Intel or AMD - which one is superior?

[mautokar]

Hi, new Ryzen processors are already with us and everyone interested already watched probably multiple reviews.

 

I was thinking about building new PC from some time and wanted to build it with Intel i9 9900K. Because Ryzen 3 release was close, I decided to wait. Right now I think Ryzen 3700X is a better option, because it matches or even outperforms Intel in some scenarios and it is only ~10% slower in games. Differences in games should be also only visible in processor heavy locations and they should be smaller in higher resolution (I think about 1440p).

 

In general this decision should be easy, BUT... I have an option to buy Intel i9 9900KF for ~310$. Now choice is more complicated, as this price is lower than for Ryzen 3700X. I want to build PC for many years (preferably 5+) with possible only small upgrades. Right now Intel is better (and cheaper in my case), but if I would like change the processor in the future, I will have to change also motherboard. On AMD AM4 platform I expect at least one more generation, and current x570 chipsets are coming with PCIe 4.0 support. Right now I cannot utilize this new interface, but possibly it may become useful in 2-3 years.

 

So, I have only one question. Looking at the market today and possible future development, which one is better Intel i9 9900KF or AMD Ryzen 3700X? Of course taking into account lower price for Intel.

[MeatFeastMan]

3700x is better in non-gaming workloads, and is only around 5-10% behind in gaming overall. And actually, if you bare in mind that AM4 has a better upgrade path, cheaper motherboards that can HANDLE 8 cores AND a free cooler worth about $30, I'd still say it edges the 9900KF out. It also has far less power consumption than the 9900KF. Like...half.

 

 

 

 

[Mister Woof]

3700x/3900x but not because rubbish upgrade path excuse.

 

Get the 3700x/3900x and use it until it's too slow in 5 years, then replace everything with whatever is on top for your money.

[Constantin]

Intel, any day of the week, i am a gamer.

If my use was different i would give a thought to the red team!

[MeatFeastMan]

5 minutes ago, Constantin said:

Intel, any day of the week, i am a gamer.

If my use was different i would give a thought to the red team!

Because of course, your eyes are so sensitive to the HUGE, MASSIVE, HUMUNGOUS differences between 160fps and 150fps. That 10fps is so noticeable that it makes it worth it to pay like $70 on a cooler and silly money on a motherboard for good vrms.

 

Thankfully everybody elses eyes aren't that sensitive.

 

I just don't see a reason to buy intel other than to brag about a tiny unnoticeable difference. At the price they have mentioned, maybe if you love watercooling then the 9900KF is the winner because you're excluding the AMD stock cooler. But otherwise it's silly to go Intel.

[Constantin]

@MeatFeastMan To be honest, 6 months ago, when i bought my rig, the 9700k was my best choice

[porina]

It is a tough choice, and I think depends more on what you will use it for. I have a 3700X that I'm still testing for myself, and my gaming system has 8086k. For now, I see no need to upgrade the 8086k for gaming.

 

AMD's efforts into the Zen 2 CPUs have truly made it catch and in cases exceed Intel. But the differences aren't that major either way for general uses. Either would be great. 

[GoldenLag]

1 minute ago, Constantin said:

@MeatFeastMan To be honest, 6 months ago, when i bought my rig, the 9700k was my best choice

No it wasnt....... The 9900k was. Or the 8700k. Not that the 9700k is bad by any stretch

[Fakmykak]

A 9900K is better than a 3700x in gaming. And just as good in professional work loads. If both were same price, I would 100% get the 9900k.

 

 There are a lot of videos online of people being paid by AMD, to downclock a 9900K to 4GHz while comparing it with the new Ryzen3000 chips. Essentially spreading lies.

 

Look at the graphs in the video. They downclocked the 9900K to 4GHz to make ryzen look better. Anyone who does not know better will believe it. Quite unfortunate....

[Mister Woof]

7 minutes ago, MeatFeastMan said:

Because of course, your eyes are so sensitive to the HUGE, MASSIVE, HUMUNGOUS differences between 160fps and 150fps. That 10fps is so noticeable that it makes it worth it to pay like $70 on a cooler and silly money on a motherboard for good vrms.

 

Thankfully everybody elses eyes aren't that sensitive.

 

I just don't see a reason to buy intel other than to brag about a tiny unnoticeable difference. At the price they have mentioned, maybe if you love watercooling then the 9900KF is the winner because you're excluding the AMD stock cooler. But otherwise it's silly to go Intel.

The question isn't so simple as, "which is better?"

