pass post, once the Aorus logo comes up it boots into Windows 10 within 15 seconds but before that it will sit there with a steady line for a good 25-30 seconds before the Aorus logo. Anyway I record TV with a HD Homerun Prime and when I edit out the commercials and encode to H.264 there is a night and day difference the Ryzen rips right through that
 
Format _C: this is unrelated to the topic however I recently had a system with an X570 Aorus Master and there is a common problem with gigabytes 570 boards and cold boots.

Specifically any time the board loses power (pull the plug, flip the master switch on the psu, etc) the bios will reset, so the next boot takes longer while it does a self-check. You would only notice if you were booting into the bios to get the message about it resetting to defaults. Some boards were so sensitive it happened just after a regular shutdown, although in that case enabling ERP in the bios would prevent that specific problem (but not the rest).

Some have fixed it by reseating or replacing the cmos battery. Gigabyte said they’re working on a bios update to address some nebulous “cold boot” issues.

Having run through several systems over the years the biggest difference in non-gaming use I ever noticed was switching to an SSD in early i7 Nehalem / Clarkdale days. It’s why a lot of people are still running 2700k rigs... new games have only recently started really making use of more than 4 cores. But regular “office” type use, you probably won’t notice much of a difference.
 
Good points from Ramon and others here.

I'd also just add (as a plus for going AM4/Ryzen now) is the next gen is allegedly going to slot into current AM4 boards (and those be obv. DDR4).

For me, i'd simply ask myself if i need the new(er) platform features i'd gain (if any) right now on AM4.

DDR5 is going to be a whole new ballgame.

Edit: For the record.. here's some Anandtech Bench numbers..

4790K vs. 2700
4790K vs. 3700X (didn't have the 3600?!)

4790K is still a potent little sucker at 1080P+.
 
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Hmm I don't know if I apply since I upgraded from a 4790k>5930k>5960x (which I still use)>3900x....but I do also have a 3700x here and it's a pretty wonderful upgrade to the 4790k. If I had an old 4th gen, I would feel very happy with a 3700x.
 
If you're still using a quad core, I would hands down recommend upgrading. If you're on 6 cores or more already, it becomes more situational if it makes sense to upgrade.

I don't fit the title perfectly but wanted to provide my experience as I feel it's still pretty applicable. Upgraded from a 3970X @ 4.4Ghz to a 3800X which I use at 4.4Ghz all core. Regular Windows usage with basic Internet and Office applications is a little noticeable. Boot time is definitely faster but that's due to faster POST and NVME drive. I mostly game at 4K and 1440P so gaming performance is nearly identical with a few games having better .1% lows. BF1 benefited most of course thanks to the Frostbite Engine.

While the gains in some areas of usage are modest for those of us making the switch, I think the Ryzen CPUs will show even greater improvements over time as newer applications and games become more aware of additional threads.
 
I had an i7 4770K and built my first Threadripper 1950x rig a few years ago. I use my PC for video encoding using Handbrake. The TR 1950x is more than twice as fast as the i7 4770K in Handbrake.
 
Right now, using the 3700x/x570 that replaced my 4790k, I have 55 browser tabs open (yikes!), I'm wiping an external drive with CCleaner (gonna donate the ol' 320GB spinner), HWiNFO is open, iCUE is making pretty colors on my keyboard and cooling the cpu (which is at 41.1C, thanks HWinfo), I'm scanning for viruses (the software kind, not the Wuhan type), I've got reliability monitor open, replying to emails, and, I'm about to use the free game key I got for buying the 3700x and open a session of Resident Evil 3.

Yeah...I'm liking the upgrade.
 
FWIW I'm on a 1700X (i know not a 4790K) and will move to a 3700X when the 4xxx chips drop and the old gen hw drops in price -- EU import fees suuuuuuck
 
Well I am going to make the move to a temporary Ryzen 3600 from a 6700k mainly because of platform and upgrade to the 4000 series big boys when they release.
I like no frills motherboard like this one :https://www.microcenter.com/product/608545/X570-P_Prime_AMD_AM4_ATX_Motherboard
Is that a good "no frills" Mobo? I don't want dancing lights, the memory and cooler are enough for that.

Figure CPU/Mobo for $307 with tax will be a good little hold over upgrade to the 4000 series.(yeah who am I shitting? A month back to work probably pick up 3900x lol.) Plus I want off this Z170 platform to fully utilize my Nvme Drives. (Have 2, only 1 slot though). Next Friday can't get here soon enough. Been along time away from AMD. Please no hiccups..
 
