i9-10900X or i9-9900K

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eljay

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I'm trying to decide which processor to get for a new build. Initially I was going to go for the i9-9900K.

I'm considering the i9-10900X for the additional PCIe lanes. I haven't been able to determine if the extra lanes would be helpful for me so I'm hoping for some feedback based on the following details of my planned build and usage.

- I'm not a hard core gamer. At most I'll play something like WoW
- I'm a photographer and use the latest versions of Lightroom and Photoshop
- At this time, no other intensive programs
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 graphics card
- Two M.2 NVMe Samsung 970 PRO 512 GB SSDs (one as Win 10 boot drive, one as program drive)
- Two 120GB SATA SSDs (one for Windows paging file, one for Photoshop scratch disk)
- Two 480GB SATA SSDs (quick access for things like Lightroom catalog and previews, and raw cache, and whatever)
- Additional large SATA HDDs for data and photos

So, would the extra PCIe lanes be beneficial with this setup, or am I just naively barking up a shiny tree?

Thanx,
eljay
 
The 9900K will serve you just fine. It's probably actually a little better than the 10900 anyway, as Photoshop tends to like fast single threaded performance versus a ton of cores, and the 9900K has slightly faster single thread performance.
 
Do you already own the motherboard? If not why not a Ryzen 3800X or 3900X? If you don't game much but primarily work in photoshop I would go for either of those 2 CPUs as they are faster than the 9900K and 10900K in photoshop.
 
I started researching PCIe lanes when I decided to use NVMe SSDs for the boot and program drives. But wasn't getting a real clear picture if the extra CPU PCIe lanes would help or not. I was starting to lean back towards the 9900K when I read that the DMI connection between the CPU and chipset is like PCIe x4 and can be saturated by a "high-end" NVMe SSD.

Which, now that I'm thinking about it, would I be able to "assign" PCIe lanes on the CPU to the NVMe SSDs? If yes, wouldn't it be worth it to avoid a bottleneck between the CPU and chipset? If no, then there doesn't seem much point for me to have 48 lanes on the CPU.

As for the AMD processors, I admit to an ancient bias against them when it seemed like there were a lot of compatibility problems with Windows. I assume that history is long past and I've read some of the comparison reviews and they are impressive. But switching from a lifelong Intel user to AMD would open up a whole new can of research worms to make me comfortable. I haven't purchased a motherboard yet so if there are a few links from reliable sources that explain overall advantages/disadvantages to running Windows on Intel/AMD, (not a bunch of benchmarks, but any serious issues), then I would be open to checking them out.

Thanx,
eljay
 
Frankly, you can get 2+tb NVME drives now, they are fast enough for most things. If you need faster you can buy optane.

I guess what I am saying is there is logic in having fewer bigger drives rather than lots of small drives
 
Keljian said:
Frankly, you can get 2+tb NVME drives now, they are fast enough for most things. If you need faster you can buy optane.

I guess what I am saying is there is logic in having fewer bigger drives rather than lots of small drives
Click to expand...

My thought is to use the 2 NVMe drives dedicated to just the OS and installed programs so the system itself can run as smoothly and uninterrupted as possible.
 
Really that is overkill.
Photoshop and Lightroom won’t need anywhere near the bandwidth a nvme can support.
 
9900k would be the best. the 9900k even best bins very hard to keep cool at 5.0. I dont see a i9-10900X being cooled properly by a aio or fan , you would need a hard core doable 360 rad custom cooled system to start and it would still be hot
 
9900k, get a single large NVME. you really only need multiple NVME drives if you are using Premier and really only matters when doing the final render.
 
eljay said:
- Two M.2 NVMe Samsung 970 PRO 512 GB SSDs (one as Win 10 boot drive, one as program drive)
- Two 120GB SATA SSDs (one for Windows paging file, one for Photoshop scratch disk)
- Two 480GB SATA SSDs (quick access for things like Lightroom catalog and previews, and raw cache, and whatever)
- Additional large SATA HDDs for data and photos

So, would the extra PCIe lanes be beneficial with this setup, or am I just naively barking up a shiny tree?

Thanx,
eljay
Click to expand...

That's needless complex imo, and a bit wasteful. There's so much damn speed with gen3/4 nvme there's no need to dedicate separate drives to os and programs. There's also no need to run a separate page file either, unless you plan on swapping from page file, which is a sign of a bottlenecked system. I suggest one fat nvme for os/apps. Let windows manage pagefile, ie on os drive. Then you can run a 2nd nvme for scratch/assets etc etc.
 
