i9700K or 3800X

[Kimbo_G]

I was sold on the AMD chip, really the 3700X not the 3800X, but it looks like there is an upcoming sale that will put them all at the same price.

 

I would appreciate your recommendations/insight. I'll be mainly gaming and doing normal productivity stuff, e-mail, XLS, etc. No video editing or streaming. Thanks! 

[Flying Sausages]

3700x

[Streetguru]

6 minutes ago, Kimbo_G said:

I was sold on the AMD chip, really the 3700X not the 3800X, but it looks like there is an upcoming sale that will put them all at the same price.

 

I would appreciate your recommendations/insight. I'll be mainly gaming and doing normal productivity stuff, e-mail, XLS, etc. No video editing or streaming. Thanks! 

Just get the R5 3600 if you don't need to do video editing or streaming

 

what's your budget/country for the PC? What monitor resolution/refresh rate?

[Princess Luna]

4 minutes ago, Kimbo_G said:

I would appreciate your recommendations/insight. I'll be mainly gaming and doing normal productivity stuff, e-mail, XLS, etc. No video editing or streaming. Thanks! 

The locked i9 9900 can work on cheaper boards and cheaper cooling solutions, if you can build around one it could be worth it too... if money is okay to be spent.

 

But in all honesty for what you want to do the R5 3600 will perform the same as the 3700X in every way, if you want to build only for gaming the i7 9700K can be justified if you're getting like a RTX 2080 Super video card where you won't e as GPU bound on every game. If you're getting just like a 5700 XT than the R5 3600 is realistically all you need.

[Sorenson]

You'll be better off with the 9700k with your work load as long as it is not more expensive than the 3700x. There is all the hype around AMD right now, but in gaming they are still slightly behind, and there is decent overclocking headroom on intel chips.  

[MartinKweh]

3800x with its higher base boost clock since you plan to spend that much lol

[NumLock21]

Go with the 3800X for its cores and threads, 9700K does not have HT, so you only get 8 cores.

[GamerDude]

The 3700X or 3800X (if the sale price is about the same as the 3700X as OP had said), 8C/16T is still better in the long run vs the 9700K's 8C/8T. Yes, purely for gaming and with a high end RTX card (RTX2070 Super and higher) and IF gaming is the main usage, then yes, the 9700K would yield higher framerates.

 

Still, this reminds me of the old days back in the 2nd Gen Core i5/i7 days, I'd usually suggest that upgraders building a new system buy an i7 for 4C/8T capability, but got shouted down by many who said the i5's 4C/4T was more than enough. Yes, they OC better, and were useful for a number of years, but 4C/8T i7's had better longevity and are even relevant to this day, the i5's 4C/4T have become too much of a limiting factor. Hence, my belief that the 8C/16T of the 3700X/3800X would last a fair bit longer than the 8C/8T 9700K.

 

The Ryzen CPU (with a decent but costlier X570 mobo for added features) and a good B450 mobo (if the features of the X570 chipset isn't required) would make for a good combo for games and some productivity usage.

[Sorenson]

4 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

Go with the 3800X for its cores and threads, 9700K does not have HT, so you only get 8 cores.

Hyper-threading does a lot less that people think. If OP is close to a microcenter then the 9700k is the same price as the 3700x. There is no rational reason to go with the Ryzen CPU when the most intensive thing he will be doing is gaming (at which the 9700k beats out the 3700x). 

[NumLock21]

6 minutes ago, Sorenson said:

Hyper-threading does a lot less that people think. If OP is close to a microcenter then the 9700k is the same price as the 3700x. There is no rational reason to go with the Ryzen CPU when the most intensive thing he will be doing is gaming (at which the 9700k beats out the 3700x). 

Not everything is only about gaming. It's better to have it and not need it, rather than want it, but don't have it. OP is better off with the 3700X. If OP decides to go with Intel then, it's better to wait for 10th gen where they should bring back HT to the Core i7s.

[Sorenson]

11 hours ago, NumLock21 said:

Not everything is only about gaming. It's better to have it and not need it, rather than want it, but don't have it. OP is better off with the 3700X. If OP decides to go with Intel then, it's better to wait for 10th gen where they should bring back HT to the Core i7s.

Not everything is about blender renders or game streaming. Intel is faster in his use case now. I know that’s not the popular opinion but programs aren’t going to be. Suddenly jumping up to needing 8 cores in the next few years when most laptops are still running 4-6.

[Kimbo_G]

23 hours ago, Streetguru said:

Just get the R5 3600 if you don't need to do video editing or streaming

 

what's your budget/country for the PC? What monitor resolution/refresh rate?

I'm in the US, thinking ~ $1K for the build. I have a case, PSU, and water cooler from my last build. Need to get a new monitor too.

[Kimbo_G]

On 11/16/2019 at 9:46 PM, Martin2132 said:

3800x with its higher base boost clock since you plan to spend that much lol

$339.99 USD

[Streetguru]

21 minutes ago, Kimbo_G said:

I'm in the US, thinking ~ $1K for the build. I have a case, PSU, and water cooler from my last build. Need to get a new monitor too.

Well this one has a 240hz monitor anyways, but how old is the power supply? and what case?

