9900KS or 3900x

[Yogi61]

Quick  and simple question 

 

Need to  get my  Gaming/Streaming PC updated  as  both of those cpus are the same price in UK   i  can choose  i  need  help  with picking  cpu  with  Mboard and ram  any  ideas i will  be grateful. 

[Zando_]

9900KS (especially OCed, if you can get it to 5.2-5.4) will do better in single core. 3900X should only be a few % behind in single core, and smash it in multicore. Both are solid options. 

Basically, what GPU are you running it with? If it's a Pascal or Turing card with the NVENC encoder, just encode on the GPU when you stream, and buy whatever CPU/mobo combo runs your favorite game or three best (or else just get whichever is cheapest). If you're on an AMD card which are pretty oof at encoding, well tbh either CPU is gonna be fine there, lol. 

9900KS has an iGPU which lets it use QuickSync in stuff like Adobe Premiere that supports it, and the 3900X has more cores, that's pretty much the tradeoff between the two. If you're worried about temps, the 3900X will run cooler. 

[Harry Voyager]

You may also want to consider the 3800X, instead of the 3900X. With the latest Bios and DDR 3600 CAS 16 RAM, I'm getting comparable single core performance to a 5.1Ghz Coffee Lake chip, and it significantly out performs it in multithreaded applications. 

[GoldenLag]

4 minutes ago, Harry Voyager said:

You may also want to consider the 3800X, instead of the 3900X. With the latest Bios and DDR 3600 CAS 16 RAM, I'm getting comparable single core performance to a 5.1Ghz Coffee Lake chip, and it significantly out performs it in multithreaded applications. 

3900x on paper has a better boost clock than the 3800x. not to mention 4 more cores. 

 

 

the redeeming feature of the high end AMD CPUs is the corecount, something that can be very neat for content creation or CPU stream encoding. 

[Zando_]

3 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

3900x on paper has a better boost clock than the 3800x. not to mention 4 more cores. 

 

 

the redeeming feature of the high end AMD CPUs is the corecount, something that can be very neat for content creation or CPU stream encoding. 

^^^ Same with Zen and Zen+, main appeal is more cores for the same or a lower price. And with Zen 2 on 7nm they're finally competing with current Intel IPC (AFAIK they're actually slightly ahead now, whereas Zen/Zen+ were just slightly above Haswell). 
 

10 minutes ago, Harry Voyager said:

and it significantly out performs it in multithreaded applications. 

Significantly? How significant, it's the same core/thread count and single core perf is comparable... . The 6950X was slightly faster in games than the 7900X, and the 7900X better in multithread workstation stuff, but neither was a massive lead. Again same core/thread count, differences are clocks/IPC and arch (14nm ringbus vs 14nm mesh). 

[Harry Voyager]

@GoldenLag At least on the averages, the 3800X is a smidge ahead of the 3900X on single thread, for now, and it is well ahead of the 9900ks for multi threaded tasks: 

 

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-i9-9900KS-vs-AMD-Ryzen-9-3900X-vs-AMD-Ryzen-7-3800X/3593vs3493vs3499

 

The 3900X is still ahead of both for multi threaded applications. However, you can get the 3800X for $350 USD if you look, so it's a much better value than it was at retail price. 

[Zando_]

3 minutes ago, Harry Voyager said:

@GoldenLag At least on the averages, the 3800X is a smidge ahead of the 3900X on single thread, for now, and it is well ahead of the 9900ks for multi threaded tasks: 

 

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-i9-9900KS-vs-AMD-Ryzen-9-3900X-vs-AMD-Ryzen-7-3800X/3593vs3493vs3499

 

The 3900X is still ahead of both for multi threaded applications. However, you can get the 3800X for $350 USD if you look, so it's a much better value than it was at retail price. 

Why is the 9900KS at 4Ghz? It runs a 5Ghz all core boost straight out of the box, doesn't it?

[Harry Voyager]

2 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

[...]

Significantly? How significant, it's the same core/thread count and single core perf is comparable... . The 6950X was slightly faster in games than the 7900X, and the 7900X better in multithread workstation stuff, but neither was a massive lead. Again same core/thread count, differences are clocks/IPC and arch (14nm ringbus vs 14nm mesh). 

At least according to passmark, the 3800X is about a 20% improvement over the i9-9900KS in multi-threaded applications. Apparently AMD has a much broader bandwidth for multi threads than the Intel implementation does. 