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eljay said:
I started researching PCIe lanes when I decided to use NVMe SSDs for the boot and program drives. But wasn't getting a real clear picture if the extra CPU PCIe lanes would help or not. I was starting to lean back towards the 9900K when I read that the DMI connection between the CPU and chipset is like PCIe x4 and can be saturated by a "high-end" NVMe SSD.

Which, now that I'm thinking about it, would I be able to "assign" PCIe lanes on the CPU to the NVMe SSDs? If yes, wouldn't it be worth it to avoid a bottleneck between the CPU and chipset? If no, then there doesn't seem much point for me to have 48 lanes on the CPU.

As for the AMD processors, I admit to an ancient bias against them when it seemed like there were a lot of compatibility problems with Windows. I assume that history is long past and I've read some of the comparison reviews and they are impressive. But switching from a lifelong Intel user to AMD would open up a whole new can of research worms to make me comfortable. I haven't purchased a motherboard yet so if there are a few links from reliable sources that explain overall advantages/disadvantages to running Windows on Intel/AMD, (not a bunch of benchmarks, but any serious issues), then I would be open to checking them out.

Thanx,
eljay
Click to expand...
You can get a 12 core AMD 3900x for the same or less than a 9900k. And it has native PCI-E 4 support. Or you can save some cash and get AMD's 8 core 3700X and still have that PCI-E support. Also, waaaaaaay less vulnerabilities to patch on AMD processors.
 
eljay said:
My thought is to use the 2 NVMe drives dedicated to just the OS and installed programs so the system itself can run as smoothly and uninterrupted as possible.
Click to expand...
But the larger capacity NVMe drives are generally faster than smaller NVMe drives due to the way the memory works. You could partition the larger drives in to smaller drives & still get better performance than the smaller drives at less expense& using less PCIe lanes in the process.
 
chameleoneel said:
You can get a 12 core AMD 3900x for the same or less than a 9900k. And it has native PCI-E 4 support. Or you can save some cash and get AMD's 8 core 3700X and still have that PCI-E support. Also, waaaaaaay less vulnerabilities to patch on AMD processors.
Click to expand...

Yeah and potentially more unpatched vulnerabilities that are not public, and more software/hardware maturity issues. Question is whether this matters to you, typically it doesn't matter.

WRT Virtual memory, YMMV - While I don't need virtual memory (I have 64 gig of memory, I typically use somewhere in the order of 15-20 gig, and often a lot more), I have a 32gig optane with a fixed swap size that I use for virtual memory, I've noticed bootup is faster and things are snappier as a result of taking the swap off the nvme, and windows still uses virtual memory for parking.
 
chameleoneel said:
All signs point to current AMD processors being more secure than current Intel.
Click to expand...

As a counterpoint, as a firmware programmer (sometimes), I guarantee that the AMD firmware side has holes in it that could be as big as intel.
 
thesmokingman said:
Ok, now prove it.
Click to expand...
I spent a few moments googling..

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/amd-cpu-vulnerability/
  • Ryzenfall: Allows malicious code to take complete control of the AMD Secure Processor
  • Fallout: Allows an attacker to read from and write to protected memory areas such as SMRAM
  • Chimera: A “double” vulnerability, with one firmware flaw and one hardware flaw that allows the injection of malicious code directly into the AMD Ryzen chipset; chipset-based malware evades virtually all endpoint security solutions
  • Masterkey: Exploits multiple vulnerabilities in AMD Secure Processor firmware to allow access to Secure Processor; allows extremely stealthy persistent chipset-based malware to evade security; could allow for physical device damage

While these are patched for now, these are just as bad as the stuff coming out of intel. Realistically speaking it doesn't matter for the average user.
 
Keljian said:
I spent a few moments googling..

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/amd-cpu-vulnerability/
  • Ryzenfall: Allows malicious code to take complete control of the AMD Secure Processor
  • Fallout: Allows an attacker to read from and write to protected memory areas such as SMRAM
  • Chimera: A “double” vulnerability, with one firmware flaw and one hardware flaw that allows the injection of malicious code directly into the AMD Ryzen chipset; chipset-based malware evades virtually all endpoint security solutions
  • Masterkey: Exploits multiple vulnerabilities in AMD Secure Processor firmware to allow access to Secure Processor; allows extremely stealthy persistent chipset-based malware to evade security; could allow for physical device damage

While these are patched for now, these are just as bad as the stuff coming out of intel. Realistically speaking it doesn't matter for the average user.
Click to expand...
go easy on him guys he doesn't know.
 