 

They are both better and worse at different points in the product cycle and it just so happens that right now, the AMD chips are a better buy and offer nearly parallel performance. This wasn't the case even two months ago, and it wasn't the case during the late kabylake days.

[Radium_Angel]

3rd choice: Xeon, because I can run multiple of them on the same mobo 

[Mister Woof]

Just now, Fakmykak said:

A 9900K is better than a 3700x in gaming. And just as good in professional work loads. If both were same price, I would 100% get the 9900k.

 

 There are a lot of videos online of people being paid by AMD, to downclock a 9900K to 4GHz while comparing it with the new Ryzen3000 chips. Essentially spreading lies.

 

Look at the graphs in the video. They downclocked the 9900K to 4GHz to make ryzen look better. Anyone who does not know better will believe it. Quite unfortunate....

It's clearly marked as an IPC test, which presumes identical clocks.

 

That said, it would be disingenuous to NOT explicitly stated that is a severe underclock for the Intel chips. I don't know if they did or not.

[Constantin]

1 hour ago, GoldenLag said:

No it wasnt....... The 9900k was. Or the 8700k. Not that the 9700k is bad by any stretch

I'll give you a 9900k and go and cool it with the 35$ cooler i bought

[GoldenLag]

1 minute ago, Fakmykak said:

A 9900K is better than a 3700x in gaming. And just as good in professional work loads. If both were same price, I would 100% get the 9900k.

 

 There are a lot of videos online of people being paid by AMD, to downclock a 9900K to 4GHz while comparing it with the new Ryzen3000 chips. Essentially spreading lies.

 

Look at the graphs in the video. They downclocked the 9900K to 4GHz to make ryzen look better. Anyone who does not know better will believe it. Quite unfortunate....

That vid is only testing IPC.........

 

Which you would know from Reading the title and watching it

[Mister Woof]

5 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

That vid is only testing IPC.........

 

Which you would know from Reading the title and watching it

It's one element that people get hung up on, but it's just part of the picture.

 

Clearly, some individuals don't see it for what it is, and could assume it is a real-world comparison of these chips in actual use.

 

Like cars....people get hung up on HP numbers and ignore transmissions, tires, weight, brakes, etc.

 

No 9900k is going to ever run at 4ghz (well, properly configured anyway) whereas a 4ghz all-core clock on Ryzen 3000 is pretty close to the actual frequency.

 

I feel when making these videos they should explicitly state the real world application repeatedly.

[GoldenLag]

7 minutes ago, Constantin said:

I'll give you a 9900k and go and cool it with the 35$ cooler i bought

Same as cooling the 9700k.......

5 minutes ago, Plutosaurus said:

feel when making these videos they should explicitly state the real world application repeatedly.

He did it twice. And showed it in the vid that ipc isnt allways useful for games

[mautokar]

@MeatFeastMan that are another elements in this tough choice - AMD is less power hungry and comes with moderate cooler. However it has also more expensive motherboards.

 

@Plutosaurus Yes, to be honest I'm not sure if I will want to play with "upgrade" to newer processor. But if I remove this "requirement" AMD platform is still better in this price?

 

@Constantin and @Plutosaurus @porina I don't think I will see huge difference between 150 and 160, but at some  point in future it may be 20 and 30  I will use it mostly for games, but I'm software developer and I will be using this PC for my hobby projects.

 

@Fakmykak I saw this video today and I don't have feeling that this guy was trying to "cheat". For me it was clear that he wanted to show pure "IPC" performance (it cannot be compared between different architectures - it is another topic). Of course Intel has higher clock speed and this is way it is faster + smaller latency when communicating with RAM

 

The difference between them is still really small, even taking into account "more professional" work.. Personally I lean towards AMD, but I think I experience this psychological effect, that I have huuge discount - that is why Intel still sits somewhere in my mind...

[Constantin]

1 hour ago, GoldenLag said:

Same as cooling the 9700k.......

1 hour ago, Plutosaurus said:

Look at some videos running the 9900k at 5Ghz

[Mister Woof]

4 minutes ago, mautokar said:

@MeatFeastMan that are another elements in this tough choice - AMD is less power hungry and comes with moderate cooler. However it has also more expensive motherboards.

 

@Plutosaurus Yes, to be honest I'm not sure if I will want to play with "upgrade" to newer processor. But if I remove this "requirement" AMD platform is still better in this price?

 

@Constantin and @Plutosaurus @porina I don't think I will see huge difference between 150 and 160, but at some  point in future it may be 20 and 30  I will use it mostly for games, but I'm software developer and I will be using this PC for my hobby projects.