 

That lines up with what I saw on the Anandtech benchmarks of the 3700X and 3900X as well. 

https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2263?vs=2520

[Harry Voyager]

3 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

Why is the 9900KS at 4Ghz? It runs a 5Ghz all core boost straight out of the box, doesn't it?

Apparently it's a naming issue. The part is named "9900ks @ 4.0Ghz" but that is just a text nametag, not the running frequency of the part. If you have a subscription you can see the frequency/performance spread: 

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/54715-is-still-intel-better-than-amd-for-single-thread/

 

[GoldenLag]

4 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

^^^ Same with Zen and Zen+, main appeal is more cores for the same or a lower price. And with Zen 2 on 7nm they're finally competing with current Intel IPC (AFAIK they're actually slightly ahead now, whereas Zen/Zen+ were just slightly above Haswell). 

IPC has nothing to do with the node. 

 

and atm they are about ~12% when it comes to IPC. 

5 minutes ago, Harry Voyager said:

@GoldenLag At least on the averages, the 3800X is a smidge ahead of the 3900X on single thread, for now, and it is well ahead of the 9900ks for multi threaded tasks: 

within margin of error according to the pretty poor source material. 

6 minutes ago, Harry Voyager said:

However, you can get the 3800X for $350 USD if you look, so it's a much better value than it was at retail price. 

and the 3700x is again better valie than the 3800x. but that not keeping in mind that the theoretical performance of Zen 2 doesnt line up in game benchmarks much. and are usually consistantly slower than the 9900k on a core to core basis. 

[GoldenLag]

3 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

Why is the 9900KS at 4Ghz? It runs a 5Ghz all core boost straight out of the box, doesn't it?

probably just naming. 

5 minutes ago, Harry Voyager said:

Apparently AMD has a much broader bandwidth for multi threads than the Intel implementation does. 

no clue what you are reffering to as the feeding pipeline really doesnt have such a bottleneck. 

 

SMT is however regarded as a slightly more efficient (performance wise) implementation of Simultanious multithreading. 

 

 

generally speaking tho, the 3800x is slower than teh 9900k . 

 

for a streaming workload id usually pick the 3900x, but with the advent of the new Nvenc encoder (not the old one) its really a tossup. 

[Zando_]

2 minutes ago, Harry Voyager said:

Apparently it's a naming issue. The part is named "9900ks @ 4.0Ghz". If you have a subscription you can see the frequency/performance spread: 

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/54715-is-still-intel-better-than-amd-for-single-thread/

 

Ah. 

4 minutes ago, Harry Voyager said:

That lines up with what I saw on the Anandtech benchmarks of the 3700X and 3900X as well. 

https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2263?vs=2520

This is a 9900K though, not the KS. 

Running at stock it can fluctuate in benches: https://www.tomshardware.com/features/intel-special-edition-core-i9-9900ks-benchmarked/3

But at 5.2 manual it puts out a solid lead:

 

Stock performs better in Far Cry 5 though, and at 5.2 again tops the chart, there's that and some other graphs in the actual article. 9900KS at a manual 5.2GHz OC seems to top every single game chart with a 10+fps lead over the 3900X with PBO (at least in my experience with a 2700X, PBO is better in games than a manual all-core OC). Not a massive lead in most but it is a lead. 

 

Don't see much on a bunch of multi-thread workloads, but OP is gaming/streaming, not doing workstation stuff. 

Again, both are solid options. If you want an iGPU and a slight to moderate lead in frames (depending on the game and if you manually OC the chip), get the 9900KS. If you'd rather that thicc core count and lower power consumption/heat then get the 3900X. 

If you don't care, just get the one with the coolest name or nicest looking mobos, lol. Neither CPU will let you down, both are on pretty solid platforms (Zen 2 has had issues but I think they fixed most of them by now?). 

[Harry Voyager]

@GoldenLag @Zando Bob I'll concede, right now it's running lower in many games. I suspect it's mostly a matter of optimization though, as most companies have been working with the Sky Lake architecture for a much longer time than the Zen architecture. In the games I'm running, at least (VR Il-2, DCS) I seem to be getting the same performance as 9900K chips are. However, both of those are rather notorious for being unoptimised for anything.

 

In part, this is a gamble that if/when the devs ever parallellize key parts of the game (AI, I'm looking at you) I'll get better leverage from the better multi-thread performance, and that the AM4 will net me a 5-10% single thread faster chip in a year or so. That calculus may change with the 10th gen Intel chips, if the socket and chipsets are compatible with the Sunny Cove parts. 