Keljian said:
I spent a few moments googling..

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/amd-cpu-vulnerability/
  • Ryzenfall: Allows malicious code to take complete control of the AMD Secure Processor
  • Fallout: Allows an attacker to read from and write to protected memory areas such as SMRAM
  • Chimera: A “double” vulnerability, with one firmware flaw and one hardware flaw that allows the injection of malicious code directly into the AMD Ryzen chipset; chipset-based malware evades virtually all endpoint security solutions
  • Masterkey: Exploits multiple vulnerabilities in AMD Secure Processor firmware to allow access to Secure Processor; allows extremely stealthy persistent chipset-based malware to evade security; could allow for physical device damage

While these are patched for now, these are just as bad as the stuff coming out of intel. Realistically speaking it doesn't matter for the average user.
Click to expand...

IM GONNA IM GONNA IM GONNA- PENTIUUUUUOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMM !!!! !!!!!!
 
eljay said:
I'm trying to decide which processor to get for a new build. Initially I was going to go for the i9-9900K.

I'm considering the i9-10900X for the additional PCIe lanes. I haven't been able to determine if the extra lanes would be helpful for me so I'm hoping for some feedback based on the following details of my planned build and usage.

- I'm not a hard core gamer. At most I'll play something like WoW
- I'm a photographer and use the latest versions of Lightroom and Photoshop
- At this time, no other intensive programs
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 graphics card
- Two M.2 NVMe Samsung 970 PRO 512 GB SSDs (one as Win 10 boot drive, one as program drive)
- Two 120GB SATA SSDs (one for Windows paging file, one for Photoshop scratch disk)
- Two 480GB SATA SSDs (quick access for things like Lightroom catalog and previews, and raw cache, and whatever)
- Additional large SATA HDDs for data and photos

So, would the extra PCIe lanes be beneficial with this setup, or am I just naively barking up a shiny tree?

Thanx,
eljay
Click to expand...

People are getting a bit off topic. But I think what advice has been given thus far for the most part has been good.
I'll add just some side commentary: Basically Photoshop can run on anything these days. You could run it competently on 7 year old hardware. Photoshop's requirements basically haven't changed (in terms of hardware power necessary) since CS6. It has become more optimized in terms of certain filters being able to use system resources better, but nothing that would change the workflow of a photographer or retoucher using Photoshop or Lightroom. The only exception to this is if you're working with incredibly large files. If you're shooting on a 100MP or 150MP PhaseOne back, then the requirements go up. But either processor and a 2070 is still plenty for that type of work.
If you decide to get into video editing, that is an entirely different ballgame, and then you really do want the absolute fastest hardware possible.

So that said, either processor is fine. I personally would go for the 10900X just for the two extra cores. It won't help you in Photoshop but things are slowly getting more multi-threaded. It's rare to want to buy things to future-proof them, but if your business expands and you want to get into video editing then you'll have the cores there to work with (provided you use a good NLE like DaVinci Resolve that will actually utilize your hardware properly unlike Premiere).
You don't want or need so many separate drives. I agree with the others that have stated: you absolutely will not saturate a single NVME drive even if you OS, Photoshop, AND the file you're working on were all on the same drive. In fact with enough RAM, say 32GB of RAM, Photoshop will literally load the entire image into RAM. It won't even touch your harddrive except while saving.
Also most NVME drives exceed 2000MB/s read/write and some more than 3500MB/s read/write. There aren't any things that Windows+Photoshop+PSD file can do that would ever get close to saturate that.

If you want more NVME drives just to store stuff on, that's one thing. But having separate drives to increase your speed isn't necessary, nor will it give you any speed increase. You won't need a scratch disk. You're working out Windows XP level ideas. Things have changed. Just buy more RAM. The paging file nor the scratch disk should essentially never be touched. You won't need more lanes, not for this kind of work.
 
the_real_7 said:
9900k would be the best. the 9900k even best bins very hard to keep cool at 5.0. I dont see a i9-10900X being cooled properly by a aio or fan , you would need a hard core doable 360 rad custom cooled system to start and it would still be hot
Click to expand...