 

PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/ghg3Zf

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor  ($194.00 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus PRIME X570-P ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($127.50 @ Amazon)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory  ($74.98 @ Amazon)
Storage: Patriot Scorch 512 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  ($57.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon RX 5700 8 GB PULSE Video Card  ($359.99 @ Newegg)
Monitor: Acer XF250Q Cbmiiprx 24.5" 1920x1080 240 Hz Monitor  ($249.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $1064.45
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-11-17 23:04 EST-0500

[Kimbo_G]

13 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

Well this one has a 240hz monitor anyways, but how old is the power supply? and what case?

The PSU is less than 6mo old, the last one went bad on the current machine. It's a Cooler Master Masterwatt 650 and the case is the Cooler Master CM690

[Kimbo_G]

On 11/16/2019 at 9:45 PM, Princess Luna said:

The locked i9 9900 can work on cheaper boards and cheaper cooling solutions, if you can build around one it could be worth it too... if money is okay to be spent.

 

But in all honesty for what you want to do the R5 3600 will perform the same as the 3700X in every way, if you want to build only for gaming the i7 9700K can be justified if you're getting like a RTX 2080 Super video card where you won't e as GPU bound on every game. If you're getting just like a 5700 XT than the R5 3600 is realistically all you need.

Yeah, for the amount I play, I can't justify a RTX 2080... I was leaning more towards a RX 590 if I went AMD CPU.

[Kimbo_G]

For comparison, my current machine is running a i5 3570K @ 3.4 GHz

[Princess Luna]

6 hours ago, Kimbo_G said:

Yeah, for the amount I play, I can't justify a RTX 2080... I was leaning more towards a RX 590 if I went AMD CPU.

For the RX 590 you should probably just go with the R5 3600.

[BruceWayneofLosSanto]

3800x if it's the same price as the 3700x.  But honestly for your use case either the 9700k or 3700x/3800x is fine.  Disabling smt on the ryzen should give you another 100mhz overclocking headroom if you plan on overclocking.

[Kimbo_G]

4 hours ago, Princess Luna said:

For the RX 590 you should probably just go with the R5 3600.

What if I splurge on the RX 5700?

[NumLock21]

On 11/17/2019 at 10:48 AM, Sorenson said:

Not everything is about blender renders or game streaming. Intel is faster in his use case now. I know that’s not the popular opinion but programs aren’t going to be. Suddenly jumping up to needing 8 cores in the next few years when most laptops are still running 4-6.

But more threads is better in the long term.

8 cores / 8 threads on the 9700K

8 cores / 16 threads on the 3700X

[Midnitewolf]

Personally I am going for the 3800x myself which I also found on sale for the same price as the 3700x,  The Intel processors may very well have better single core performance but it seems there is a new security flaw every other day with the Intel Processors plus while gaming has traditionally been more single core intensive, it isn't going to stay that way. 

 

For example, one game I have been following for a long time is Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord and in an interview they came right out and side they are designing the game to take advantage of multicore CPUs.  They probably aren't the only game developer doing this for upcoming games and they won't be the last.  

 

Additionally,  I think there is a much greater probability of AMD using the AM4 socket and thus offering an upgrade path over the next couple generation of CPUs than with Intel which I think will end up changing the socket when they finally get a true next gen processor to market.  This is pure speculation but since no one can predict the future, we all have to use our best guess and I think this will more likely be true for AMD than Intel.

 

Finally, since we can't predict the future, it just seems to make more sense to go with the only processor that is truly next gen.  I know I would rather have PCI 4.0 available and not use it rather than not having it and finding out the next generation of GPU releasing next year, gets a huge boost from it.  Same for the cores as I mentioned above.  This is especially true when even though Intel is faster in gaming, the difference isn't earth shattering. The actual fps difference is such a small percentage that I doubt many people would even know that they were running on a AMD or Intel if you didn't explicitly tell them.

 

So yeah, AMD for me all the way.  Future Proofing > 5% greater FPS hands down.

[Kimbo_G]

4 minutes ago, Midnitewolf said:

So yeah, AMD for me all the way.  Future Proofing > 5% greater FPS hands down.

That's where I'm leaning too given all the feedback.

[Harry Voyager]

On 11/16/2019 at 10:15 PM, Sorenson said:

Hyper-threading does a lot less that people think. If OP is close to a microcenter then the 9700k is the same price as the 3700x. There is no rational reason to go with the Ryzen CPU when the most intensive thing he will be doing is gaming (at which the 9700k beats out the 3700x). 

I actually tried disabling SMT on my 3800X to see what it did in IL-2 Battle of Bodenplattte, and running without SMT actually ended up costing me about 20% on the minimums. It was a bit of a surprise, given how single thread limited Il-2 always has been in VR. 

 

All I can figure is its not costing me on the heavy thread, and its keeping the light threads away from running it over. 

 

That said, I do not have comparible data on the 9700 or non-HT enabled 9900K for the current version. The last rounds of updates split out the terrain engine into a separate thread, invalidated the prior benchmark results and broke the last round of common benchmark tracks. 

[BruceWayneofLosSanto]

Disabling smt would probably hurt  on stock settings, would only help if you were running an all core overclock.