 

I will say, with current 3700X and 3800X prices, you do need to evaluate what you're local price structure is to say which one is a better value. I recall, but can't find the source, that 3800X chips have a higher probability of clicking higher than 3700X chips, and for me, since the price difference was $20, it was worth the gamble. 

 

One thing, I'm given to understand that the Coffee Lake CPUs do not like streaming. I'm only going off of recollection, rather than benchmarks. Have either of you seen benchmarks on that? 

[Zando_]

7 minutes ago, Harry Voyager said:

One thing, I'm given to understand that the Coffee Lake CPUs do not like streaming. I'm only going off of recollection, rather than benchmarks. Have either of you seen benchmarks on that? 

I've never seen anything about that. I streamed fine with an 8600K using NVENC on my 1080 IIRC. Didn't do encoding on the CPU itself. 

10 minutes ago, Harry Voyager said:

I'll concede, right now it's running lower in many games. I suspect it's mostly a matter of optimization though,

Yeeeeah tbh that's more of another mark against Ryzen, their platform doesn't seem as stable. They already went through this with Zen and fixed it (mostly) with Zen+, Zen 2 is new but they really shouldn't be repeating all the launch day bugginess. Do have less vulnerabilities than Intel though (massive caveat: have people scrutinized Ryzen as hard as Intel yet, also the 9900KS has some hardware fixes for a few of them). 

[GamerDude]

1 hour ago, Harry Voyager said:

 

I will say, with current 3700X and 3800X prices, you do need to evaluate what you're local price structure is to say which one is a better value. I recall, but can't find the source, that 3800X chips have a higher probability of clicking higher than 3700X chips, and for me, since the price difference was $20, it was worth the gamble. 

 

From what I've heard, 3800X are higher binned 3700X and should reach higher OC's (and perhaps with lower voltage at similar clockspeed with the 3700X) as well. As for which is better, sure the 9900KS outpaces the 3700X/3800X/3900X at 1080P, but not many of us game at 1080P anymore (I game with two rigs, and two monitors, one at 3440x1440 and the other at 3840x1080) so when we play at higher res, CPU bottleneck becomes less of a factor than GPU bottleneck.

[GoldenLag]

7 hours ago, Zando Bob said:

Yeeeeah tbh that's more of another mark against Ryzen, their platform doesn't seem as stable

Its mostly been down to poor mobos with Zen 2. 

 

Older parts have been working rather well. 

[Yogi61]

15 hours ago, Zando Bob said:

9900KS (especially OCed, if you can get it to 5.2-5.4) will do better in single core. 3900X should only be a few % behind in single core, and smash it in multicore. Both are solid options. 

Basically, what GPU are you running it with? If it's a Pascal or Turing card with the NVENC encoder, just encode on the GPU when you stream, and buy whatever CPU/mobo combo runs your favorite game or three best (or else just get whichever is cheapest). If you're on an AMD card which are pretty oof at encoding, well tbh either CPU is gonna be fine there, lol. 

9900KS has an iGPU which lets it use QuickSync in stuff like Adobe Premiere that supports it, and the 3900X has more cores, that's pretty much the tradeoff between the two. If you're worried about temps, the 3900X will run cooler. 

 

I have 2080Ti  from Asus nvec encoding is good if u encode only game  it get less existing when you add external video capture like camera 

[Harry Voyager]

13 hours ago, GamerDude said:

From what I've heard, 3800X are higher binned 3700X and should reach higher OC's (and perhaps with lower voltage at similar clockspeed with the 3700X) as well. As for which is better, sure the 9900KS outpaces the 3700X/3800X/3900X at 1080P, but not many of us game at 1080P anymore (I game with two rigs, and two monitors, one at 3440x1440 and the other at 3840x1080) so when we play at higher res, CPU bottleneck becomes less of a factor than GPU bottleneck.

 

Well, sometimes. I'll agree for most games things are GPU bound, but in Il-2 VR, even in 4k VR, the minimums are controlled by the CPU, even while the averages are GPU bound. 

 

At HP Reverb resolution, 150km of rolling clouds and landscape pin my 1080 Ti at 100% usage and an average 54fps, but add eight or so B-25's and their five AI crew each trying to decide Are you hostile? into the mix, and that pushes it down to ~40fps minimums, even on 9900K platforms. I think I'm getting better lows, but it's both a marginal difference and very hard to get controlled comparable tests in that game, so I could easily be wrong. 