Exactly right. However, there is one caveat to this. The Cascade Lake-X chips can overclock quite well. I don't know where the ceiling is on the 10900X, but the 10980XE actually seems like it could do 5.1GHz if you could actually cool the damn thing. On water cooling, you can't feed it enough voltage to keep it stable and keep it cool enough to keep it stable at the same time. You would also think that chips with fewer cores would do better, but according to Intel, this isn't true in Cascade Lake-X's case.
 
Dan_D said:
Cascade Lake-X
Click to expand...
Makes sense Dan your right Cascade Lake-X architecture must be helping then , also they use two different memory subsystems which also raises vcore on the 9900k side , with 3200mhz memory to 4000mhz does change volts and temps on ringbus architecture.
 
Also, disabling cores doesn't help on the 10980XE as I've tested that and found it made literally no difference what so ever. However, tha's not quite the same as doing it with a 10900X.
 
Keljian said:
I spent a few moments googling..

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/amd-cpu-vulnerability/
  • Ryzenfall: Allows malicious code to take complete control of the AMD Secure Processor
  • Fallout: Allows an attacker to read from and write to protected memory areas such as SMRAM
  • Chimera: A “double” vulnerability, with one firmware flaw and one hardware flaw that allows the injection of malicious code directly into the AMD Ryzen chipset; chipset-based malware evades virtually all endpoint security solutions
  • Masterkey: Exploits multiple vulnerabilities in AMD Secure Processor firmware to allow access to Secure Processor; allows extremely stealthy persistent chipset-based malware to evade security; could allow for physical device damage

While these are patched for now, these are just as bad as the stuff coming out of intel. Realistically speaking it doesn't matter for the average user.
Click to expand...

Yea, we know about those and they're patched. You implied that there would be holes that could be as large as Intel... Yea, no. Technically there are no holes atm. There's a handful of patched flaws on AMD vs what 77 for Intel in 2019?
 
Keljian said:
I have not the time, nor the inclination to do so, however if you look at the TRNG side of things, AMD is not particularly great..
Click to expand...
Keljian said:
I spent a few moments googling..

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/amd-cpu-vulnerability/
  • Ryzenfall: Allows malicious code to take complete control of the AMD Secure Processor
  • Fallout: Allows an attacker to read from and write to protected memory areas such as SMRAM
  • Chimera: A “double” vulnerability, with one firmware flaw and one hardware flaw that allows the injection of malicious code directly into the AMD Ryzen chipset; chipset-based malware evades virtually all endpoint security solutions
  • Masterkey: Exploits multiple vulnerabilities in AMD Secure Processor firmware to allow access to Secure Processor; allows extremely stealthy persistent chipset-based malware to evade security; could allow for physical device damage

While these are patched for now, these are just as bad as the stuff coming out of intel. Realistically speaking it doesn't matter for the average user.
Click to expand...


If you don't have the time to properly research to give accurate advice, don't give any advice at all. If you had looked them up, they had been long been patched and requires physical access to even exploit these. This was an article from the old Zen 1 architecture. This was a whole sham by Viceroy research to defame AMD.


To the OP - 9900k gets my recommendation and also the 3700x or 3900x from AMD. You can be confident that AMD now (currently that is) the superior platform with X570 with more available PCI-E bandwidth as well. If you don't feel comfortable, totally understand but I would do a little research on these CPUs and how they perform in more recent benchmarks. As of Zen 2, AMD is no longer considered a budget alternative especially if its not chasing the highest FPS for games.
 
eljay said:
- Two M.2 NVMe Samsung 970 PRO 512 GB SSDs (one as Win 10 boot drive, one as program drive)
- Two 120GB SATA SSDs (one for Windows paging file, one for Photoshop scratch disk)
- Two 480GB SATA SSDs (quick access for things like Lightroom catalog and previews, and raw cache, and whatever)
- Additional large SATA HDDs for data and photos
Click to expand...
As others have mentioned, this is needlessly complicated with no benefits. Buy one 2 TB NVMe drive for all OS/programs/pagefile/scratch needs.

For your use case, I would definitely go AMD. Better price/performance today and a solid, easy CPU only upgrade path for both single and multi core performance upgrade. With Intel, you'll pay more for same or worse performance with no upgrade prospects.

Keljian said:
While these are patched for now, these are just as bad as the stuff coming out of intel.
Click to expand...
Not even close.
 
