i9-10980xe or r9 3950x?

[Quadrum]

I’m currently in the first stages of planning my computer upgrade. I do a good bit of gaming, including vr, and also do music production. 
 

I was wondering whether to go with a 10980xe or a 3950x

 

Here are the pros and cons I’ve worked out so far:

 

10980xe:

Pros: Slightly better at gaming performance, many more pcie lanes, more cores, more overclocking headroom, possible better performance for music production?

Cons: Much more expensive, higher power consumption, might require a more expensive motherboard

 

3950x:

Pros: Better for 3D rendering and other intensive tasks I might do on the side, much cheaper, likely cheaper motherboard, higher ram clock speeds?

Cons: Less overclocking room, few pcie lanes, slightly worse gaming performance.

 

 

I do really appreciate your input so that I can make the best decision I can for my future computer.

 

Thanks!

[m0oble]

3950x

[ChaoticChaosx]

Either will do what you need it for. However comes to performance per dollar. AMD R9 3950x,

In gaming maybe 5-10 fps drop if that for your other tasks either is perfect.

You will need a expensive motherboard for the i9 and not worth when the R9 is more than enough for years. Ryzen loves high speed ram. D.O.C.P. in bios and your good to go. However this is not mainstream so for your needs R9 3950x. In my opinion.

[ShinRamen]

Both are excellent work horses and will be perfectly capable of handling anything you intend to throw at it - Adobe used to prefer Intel CPUs, but as far as I know that's no longer true. You've mentioned the main pros and cons, I'd like to add that the 10980XE is most likely going to be the last CPU on that platform, so there's no upgrade path in the future - if you don't plan on doing that and just want to stick with it for 5 years then that doesn't really matter.

How important are PCie lanes for you? One could've argued that you have more lanes for things like multi GPU at full 16x/16x, however with PCIe4 on AM4 and future GPUs most likely supporting PCIe4 that is no longer an issue. Any other reasons for that many lanes?

 

What resolution are you gaming at? There won't be much of a difference in gaming performance above 1440p for example - that'll mostly be handled by your GPU. If you are mainly playing competitive esports titles @1080p on a very high refresh rate monitor I could see the 10980XE having a somewhat significant advantage. 

The reasonable answer would always be 3950X, but if money is not an issue and your gut tells you to go Intel you wouldn't be leaving performance on the table. What about the 3900X, do you really need that many cores or is it more of an 'I just want it' issue? (which I'd totally understand )

[Quadrum]

8 minutes ago, ChaosCGTV said:

Either will do what you need it for. However comes to performance per dollar. AMD R9 3950x,

In gaming maybe 5-10 fps drop if that for your other tasks either is perfect.

You will need a expensive motherboard for the i9 and not worth when the R9 is more than enough for years. Ryzen loves high speed ram. D.O.C.P. in bios and your good to go. However this is not mainstream so for your needs R9 3950x. In my opinion.

Something I did forget to mention is that if I go amd, for some very specific reasons (I’m being vague on purpose), I will have to keep a second tower on my desk, which would mean having to buy new m.2s. I don’t think it changes anything but it does mean that Amd will cost me more than 700$

[DG House]

X299 chipset Intel has 24 pci-e 3.0

X570 amd has 24 pci-e 4.0 (4 are reseverd for the chipset)

correct me if im wrong but amd has almost double bandwith as intel in this compraseon

 

and the rest i think is right

 

 

[Quadrum]

1 minute ago, ShinRamen said:

Both are excellent work horses and will be perfectly capable of handling anything you intend to throw at it - Adobe used to prefer Intel CPUs, but as far as I know that's no longer true. You've mentioned the main pros and cons, I'd like to add that the 10980XE is most likely going to be the last CPU on that platform, so there's no upgrade path in the future - if you don't plan on doing that and just want to stick with it for 5 years then that doesn't really matter.

How important are PCie lanes for you? One could've argued that you have more lanes for things like multi GPU at full 16x/16x, however with PCIe4 on AM4 and future GPUs most likely supporting PCIe4 that is no longer an issue. Any other reasons for that many lanes?

 

What resolution are you gaming at? There won't be much of a difference in gaming performance above 1440p for example - that'll mostly be handled by your GPU. If you are mainly playing competitive esports titles @1080p on a very high refresh rate monitor I could see the 10980XE having a somewhat significant advantage. 