[Yogi61]

I'm still in a pickle don't know what to choose.

Like somebody says  neither off those are bad choice. but there is a different question if i go with  intel  i don't have sup for new gen  they wont to use lga1200 or something else with amd i  have option to get newer generations on my  Mboard until they will stick with amd 4 and there is no rumours Amd wont to change socket for now.

[Zando_]

9 hours ago, GoldenLag said:

Its mostly been down to poor mobos with Zen 2. 

 

Older parts have been working rather well. 

I... said that?
 

They fixed it with Zen+:

16 hours ago, Zando Bob said:

They already went through this with Zen and fixed it (mostly) with Zen+

But:

16 hours ago, Zando Bob said:

Zen 2 is new but they really shouldn't be repeating all the launch day bugginess

They already went through this with Zen, why are they repeating it? You'd think they'd be more prepared this time? 

Also the older hardware does indeed still have issues. A friend's office has Threadripper, X299, Mainstream Ryzen, and Mainstream Intel (specifically 9900Ks since the 9900KS just came out). In order of being problematic its: Threadripper > X299 > Ryzen > and basically never an issue with the 9900Ks. The 9900KS is built on top of the already rock solid 9900K. 

And poor mobos is different. The earlier models of the ASUS Rampage V Extreme for X99 were examples of poor mobos, they fed so much voltage to CPUs that there's a long list of chips killed by those boards (haven't seen boards cooking Zen 2 chips?). From what I've seen of Zen 2 it's not boards, it's the CPUs themselves and how they boost, and how Windows handles them and their boost. Most of the fixes have been AGESA updates for the CPUs themselves, and chipset drivers and such to fix it from the Windows side. All stuff AMD should have done ahead of time since again, they already went through something very similar with Zen. 
 

Zen still has its issues with higher clocked RAM (and some capture cards apparently), Zen+ is mostly solid AFAIK, Zen 2 has been having issues hitting the claimed boost numbers and some stuff with voltages (also just... didn't work with specifically Destiny 2 for a bit, IDK the reason why). 

 

7 hours ago, Yogi61 said:

 

I have 2080Ti  from Asus nvec encoding is good if u encode only game  it get less existing when you add external video capture like camera 

Oooooo... I've never ran a webcam so I never tried encoding that too. Do you get a hit to performance in games or does the encoder itself struggle? 

If you're going to encode on the CPU, again either chip should do it easily. If you play heavily multithreaded games (that actually scale well above 6 cores or so, something like Destiny 2 can use up to 20 cores but it doesn't actually scale that well, a high clocked 6c/6t CPU can beat a lower clocked/IPC 8c/16t chip easily) then the 3900X would have the lead because moar cores. 

 

1 minute ago, Yogi61 said:

I'm still in a pickle don't know what to choose.

Like somebody says  neither off those are bad choice. but there is a different question if i go with  intel  i don't have sup for new gen  they wont to use lga1200 or something else with amd i  have option to get newer generations on my  Mboard until they will stick with amd 4 and there is no rumours Amd wont to change socket for now.

They changed the Threadripper socket for the new ones coming soon, rumors are Zen 3 will be on AM5, a different socket. At best you'll have current stuff or maybe a refresh of that (similar to how Zen+ was more of refresh and tweak to Zen). You do have the option to eventually get a 3950X though, whereas the best in socket for Z390 is the 9900KS. Though are you going to realistically need more cores in the future, but would buy older hardware instead of just getting more cores on the latest platform so you get any improvements that brought as well? 

I run X99 with CPUs from 2014. My 6c/12t 5820K at 4.2Ghz runs all my games just fine, and my 8c/16t 5960X at 4.5Ghz does damn well too, but there's not a massive difference between the two because I only game at 75Hz. Point being I have 5 year old 6c and 8c chips that kick ass, I doubt the 9900KS - with the same core/thread count but massively better single core perf - will suddenly, magically slow down in the future because uh, reasons? 3900X will probably chug for a good while too, and like I said unless you plan to buy a used 3950X in the future (say 3 years from now? CPUs usually go 3-5, or more, just fine before needing an upgrade) instead of whatever is current at the time, the added upgradeability of AM4 isn't really a feature worth considering. If you go with the 3900X you already have the second best-in-socket, your only upgrade is a $750 chip (same here, my 5960X is second only to the 6950X, which usually goes for around $700). 