Yeah if I would have waited for my current build I'd have gone with AMD, but the 2000-series at the time didn't have the single-thread performance I was looking for and Zen2 was still an unknown. Especially given that Intel is forcing yet another socket change despite still using effectively the same core tech.

Don't buy a 120GB SSD OP, and especially not for a Photoshop or page file disk. If anything do what they said and grab 1-2 large NVME drive(s) and maybe another 1TB or 2TB SATA SSD if you want additional storage. You don't need to run Windows by itself on an NVME drive as performance is more than fast enough to do whatever on the drive in addition to the OS. If you want to partition it I'd recommend allocating no more than 150-200GB for C: and use the remainder as additional program storage.
 
thesmokingman said:
That's needless complex imo, and a bit wasteful. There's so much damn speed with gen3/4 nvme there's no need to dedicate separate drives to os and programs. There's also no need to run a separate page file either, unless you plan on swapping from page file, which is a sign of a bottlenecked system. I suggest one fat nvme for os/apps. Let windows manage pagefile, ie on os drive. Then you can run a 2nd nvme for scratch/assets etc etc.
Click to expand...

As you and others have pointed out, my thinking on this is clearly out of date, as it comes from my current build from 2012 when separating disk access on HDDs made some sense. Point taken.

UnknownSouljer said:
Basically Photoshop can run on anything these days. You could run it competently on 7 year old hardware. Photoshop's requirements basically haven't changed (in terms of hardware power necessary) since CS6. It has become more optimized in terms of certain filters being able to use system resources better, but nothing that would change the workflow of a photographer or retoucher using Photoshop or Lightroom.
Click to expand...

My 7 year old hardware is having a tough time making some local adjustments in Lightroom these days. Just painting with the adjustment brush can be so slow as to be unworkable. It was a good system back in the day, but it's time for an update.

-
Click to expand...

As for AMD, I mentioned earlier that I have seen recent benchmarks and of course they are top of the line. Going from Intel to AMD may not be exactly the same as giving up my Nikon gear for Canon, but change is not as easy as a snap of the finger. That said, I believe I will take some time to review the AMD offerings.

Thank you all for your comments and suggestions.

- eljay
 
eljay said:
My 7 year old hardware is having a tough time making some local adjustments in Lightroom these days. Just painting with the adjustment brush can be so slow as to be unworkable. It was a good system back in the day, but it's time for an update.

- eljay
Click to expand...

I came from a 2013 MacBook Pro with an i7 2.0GHz 4 core, 16GB of RAM, and Iris Pro Graphics.
Never had any issues with speed in either Photoshop or Lightroom. I only upgraded because editing 4K video crushed that system. If I only did stills it wouldn’t have been necessary.

So I wouldn’t say any 2013 hardware could hack it, but at least hardware that was reasonably decent performing for its day is plenty.
 
Last edited:
Meeho said:
As others have mentioned, this is needlessly complicated with no benefits. Buy one 2 TB NVMe drive for all OS/programs/pagefile/scratch needs.

For your use case, I would definitely go AMD. Better price/performance today and a solid, easy CPU only upgrade path for both single and multi core performance upgrade. With Intel, you'll pay more for same or worse performance with no upgrade prospects.


Not even close.
Click to expand...

I have done exactly that, moving to a 2 TB NVME drive (Intel 660P) from a 1 TB SSD. I also installed a i9 10940X whis is OK but not a great overclocker.
 
eljay said:
Which, now that I'm thinking about it, would I be able to "assign" PCIe lanes on the CPU to the NVMe SSDs? If yes, wouldn't it be worth it to avoid a bottleneck between the CPU and chipset? If no, then there doesn't seem much point for me to have 48 lanes on the CPU.
Click to expand...
You need to read the motherboard manual carefully before buying, it should tell you somewhere (often a block diagram) what hardware is connected to the PCIe lanes on the chipset and what is connected directly to the CPU.
 
I am currently in the same boat - own the 7820x - didnt want to pay $600 cad for 2 extra cores at the time. Now I'm interested in more PCI lanes with NVME and I got the Intel CPU Raid mod for the x299 rampage apex board.

So, was debating 10920x 12core or 10980xe -disable cores and run @ 12core 5ghz. (extra cache).

Waiting for prices to drop - but there is a risk of availability during the 'next' sale.

It's possible i might just wait till 10nm hedt. - I can wait another 2 years.
 
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