Intel X299 worth it in 2019?

[gepowr]

So after casually lurking around online for new pc parts i found some pretty cheap X299 parts (used and outlet prices of course). I found an i7 7800X for 200€ and a matching MSI X299 Raider for just 84€. So 284€ for cpu+mainboard + another ~100€ for DDR4 RAM. What do you guys think of that? Is the i7 7800X even an option compared to AMD's latest Ryzen 5 3600? Would the 7800X be a significant upgrade from my 4790k or should i rather look out for an 7820X?

[Fasauceome]

It loses to new Ryzen in everything but AVX workloads, it has last gen PCIe and its sole advantage in raw performance is that it tops out at 18 cores instead of 16, but they're slow ass cores so it's a bit of a wash. Thunderbolt used to be an Intel advantage but now that's not even exclusive to the platform. Quad channel also used to be an advantage and still somewhat is, but now with new Ryzen making high frequency ram kits mainstream and great OC potential, you can still get really high bandwidth on dual channel.

[Tom H]

it really depends on what clock speed your 4790k is running at. If you are running @ 4.6ghz+, the 7800x won't be a huge upgrade, if an upgrade at all. But like fasauceome said, those cores on the 7800x are slow, and the whole x299 platform is like driving a huge power hungry 1970's Cadillac in 2019

[gepowr]

12 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

It loses to new Ryzen in everything but AVX workloads, it has last gen PCIe and its sole advantage in raw performance is that it tops out at 18 cores instead of 16, but they're slow ass cores so it's a bit of a wash. Thunderbolt used to be an Intel advantage but now that's not even exclusive to the platform. Quad channel also used to be an advantage and still somewhat is, but now with new Ryzen making high frequency ram kits mainstream and great OC potential, you can still get really high bandwidth on dual channel.

Alright, good to know. But the price is compelling for me. A full ryzen upgrade would be much more expensive, even with the 3600.

[porina]

As owner of 7800X, I'd say get a Ryzen 3600 or higher (which I also have). Today, the only unique strength of Skylake-X is AVX-512 performance. If you have an application that can use that, then maybe. Unfortunately the mesh cache of it doesn't work really great with consumer workloads so it'll often lose out to e.g. 8700k. And for whatever reason Skylake-X guzzles power even when not using AVX-512.

 

If you want cheap Intel 6 core for whatever reason, 5820k is really cheap, but you may struggle to find an affordable X99 mobo to pair it with.

 

Basically if building a system today, I'd find it hard to look at anything other than a Zen 2 CPU outside of some specific niches. The updates in Zen 2 compared to earlier Ryzen really do make a difference.

 

 

[Crunchy Dragon]

I'd say it's worth it if you can't afford Ryzen.

 

It's still a viable platform for sure, but it's not really worth buying unless you're an enthusiast, in the same vein as X58 and X99.

[porina]

2 minutes ago, Tom H said:

But like fasauceome said, those cores on the 7800x are slow, and the whole x299 platform is like driving a huge power hungry 1970's Cadillac in 2019

I don't get that part, how exactly are they slow? It runs AVX-512 all cores at stock 4.0 GHz and my sample at least was an easy OC to 4.8 for non AVX code attainable with high end air. The cache structure limited its performance in gaming in a similar way that older Ryzen was afflicted.

 

No arguments on the power side though...

[gepowr]

2 minutes ago, Tom H said:

it really depends on what clock speed your 4790k is running at. If you are running @ 4.6ghz+, the 7800x won't be a huge upgrade, if an upgrade at all. But like fasauceome said, those cores on the 7800x are slow, and the whole x299 platform is like driving a huge power hungry 1970's Cadillac in 2019

Yep, i'm currently running 4.6GHz on my 4790k, so it wouldn't be an upgrade for games like csgo at all, am i right?

 

2 minutes ago, porina said:

As owner of 7800X, I'd say get a Ryzen 3600 or higher (which I also have). Today, the only unique strength of Skylake-X is AVX-512 performance. If you have an application that can use that, then maybe. Unfortunately the mesh cache of it doesn't work really great with consumer workloads so it'll often lose out to e.g. 8700k. And for whatever reason Skylake-X guzzles power even when not using AVX-512.

 

If you want cheap Intel 6 core for whatever reason, 5820k is really cheap, but you may struggle to find an affordable X99 mobo to pair it with.

 

Basically if building a system today, I'd find it hard to look at anything other than a Zen 2 CPU outside of some specific niches. The updates in Zen 2 compared to earlier Ryzen really do make a difference.

 

 

Thank you, i think i should probably wait for either lower prices for the 9700k or a new intel mainstream desktop release in general. The 3600/3600X are great cpu's but i think they would definitely loose against a 9700k in csgo at least and that's what i play for the most part.

[porina]

1 minute ago, gepowr said:

The 3600/3600X are great cpu's but i think they would definitely loose against a 9700k in csgo at least and that's what i play for the most part.

