Ryzen Worth it in 2019

[Djinnux]

I am kind of to the point where I want to buy a new PC but am I a total fool for not waiting for zen 2??? 

[NunoLava1998]

If you can wait, I'd probably wait. Zen 2 is likely coming June or July.

Otherwise, just go for a 2600 and upgrade later

[Wormhole]

go for it and sell it when zen 2 releases 

[Djinnux]

Is zen 2 going to be leaps and bounds ahead though?  

 

[r2724r16]

16 minutes ago, Djinnux said:

Is zen 2 going to be leaps and bounds ahead though?  

Real benchmarks haven't been released yet, so we don't know.

[Ashiella]

20 minutes ago, NunoLava1998 said:

If you can wait, I'd probably wait. Zen 2 is likely coming June or July.

Otherwise, just go for a 2600 and upgrade later

It is confirmed Zen 2 is coming in July.

 

17 minutes ago, Djinnux said:

Is zen 2 going to be leaps and bounds ahead though?  

 

Zen 2 is going to have up to 16 cores ( from the previous 8 ) and have a 15% ipc uplift and a clockspeed boost (Last two are rumors, but the 8 core model has been seen to compete with intels i9 9900k (not final clocks))

 

2 minutes ago, Geography said:

Real benchmarks haven't been released yet, so we don't know.

During the keynote, (could be faked but still a real benchmark) the 8 core variant of the Zen 2 chip scored slightly higher than the i9 9900k in Cinebench R15.

[Jurrunio]

Is what you're using now bearable?

[r2724r16]

Just now, Ashiella said:

During the keynote, (could be faked but still a real benchmark) the 8 core variant of the Zen 2 chip scored slightly higher than the i9 9900k in Cinebench R15.

Well of course it did. Wouldn't AMD look stupid if they demoed their own chip and scored lower than a 9900K?

 

Also, that benchmark was probably run in AMD's favour (in terms of settings and optimization), so I wouldn't count it as a genuine benchmark.

[Ashiella]

Just now, Geography said:

Well of course it did. Wouldn't AMD look stupid if they demoed their own chip and scored lower than a 9900K?

 

Also, that benchmark was probably run in AMD's favour (in terms of settings and optimization), so I wouldn't count it as a genuine benchmark.

They just wouldn't benchmark it then, they didn't need to leave a teaser for it.

Are you suggesting they specifically coded R15 to favour AMD's chip and perform better? The score the i9-9900k got was in-line with averages.

[Alex Kidd]

I'm in a similar boat.  I'm itching to build a new PC in the ITX form factor - I want to miniaturize and set up some killer RGB effects.  I always liked AMD chips so I'm willing to go back to them (current rig is i7-4790k from years and years ago).  Well, if I buy now the new Zen 2 chips will likely come out and sweeten the performance and increase value, but I'm also faced with the realization that it may not be likely we will see any good ITX class board for Zen 2 anytime soon.  So I'd have to push off the build even longer.

 

If others were in my shoes, would a current investment in a 2700 (not X) and an ASRock or MSI ITX board be reasonable?  I'm not really looking for crazy top tier performance - hence my skipping the "X" model for no overclocking.  What do you all think?

[Mister Woof]

3 hours ago, Ashiella said:

They just wouldn't benchmark it then, they didn't need to leave a teaser for it.

Are you suggesting they specifically coded R15 to favour AMD's chip and perform better? The score the i9-9900k got was in-line with averages.

I'll say 3 things:

 

1. The Cinebench display was not a statistical win. It was within margin of error. Historically, AMD's SMT always scores better than HT in Cinebench relative to single-core performance and equal numbers of threads. Although the Zen 2 chip might score the same as the 9900k in multi-threaded performance, I fully expect it to have a lower single core score in that test.

 

2. IPC: At present, Intel maintains about a 3-4% IPC improvement over Ryzen 2000 at equal clocks. This information is helpful, but doesn't tell the whole story because frequency is generally where AMD falls behind. Assuming 15% increase over Zen 2 is true, it means only around 11% over present Intel IPC. That 11% can easily be made up for in frequency, assuming AMD still can't get it's clocks dialed in. Assuming they can get equal clocks, at even a 11% single core disparity, it isn't going to be pushing the 9900k and similar into antiquity. AMD, including it's 3% IPC deficit and 1ghz clock speed deficit, isn't considered (especially on THIS forum) bad or crap despite in some cases being almost 30% slower than its competition core-for-core, and it would be hypocrisy for those AMD fans to change their stance towards the older-tech Intel if the roles reversed. The Intel is expensive, but it was in the game for almost 2 years, giving their customers excellent, unparalleled performance during that time.

 

3. We also know in terms of gaming, there's more to it than a single-core cinebench score. Older Intel chips, notably Haswell i7s, are on-par both in frequency and IPC to Ryzen, but still in many cases perform as well or better at gaming. At equal clocks, Coffeelake performs better in gaming than even Ryzen 2000, thanks to it's lower latency Ringbus and its 3% IPC advantage. We don't know how the chiplet design is going to perform in this manner. It might be way better, it might be way worse. We don't know.

 

So in closing, the Cinebench score was fun to see, but it is not really very helpful in determining how good these CPUs are going to be.

 

If you can hold out, hold out. But don't expect Zen 2 to be the panacea of computing for the 21st century. AMD tends to boast high and under-deliver.

 

That said, I certainly hope AMD can offer a competitive product. The only reason my 8700k (and the 9900k) even exist is because of Ryzen. Personally, I feel AMD's Zen 2 will offer near-parity performance core-for-core. They will offer better value, with more cores for less money than Intel, and this will be until whatever Intel launches in response.