 

@Fakmykak I saw this video today and I don't have feeling that this guy was trying to "cheat". For me it was clear that he wanted to show pure "IPC" performance (it cannot be compared between different architectures - it is another topic). Of course Intel has higher clock speed and this is way it is faster + smaller latency when communicating with RAM

 

The difference between them is still really small, even taking into account "more professional" work.. Personally I lean towards AMD, but I think I experience this psychological effect, that I have huuge discount - that is why Intel still sits somewhere in my mind...

I'd get the Ryzen if you are concerned about security patches, and the Intel if you don't and mostly game.

 

But are they really the same price? You also need a pretty good cooler for the 9900kf, and the 3700x comes with a serviceable one.

[GoldenLag]

6 minutes ago, Constantin said:

Look at some videos running the 9900k at 5Ghz

I have......

 

Its pretty much the same, also you arent running at 5 judging by the bio

[GoldenLag]

8 minutes ago, mautokar said:

However it has also more expensive motherboards.

Sort of, but not really. 

 

 

All the motherboards are worth it at the pricepoint except the halo products. 

 

Like the bottom x570 Asus board has the same VRM as the the top Z390 board. 

 

They might start at 160$, but they are pretty darn good at that price. 

[MeatFeastMan]

11 minutes ago, mautokar said:

@MeatFeastMan that are another elements in this tough choice - AMD is less power hungry and comes with moderate cooler. However it has also more expensive motherboards.

 

@Plutosaurus Yes, to be honest I'm not sure if I will want to play with "upgrade" to newer processor. But if I remove this "requirement" AMD platform is still better in this price?

 

@Constantin and @Plutosaurus @porina I don't think I will see huge difference between 150 and 160, but at some  point in future it may be 20 and 30  I will use it mostly for games, but I'm software developer and I will be using this PC for my hobby projects.

 

@Fakmykak I saw this video today and I don't have feeling that this guy was trying to "cheat". For me it was clear that he wanted to show pure "IPC" performance (it cannot be compared between different architectures - it is another topic). Of course Intel has higher clock speed and this is way it is faster + smaller latency when communicating with RAM

 

The difference between them is still really small, even taking into account "more professional" work.. Personally I lean towards AMD, but I think I experience this psychological effect, that I have huuge discount - that is why Intel still sits somewhere in my mind...

Except it doesn't have more expensive motherboards. They are cheaper because the 9900KF is a hot, fiery processor on a recycled 14nm node, so you need to make sure you get a decent mid-range board for it. The 3700x doesn't have those issues. You can pair a bang average B450 board with it and it'll run just fine because it's so darn efficient.

 

And the difference won't widen. It'll be the same 10 years down the line.

 

They are both good at those prices though, don't feel like either is a bad decision.

 

 

 

[mautokar]

@Plutosaurus at work we were concerned with these security issues on Intel chips. That is another topic. Many people are saying "did you see any real life use of those vulnerabilities?" - I wouldn't be so bold about no "real use", but to be honest for personal use it should be rather save

 

Difference in price is ~ 20$ I cannot say for sure, because I can buy this processor in USD + pay VAT tax (I already included it) and rest of the pieces I calculate in my currency (PLN). AMD cooler is ok, but I heard it is loud. I would like to have silent PC (getting silent case increase overall temperature, which is worse for Intel). For Intel I was thinking about Be Quiet! Dark Rock 4 Pro which costs ~60$ in my country. So Intel becomes more expensive, but I'm not sure if I will not buy other cooler also for AMD.

[Mister Woof]

3 minutes ago, mautokar said:

@Plutosaurus at work we were concerned with these security issues on Intel chips. That is another topic. Many people are saying "did you see any real life use of those vulnerabilities?" - I wouldn't be so bold about no "real use", but to be honest for personal use it should be rather save

 

Difference in price is ~ 20$ I cannot say for sure, because I can buy this processor in USD + pay VAT tax (I already included it) and rest of the pieces I calculate in my currency (PLN). AMD cooler is ok, but I heard it is loud. I would like to have silent PC (getting silent case increase overall temperature, which is worse for Intel). For Intel I was thinking about Be Quiet! Dark Rock 4 Pro which costs ~60$ in my country. So Intel becomes more expensive, but I'm not sure if I will not buy other cooler also for AMD.

Then if you are concerned about security patches get the Ryzen. It's pretty easy at that point. The performance difference literally does not matter if it compromises your business.

[Constantin]

1 hour ago, GoldenLag said:

also you arent running at 5 judging by the bio

Yes, but i am very satisfied at 4.943.1Mhz.