4790k -> 3700X
Power consumption dropped a lot. Not much noticeable difference otherwise.
 
My experience - had a 4790k with a mild overclock on all cores
- normal windows usage - no real difference
Games (1440p, dual monitors)
- FPS: some, not much really (although better overall). with some exceptions where the difference was quite visible
Stability during gaming
- less intensive games - not visible impr. (did not have issues before )
- intensive games:eek:verall, no more stuttering. Division 2: no more hiccups during gaming (had the fps, but any background activity would trigger stutter); CIv (modded, late game): no more stutters after round transition is over; similar with Cities Skyline (although fps impr was not much)
It may sound disappointing buuut:
- i don't need to close the browser(s) any more (many tabs, youtube and so on), background programs (eg a torrent client downloading and/or uploading), in general, unless there is a ram issues, everything runs in the background fine > no more stuterring (including during Division)
Alt-Tab - from any game (intensive or not) is instant (again, when ram is not the problem). High speed downloads/ uploads, program updates, windows updates no longer visible while gaming
I can forget a running city (in city skyline) in the background without noticing it* (in need to stress how intensive Skylines can be with some public traffic overlays, over modded, while zoomed in on a massive public transportation node, at high speed )
*have a kraken over gpu, no real noise increase during usage

TLDR:
not much improvement over FPS values, but massive improvement over random stutters, and overall usage (multiple browsers and/or browser windows vs video players vs netflix app vs games vs background)
- as long as ram is not a problem, i no longer need to close everything/ anything in background
- Alt-tab is a breeze, no more waiting, no more black screens, no more stutters after going back to game.
 
mda said:
I have a 4770K at 4.2, a 2600X, a 2700X and a 3700X, and I have used my 1070TI on all of them so I guess I should be in a decent position to answer this.

For most tasks, you won't see much of a difference. The Ryzen systems are mostly SLIGHTLY snappier, but only slightly.

For older games, you won't see much difference between systems either. One outlier is Starcraft 2, where 4v4 games would play nicely on the 3700X while the framerate would start going down on the 4770K. If I won the silicon lottery and the chip would clock to 4.8, that may be a different story.

For newer AAA games, the 4770K had some frame drops that the 2700X and the 3700X don't. (Wasn't able to test the 2600X much since that machine doesn't see much gaming.)

I game at 1080p and even at 60hz, this is noticeable in games like The Division 2. The 4770K will hitch and drop a frame here and there, but for the MOST part, the game is still mostly smooth.

Is it worth the upgrade? This is a 'value' question, but for me -- not so much if you are on a budget. I just happened to need more cores for VM work, and some more PCs.

Can you 'feel' the difference? Yes.
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I agree with this assessment. I went from a 4790K to a 3700X. You will feel a difference, how much of a difference depends on the task. I saw a huge difference in BFV and FFXIV, particularly in large player hubs. Older games that don't leverage the available cores/threads? You will see / feel a difference but it won't be as pronounced. To me it was worth the upgrade.
 
gigatexal said:
FWIW I'm on a 1700X (i know not a 4790K) and will move to a 3700X when the 4xxx chips drop and the old gen hw drops in price -- EU import fees suuuuuuck
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you'll like it. i went from a 1600x to 3600 which sits at 4.2Ghz all core boost without PBO. skipped the 2000 series because the gains didn't seem worth it at the time to pay another 200 bucks less than a year later for the 2600.
 
I went 4790K -> 3950X (also a 1700 and 2700X before that which got repurposed for server stuff, p.s. it's great Ryzen supports ECC RAM). I definitely would only recommend getting a Zen 2 CPU at this point (Ryzen 3xxx) for the big IPC gains. 12 Zen2 threads with higher frequency and IPC > 16 Zen+ threads with lower clockspeed in most usage. 3600 or 3700X are probably the sweet spot for price/performance and depending on your workload the 12 or 16 threads should last you a while. If you want to spend more obviously there is the 3900X and 3950X, 3900X at around $400 - $420 with 24 threads is great and puts the 9900K to shame in multi-threaded workloads and close enough gaming performance.

Another big reason to upgrade is support for the much faster NVME SSDs in the m.2 form factor which Z97 didn't really have. Have that for your boot drive paired with any Zen 2 chip and man, you'll really be flying.
 
I recently upgraded my previous system, which was a Core i7 3770K (the generation before the i7 47xx).

I have a Ryzen 3900X with an AMD X570-based motherboard for future-proofing.