Worth double check, wasn't that one of the games they used at launch to show their performance relative to Intel?

[gepowr]

3 minutes ago, porina said:

Worth double check, wasn't that one of the games they used at launch to show their performance relative to Intel?

Well i saw that too but those csgo benchmarks just make 0 sense at all imo. The only thing worth testing is competetive 5v5 on a certain map and then comparing it to another cpu, but i can't find any videos on that.

[Princess Luna]

Frankly the i7 7800X hasn't been worth it ever since the i7 8700K has released.

[Enderman]

None of the x299 CPUs are worth it compared to ryzen or Z390

[Tom H]

9 minutes ago, porina said:

I don't get that part, how exactly are they slow? It runs AVX-512 all cores at stock 4.0 GHz and my sample at least was an easy OC to 4.8 for non AVX code attainable with high end air. The cache structure limited its performance in gaming in a similar way that older Ryzen was afflicted.

 

No arguments on the power side though...

My son had a 7800x OC'ed to 4.7ghz...and even at that speed, it could not keep up with a stock 7700k in games. It was 10-15% slower than a stock 7700k in games. The stock speed on the 7800x is 3.5ghz and turbo is 4ghz on one core from what I remember. This is what I mean when I say it was slow.

 

You are totally correct about the cache. setting a faster cache speed helped. ALso using low latency, fast ram also helped. 

[porina]

4 minutes ago, Tom H said:

My son had a 7800x OC'ed to 4.7ghz...and even at that speed, it could not keep up with a stock 7700k in games. It was 10-15% slower than a stock 7700k in games. The stock speed on the 7800x is 3.5ghz and turbo is 4ghz on one core from what I remember. This is what I mean when I say it was slow.

On this particular CPU, the 4 GHz turbo applies regardless how many cores are used, even running AVX-512!

https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/core_i7/i7-7800x

 

The gaming performance was not as good, again, same problem as older Ryzen.

 

4 minutes ago, Tom H said:

You are totally correct about the cache. setting a faster cache speed helped. ALso using low latency, fast ram also helped. 

Yup, common "trick" for owners of that CPU range was to overclock the cache as far as possible. A bit like Infinity Fabric on Ryzen.

[Tom H]

19 minutes ago, gepowr said:

Yep, i'm currently running 4.6GHz on my 4790k, so it wouldn't be an upgrade for games like csgo at all, am i right?

csgo? You are running a 4790k @4.6ghz and a gtx 1080? You are probably already getting 500 fps. I defintely would not spend money on a 7800x as you would probably lose fps

 

Going to a modern ryzen platform might get you 600fps but at some point you have to ask yourself if its worth it lol

[Tom H]

3 minutes ago, porina said:

On this particular CPU, the 4 GHz turbo applies regardless how many cores are used, even running AVX-512!

https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/core_i7/i7-7800x

 

The gaming performance was not as good, again, same problem as older Ryzen.

 

Yup, common "trick" for owners of that CPU range was to overclock the cache as far as possible. A bit like Infinity Fabric on Ryzen.

ah, i didn't know that about the turbo cores. Thanks for the info

[gepowr]

9 minutes ago, Tom H said:

csgo? You are running a 4790k @4.6ghz and a gtx 1080? You are probably already getting 500 fps. I defintely would not spend money on a 7800x as you would probably lose fps

 

Going to a modern ryzen platform might get you 600fps but at some point you have to ask yourself if its worth it lol

In competetive matchmaking i'm getting 170-350 fps. The Benchmark's result was around 480 fps if i remember correctly.

[aham]

Honestly I don't know what inlet was thinking with x299. Id say no unless if you can get a really good deal on a top end CPU. Some boards are cheap but for a reason, like the x299 raider, its not a very good board. I would not pay anything over 75$ new for one.

 

And this is coming form someone that had a x79 system and jumped to x299. I sold the x299 system and went back to my x79 setup and drooped in a xeon, second GPU and never looked back.

[Tom H]

1 minute ago, gepowr said:

In competetive matchmaking i'm getting 170-350 fps. The Benchmark's result was around 480 fps if i remember correctly.

the 7800x was not a good cpu for gaming. the x299 platform as a whole was slow for gaming. I would defintely NOT spend money on that if CSGO frame rates is one of the main reasons to upgrade computer. CSGO uses an old game engine that doesn't scale well with threads. You want fast single threaded performance. So something like a used 8600k would be up your alley and overclock it like crazy

[gepowr]

4 hours ago, Tom H said:

the 7800x was not a good cpu for gaming. the x299 platform as a whole was slow for gaming. I would defintely NOT spend money on that if CSGO frame rates is one of the main reasons to upgrade computer. CSGO uses an old game engine that doesn't scale well with threads. You want fast single threaded performance. So something like a used 8600k would be up your alley and overclock it like crazy

Alright thank you. If I do upgrade, I want a significant performance boost in both single threaded and multi threaded workloads so the 8600k would be a good choice for IPC and clock speeds, I doubt that it's worth it over my 4790k. I will probably just wait a bit longer.