The reasonable answer would always be 3950X, but if money is not an issue and your gut tells you to go Intel you wouldn't be leaving performance on the table. What about the 3900X, do you really need that many cores or is it more of an 'I just want it' issue? (which I'd totally understand )

I do need a number of pcie lanes, with music production I have 3 high speed usb cards as well as multiple m.2s and some other drives. I’m not sure on whether or not I’m going to upgrade my monitor yet, but it’s likely I will be gaming at somewhere in the range of 1440p at 120hz.

[Quadrum]

3 minutes ago, DG House said:

X299 chipset Intel has 24 pci-e 3.0

X570 amd has 24 pci-e 4.0 (4 are reseverd for the chipset)

correct me if im wrong but amd has almost double bandwith as intel in this compraseon

 

and the rest i think is right

 

 

Intel seems to say that the 10980xe has 88 lanes

[DG House]

6 minutes ago, Quadrum said:

Intel seems to say that the 10980xe has 88 lanes

i didnt realise tahts the X299X chipset

i looked at the datasheet for the X299

i didnt find anything specific but you surely right

[Aaron_T]

16 minutes ago, Quadrum said:

I do need a number of pcie lanes, with music production I have 3 high speed usb cards as well as multiple m.2s and some other drives. I’m not sure on whether or not I’m going to upgrade my monitor yet, but it’s likely I will be gaming at somewhere in the range of 1440p at 120hz.

Sounds like maybe you should consider the 3960x threadripper. Tons of cores, good gaming performance, tons of PCIe 4.0 lanes. And I believe most of the reviews have mentioned that the latest Threadrippers are excellent for audio production.

[Quadrum]

9 minutes ago, AaronThomas said:

Sounds like maybe you should consider the 3960x threadripper. Tons of cores, good gaming performance, tons of PCIe 4.0 lanes. And I believe most of the reviews have mentioned that the latest Threadrippers are excellent for audio production.

The 3960x is 1400$ though, and requires an even more expensive motherboard, so if I do have some budget constraints, what would you recommend?

[Arrogath]

21 minutes ago, Quadrum said:

I do need a number of pcie lanes, with music production I have 3 high speed usb cards as well as multiple m.2s and some other drives. I’m not sure on whether or not I’m going to upgrade my monitor yet, but it’s likely I will be gaming at somewhere in the range of 1440p at 120hz.

If you legitimately need the support for multiple pci-e cards simultaneously you are probably better off with threadripper or intel HEDT. New threadripper is pretty over the top in terms of performance and the price is on the high side but it's hard not to consider if you want access to the newest generation of interface. If you weren't talking about gaming I would suggest 2nd gen threadripper, since the prices on it have been pretty attractive lately, but in your case if new threadripper is too expensive x570 if you can manage with fewer pci-e lanes or x299 if you can't. Honestly, Intel's offerings on that platform aren't the most attractive options imo, but there's nothing wrong with them apart from the stack of security flaws and accompanied patches

[Quadrum]

1 minute ago, Arrogath said:

If you legitimately need the support for multiple pci-e cards simultaneously you are probably better off with threadripper or intel HEDT. New threadripper is pretty over the top in terms of performance and the price is on the high side but it's hard not to consider if you want access to the newest generation of interface. If you weren't talking about gaming I would suggest 2nd gen threadripper, since the prices on it have been pretty attractive lately, but in your case if new threadripper is too expensive x570 if you can manage with fewer pci-e lanes or x299 if you can't. Honestly, Intel's offerings on that platform aren't the most attractive options imo, but there's nothing wrong with them apart from the stack of security flaws and accompanied patches

If you are finding cheap gen 2 Threadrippers I would really like to know where. I haven’t really considered them, but mostly because to what I’ve found their prices are still quite high. When it comes to performance, only the 2970x really matches, and I’ve been seeing them for upwards of 1200$

[Aaron_T]

Just now, Quadrum said:

The 3960x is 1400$ though, and requires an even more expensive motherboard, so if I do have some budget constraints, what would you recommend?

Like you, I have need of a lot of PCIe lanes, so I run a 10900x, and if I were to ever have to switch platforms, it would have to be to Threadripper for that reason.

 

If your workflow is dependent on lots of high speed PCIe devices(many being used at once), then I'd go with the 10980xe. I hate sacrificing any inefficiency in my workflow, and IO is a big part of that.