My new system is really fast, and a very nice upgrade from my 7+ year-old machine. There are a lot of bottlenecks that have been removed from the older tech - such as: speedier DDR4 RAM, USB 3.1 / 3.2, NVMe SSD, PCIe 4.0. Plus, the increase from 4 cores / 8 hyperthreads to 12 cores / 24 hyperthreads has made a huge difference.

Waiting for other minor tech improvements, such as DDR4 to DDR5 shouldn't hold you back at this point. It's not like your system will run twice as fast with a DDR4 to DDR5 change. There are always new tech / slightly upgraded CPUs on the horizon, and if you are always holding off due to the promise of new tech you'll be living with your slower old tech forever.

Time to get started building your new PC!


IH8Spam
 
Already posted my experience, but i also think that a lot of graphs can help.
(i hope linking to youtube is ok, i read the rules, hope i did not missed anything)
 
SpongeBob said:
So the current gen of Ryzen has been out for a while now. I'm curious what your thoughts are on the upgrade and was it worth it or do you regret not waiting for next gen DDR5 system?

I'm considering an upgrade to something like a 2700/3600 but what's keeping me from pulling the trigger is DDR5, coming out this or next year potentially and it's significantly faster than DDR4. I kinda wonder if the i7 to Ryzen upgrade feels significant because DDR3 wasn't super amazing so I should hold off.

Thanks
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I just replaced my 4770 with a 3600.

For me, the difference is remarkable.

I probably am not a typical user. My PC for one is used as an IP cam server in the background (https://blueirissoftware.com/). Also, I tend to have many (20-40) browser tabs open as well as multiple applications including Powerpoint, Word, Excel, Acrobat, voice recognition, remote login to Citrix server for work. Then, the occasional VM and then on top of that, open a game like Rome 2 or something.

This was too much for my 4770, with all this going on my CPU load was in the high 90s to 100 percent and things were noticeably slow.

Enter the 3600. The 3600 can run all of this and not bat an eye. I have not gone above 50% processor utilization yet and performance is quite good, subjectively. Temps are not excessive on stock cooler.

I had thought I would need something with more cores, like the 3900 to deal with all of this workload but I am stunned to find that the 3600, which I got for exactly $160 (!) can handle it all.
 
Just replaced my ~4.5ghz 4790k with the 3900x. It was due for an upgrade as 4 cores didn't seem to be cutting it anymore. I haven't really had the desire to overclock anything yet outside of running my ram, actually 3200mhz, at 3600mhz. I don't notice a large outright FPS increase, but the overall smoothness is very noticeable with far fewer dips and slowdowns. It doesn't feel far off from a gpu upgrade actually, the overall smoothness is that noticeable.

I kept my RV02 case, which doesn't really play great with modern AIO's so i went with a Noctua NH-D15 and temps have been great. During gaming I kinda hover around the low 60c mark. This thing has been great working from home too.
 
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I just upgraded from a 4690k to a Ryzen 3600. The game that motivated the change was Assassins Creed Syndicate. It would stutter when driving the carriages around town and all 4 cores were hitting 100%. With the 3600, everything is super smooth. The Ryzen chip runs a lot hotter in part because the 4690k was cooled with a Corsair H60 while the 3600 is currently under the stock cooler. I used Asus AI Suite to determine optimal fan profiles and it did a nice job getting fan noise under control. Still, I am picky about noise and temps, and will therefore be putting an Arctic Freezer 34 esports tower cooler on it this weekend.

As others have stated, day to day operations seem snappier. Opening apps, startup/shutdown, webpages, etc. Not super noticeable, however, as the old system was still pretty fast.

Also happy with future options on the Asus X570-P Prime motherboard. Overall satisfied with the upgrade.
 
Well, I don't game a whole lot anymore (and when I do it's CS:GO) but I've recently worked on some video editing projects. My desktop setup is an I7-4770K at 4.1ghz with a GTX770; laptop is an X1 carbon with an i7-4600u. I'm picking up an Asus G14 with the 4900HS and GTX2060 MaxQ on Monday to replace both - I'll post back to report how it feels. The 4900HS is supposed to be marginally faster than the 3600X desktop part.

Honestly, even my X1 carbon handles daily driver laptop duty just fine - web browsing, email, 1080p youtube, and even multi track (8+) audio recording have all been just fine on it. Really, the desire to consolidate onto one device with longer battery life and better video editing performance are the main reasons I'm upgrading.
 
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