[Jurrunio]

3 hours ago, Ashiella said:

They just wouldn't benchmark it then, they didn't need to leave a teaser for it.

Are you suggesting they specifically coded R15 to favour AMD's chip and perform better? The score the i9-9900k got was in-line with averages.

Why not? Anything that shows their improvement relative to their competitor is good. Even if it's biased, even if it's niche, it will work. That's marketing for you.

 

Cinebench measures compute performance well, but games need more than compute performance. Otherwise 24 core and 32 core TR performances won't be so task dependent.

[Djinnux]

3 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

Is what you're using now bearable?

 Current system is don't laugh at me... an HP Envy Phoenix with an i7 4770 Non K.... 12 gigs of RAM, RX 570 8gig … it does ok for what I do but I just want something a little zippier ya know.  

[Mister Woof]

4 minutes ago, Djinnux said:

 Current system is don't laugh at me... an HP Envy Phoenix with an i7 4770 Non K.... 12 gigs of RAM, RX 570 8gig … it does ok for what I do but I just want something a little zippier ya know.  

Realtalk here, in terms of gaming specifically:

 

All present Ryzens are a side-grade/marginal upgrade to you and all intels are only an upgrade with a much stronger GPU and at 1080p unlimited framerate.

 

Upgrade to an SSD if you haven't already, and make sure you're running your RAM in dual channel.

[Djinnux]

Just now, Plutosaurus said:

Realtalk here

 

All present Ryzens are a side-grade to you and all intels are only an upgrade with a much stronger GPU and at 1080p unlimited framerate.

Really?  How is that?  is the IPC not a lot better than 4 gens old intel?? 

[Mister Woof]

4 minutes ago, Djinnux said:

Really?  How is that?  is the IPC not a lot better than 4 gens old intel?? 

Ryzen 1 IPC is essentially in parity with Haswell IPC, and only slightly surpassed by Ryzen 2 thanks to PB2/XFR2 self-overclocking.

 

Even compared to Coffeelake (i7-8700k/i9-9900k) the IPC difference between haswell is like, within 15%

 

https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/amd-ryzen-7-2700x-review,9.html

 

[Djinnux]

So wait for zen 2 and 3rd gen Ryzen eh.. 

[Jurrunio]

7 minutes ago, Djinnux said:

 Current system is don't laugh at me... an HP Envy Phoenix with an i7 4770 Non K.... 12 gigs of RAM, RX 570 8gig … it does ok for what I do but I just want something a little zippier ya know.  

Buy a 500GB if not 1TB SSD and throw most apps you use in there then. FPS doesnt go up, but you load into the game faster.

 

4 minutes ago, Djinnux said:

Really?  How is that?  is the IPC not a lot better than 4 gens old intel?? 

Intel's IPC might be somewhat stagnant for the past 5 years, but Ryzen's high memory and cache latency stops it from beating newer Intel CPUs in games

[Mister Woof]

4 minutes ago, Djinnux said:

So wait for zen 2 and 3rd gen Ryzen eh.. 

Personally, I think your system is fine. The CPU is fine. It can boost up to 3.9ghz. Get a decent cooler to make sure it can stay at 3.9ghz. If you had only an i5, it would be harder to remain relevant. But you have the i7.

The RX 570 right now is your bottleneck. You could even upgrade to a 1660 ti or rtx 2060 (assuming your PSU supports it) and you won't bottleneck those any worse than a Ryzen 5 2600 in the vast majority of games.

 

Wait until Zen 2. Then wait for Intel's response, which should come later in the year. Then make your decision. That's my take.

[Djinnux]

It has this AIO thing on it right now but its kinda small... I have considered transplanting all of it into a bigger case with better airflow to see if I can keep the thermals under control.  

 

[Kalm_Traveler]

4 hours ago, Djinnux said:

I am kind of to the point where I want to buy a new PC but am I a total fool for not waiting for zen 2??? 

I was ready to build a homelab server now, so I picked up a 2700x. No regrets - it is perfect for what I wanted and was only $300

[Mister Woof]

Just now, Djinnux said:

It has this AIO thing on it right now but its kinda small... I have considered transplanting all of it into a bigger case with better airflow to see if I can keep the thermals under control.  

 

You could buy that stuff now and upgrade your "quality of life". All that shit you can save and move over later and it will still be good. What motherboard do you have?

[Djinnux]

Just now, Kalm_Traveler1 said:

I was ready to build a homelab server now, so I picked up a 2700x. No regrets - it is perfect for what I wanted and was only $300

My server has dual quad core xeons at 2.33 ghz and 16 Gigs of ECC RAM with 3x 500g hard drives in raid 5 lol... It was a throw away at work so I picked it up out of the trash pile LOL 

 

[Kalm_Traveler]

Just now, Djinnux said:

My server has dual quad core xeons at 2.33 ghz and 16 Gigs of ECC RAM with 3x 500g hard drives in raid 5 lol... It was a throw away at work so I picked it up out of the trash pile LOL 

 

yeah I was looking around for a used older server but decided to say screw it, I want new technology. On the plus side, all this thing would need is a real graphics card to be a pretty rockin gaming rig (gave it 32gb DDR4 3200 mhz, 1tb Samsung 960 Pro nvme ssd, Corsair 750w platinum PSU, cpu is cooled by an EVGA 280mm AIO).

[Mister Woof]

My wife's 1600 is our plex server right now. Does a great job of it. Paid $149 for the CPu and the motherboard during BF, great deal. Fully satisfied with it. 

 

It games about as good as my old i5-4570, though.