 

If your workflow is only using one or two PCIe devices at a time however, then you may not see a performance loss on 3950x. It all depends on how many lanes you want to saturate at the same time.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Quadrum said:

If you are finding cheap gen 2 Threadrippers I would really like to know where. I haven’t really considered them, but mostly because to what I’ve found their prices are still quite high. When it comes to performance, only the 2970x really matches, and I’ve been seeing them for upwards of 1200$

What Country are you buying from ? 

 

 

[Quadrum]

Just now, lee32uk said:

What Country are you buying from ? 

 

 

The US

[Guest]

Just now, Quadrum said:

The US

The 24 core 2970WX is listed at $949 on Amazon and bhphoto. 

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/LRXnTW/amd-threadripper-2970wx-3-ghz-24-core-processor-yd297xazafwof

 

 

 

[Quadrum]

4 minutes ago, lee32uk said:

The 24 core 2970WX is listed at $949 on Amazon and bhphoto. 

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/LRXnTW/amd-threadripper-2970wx-3-ghz-24-core-processor-yd297xazafwof

 

 

 

Oh wow. This might change my decisions... I have more thinking to do

[Quadrum]

5 minutes ago, lee32uk said:

The 24 core 2970WX is listed at $949 on Amazon and bhphoto. 

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/LRXnTW/amd-threadripper-2970wx-3-ghz-24-core-processor-yd297xazafwof

 

 

 

Just did a quick search on userbenchmark, seems that the 10980xe is getting 10-20% better scores than the 2970wx. The Threadripper is definitely better at rendering tasks, but it does seem that for my use case, the 10980xe will perform better

[ShinRamen]

If you have to compromise your workflow because of the missing PCie lanes on X570, then I would personally go 10980XE. I'm assuming (and please correct me if I'm wrong) that gaming is pretty important to you and you will definitely see a performance advantage with the 10980XE over 2970WX Threadripper

[Quadrum]

Just now, ShinRamen said:

If you have to compromise your workflow because of the missing PCie lanes on X570, then I would personally go 10980XE. I'm assuming (and please correct me if I'm wrong) that gaming is pretty important to you and you will definitely see a performance advantage with the 10980XE over 2970WX Threadripper

I will see performance advantage with the 10980xe over the 2970WX. Main focus for gaming is vr, so I don’t really know how cpu demanding that is. I have to do more research as to whether I can saturate enough pcie lanes to make a difference. 
 

If I have a gpu at 16x, 3 USB cards at 4x, a WiFi card (might not need this) at 4x, and 2 m.2s, a few SATA drives (I really don’t know if this matters) is there a use case where I would saturate the 24 lanes on a 3950x?

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Quadrum said:

Just did a quick search on userbenchmark, seems that the 10980xe is getting 10-20% better scores than the 2970wx. The Threadripper is definitely better at rendering tasks, but it does seem that for my use case, the 10980xe will perform better

I guess it depends what your priority is. The Intel cpu will be a bit faster for gaming, but once you start moving up in resolution the gap will get smaller.

 

The review of the 10980XE below also shows the 2970WX in a few games to give you an idea.

 

https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/intel_core_i9_10980xe_processor_review,1.html

 

 

[Quadrum]

10 hours ago, lee32uk said:

I guess it depends what your priority is. The Intel cpu will be a bit faster for gaming, but once you start moving up in resolution the gap will get smaller.

 

The review of the 10980XE below also shows the 2970WX in a few games to give you an idea.

 

https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/intel_core_i9_10980xe_processor_review,1.html

 

 

That’s a really comprehensive review! It seems that as great as the amd chips are, Intel by cutting their prices in half has created some decently lucrative options.

 

I’m now really stuck on my options, especially considering that for specific reasons (I know it’s vague), I’d have to spend an extra 200$ish on the amd system, or an extra 350$ish on the threadripper.

 

My options now are essentially 3950x at 900$ (included added costs), 10980xe at 1000$, 2970wx at 1300$ (Including added costs), and 3960x at 1750$ (Including added costs.

 

For my personal workload, Intel does make my life much saner. If I go amd, I will likely have to keep my current Intel system working and functioning, which means I can’t move over the drives.

 

Does any of this change anything, because I’m currently leaning between 3950x, 10980xe, and 2970wx.

[Guest]

The 3950X is obviously the cheapest option, but you mentioned not having enough pcie lanes on AM4 ? So if that is the case then I would go with the 10980xe if it is going to be $300 - $750 cheaper than the other two TR4 cpu's. 

[m777y]

intel throw high price every first launcing

just ignore it. go ryzen 16 core