Are there specific titles you play a lot that'd tip the scales either way if one CPU is noticeably faster than the other in those games? If there isn't, then like I said earlier, just pick whatever is cheapest, or has the coolest looking motherboards in your opinion, lol. Speaking of motherboards, Zen 2 with an X570 board does have PCIe 4.0, but even your 2080 Ti isn't pushing the full bandwidth of PCIe 3.0 x16 yet so it's mostly a benefit for faster NVMe SSDs. 

[GoldenLag]

2 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

They already went through this with Zen, why are they repeating it? You'd think they'd be more prepared this time? 

you would expect so, but given AMDs track record of launching anything, not really. 

 

also im dairly certain the day 1 bugs on zen 2 were mobo related (not that it should really be forgiven). unless im missing something. 

 

4 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

From what I've seen of Zen 2 it's not boards

there were actually a handful of boards that had poor qc or bioses that had issues with Zen 2 at launch. including the Elite from gigabyte and lower end MSI boards. and now also probably more of gigabyte board if forum posts are anything to go by. 

[Zando_]

8 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

you would expect so, but given AMDs track record of launching anything, not really. 

 

also im dairly certain the day 1 bugs on zen 2 were mobo related (not that it should really be forgiven). unless im missing something. 

Your argument *against* me saying the platform is less stable is backed by you believing their platform is unstable and not expecting it to be stable in the first place because AMD is known to not launch stuff cleanly? What?
 

8 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

there were actually a handful of boards that had poor qc or bioses that had issues with Zen 2 at launch. including the Elite from gigabyte and lower end MSI boards. and now also probably more of gigabyte board if forum posts are anything to go by. 

What about all the people having issues on not MSI or Gigabyte boards. With the RVE I mentioned, the issue wasn't with X99 there, it was with those specific boards. If Zen 2 has issues on problematic boards and on good ones, maybe the issue is with Zen 2?

 

You can't honestly tell me that the Zen based platforms have been more stable than their Intel counterparts thus far. 

[GoldenLag]

3 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

Your argument *against* me saying the platform is less stable is backed by you believing their platform is unstable and not expecting it to be stable in the first place because AMD is known to not launch stuff cleanly? What?

yeah i realize i did a dum dum there. 

 

it was more a comment against the statement that Zen as a plattform doesnt  stable. now that i read over it again, idk fully what i was thinking. thats on me

 

4 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

Zen 2 has issues on problematic boards and on good ones, maybe the issue is with Zen 2?

you reffering to boot problems or other issues? because i can really only remember a handful cropping up in the "bad mobo" department based on forum posts. and most issues were with those boards.

 

6 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

You can't honestly tell me that the Zen based platforms have been more stable than their Intel counterparts thus far. 

no AMD has been on the backend of stability, as allways they struggle to deliver any "clean" launch. 

[Zando_]

Just now, GoldenLag said:

yeah i realize i did a dum dum there. 

 

it was more a comment against the statement that Zen as a plattform doesnt  stable. now that i read over it again, idk fully what i was thinking. thats on me

 

you reffering to boot problems or other issues? because i can really only remember a handful cropping up in the "bad mobo" department based on forum posts. and most issues were with those boards.

 

no AMD has been on the backend of stability, as allways they struggle to deliver any "clean" launch. 

that's... why I was bamboozled. You said:

As an argument against me saying the platform wasn't as stable. Hell, I run a Radeon VII and I ran an R5 1600 and I ran a 2700X and I ran a Vega FE, I'm used to AMD being wack af with launches. 

 

Zen as a platform has mostly had issues with RAM, voltages, and its boost. Also in my experience once overclocked they're not much cooler than Intel chips. Actually scrap that, they're hotter clock for clock. Zen 2 can get away with that though due to having a better IPC, so lower clocks provide the same performance as a higher clock on Intel (but the Intel chips can clock even higher so it's neither here nor there, my personal experience is with Zen/Zen+ hardware from ITX 2200G rigs up to a 2700X on Crosshair VII). 

All that said, if you're doing general stuff like gaming and multitasking and such, the older hardware is perfectly stable for that. I never had any issues with my older Ryzens other than anything over 2933Mhz on my Zen chips, and OC headroom being shit on my 2700X (also good lord they get hot at the voltage they need to even scrape by with a 4.2-4.25Ghz all-core). Zen 2 has had issues with again, specifically Destiny 2, and bugs with its boost and voltages and all sorts of stuff. You can't claim Zen as a platform is just as stable as Intel's has been, but in general use you're usually fine.