 

4 hours ago, aham said:

Honestly I don't know what inlet was thinking with x299. Id say no unless if you can get a really good deal on a top end CPU. Some boards are cheap but for a reason, like the x299 raider, its not a very good board. I would not pay anything over 75$ new for one.

 

And this is coming form someone that had a x79 system and jumped to x299. I sold the x299 system and went back to my x79 setup and drooped in a xeon, second GPU and never looked back.

Which GPUs and Xeon are you personally running right now if I may ask?

[Zberg]

4 hours ago, porina said:

Worth double check, wasn't that one of the games they used at launch to show their performance relative to Intel?

I believe you are right, even though the 9700 does tend to win out a lot in the single thread performance category relatively, CSGO was one that lots of reviewers were surprised went to AMD this round (which is extra odd being that it is usually intel)

 

That said, and I cannot stress this enough...WHY DOES ANYONE CARE ABOUT CSGO PERFORMANCE!!!

 

OK sorry for the outburst.  But seriously though.  The game is old AF.  Almost anything can run it at 144 hz.  Current gen CPUs are competing for FPS gains in the well over 240 FPS area in that game (sometimes much higher than this!).  You could build a 500 system that could crush CSGO, its graphics are old and borderline bad (actually bad?).  When Linus did the comparison the 8700k vs the 2700x both were well above 144 hz, often in the 300's.  Your eyes cant comprehend it!

 

Ok I feel better now. 

 

 

 

 

[Zberg]

Just now, Zberg said:

I believe you are right, even though the 9700 does tend to win out a lot in the single thread performance category relatively, CSGO was one that lots of reviewers were surprised went to AMD this round (which is extra odd being that it is usually intel)

 

That said, and I cannot stress this enough...WHY DOES ANYONE CARE ABOUT CSGO PERFORMANCE!!!

 

OK sorry for the outburst.  But seriously though.  The game is old AF.  Almost anything can run it at 144 hz.  Current gen CPUs are competing for FPS gains in the well over 240 FPS area in that game (sometimes much higher than this!).  You could build a 500 system that could crush CSGO, its graphics are old and borderline bad (actually bad?).  When Linus did the comparison the 8700k vs the 2700x both were well above 144 hz, often in the 300's.  Your eyes cant comprehend it!

 

Ok I feel better now. 

 

 

 

 

As an aside, my previous system which was a 3350 and a gtx 970 ran CSGO always over 144 hz.  It could easily play the game at 1440p as well.  I am always astonished that it still exists as a benchmark of any kind in the current generation of gaming.

[porina]

47 minutes ago, Zberg said:

The game is old AF.  Almost anything can run it at 144 hz.  Current gen CPUs are competing for FPS gains in the well over 240 FPS area in that game (sometimes much higher than this!).  You could build a 500 system that could crush CSGO, its graphics are old and borderline bad (actually bad?).  When Linus did the comparison the 8700k vs the 2700x both were well above 144 hz, often in the 300's.  Your eyes cant comprehend it!

Breath in... breath out...

 

I don't play it myself so I could be talking out of my back bottom. Maybe some people have like 240 Hz displays? Or are they even higher now? Maybe they use fast sync to reduce the difference in hand to screen latency that fraction of a second. I dunno. I'm at the other extreme, recently capping my rendering to 85fps to reduce load on GPU and lower heat...

[Zberg]

2 hours ago, porina said:

Breath in... breath out...

 

I don't play it myself so I could be talking out of my back bottom. Maybe some people have like 240 Hz displays? Or are they even higher now? Maybe they use fast sync to reduce the difference in hand to screen latency that fraction of a second. I dunno. I'm at the other extreme, recently capping my rendering to 85fps to reduce load on GPU and lower heat...

alright im off the ledge lol

 

[Dr. KEK]

Amazon has the Gigabyte UD4 Pro board for $99. I purchased one along with a i7-7800X and some DDR4 3200MHz. For a total of $676, I have a good CPU/MOBO/RAM running at 4.7GHz. 

 

My 7800X is one of the worst binned I've encountered, but still hits 4.7GHz at 1.33v. At work I run 4.8GHz at 1.225v

 

I would wait for next Intel release if you want more than 12 cores, because that require motherboard more than $99. 

 

AMD motherboard is so overpriced, and new Ryzen still has driver issue and typical excuses going on. 

 

Also, QUAD CHANNEL MEMORY. Lots of PCIE lanes. 

 

 

https://www.amazon.com/d/Computer-Motherboards/GIGABYTE-X299-UD4-Pro-Motherboard/B07B79CF9R