2070 or 2070S?

[eth_jones]

Hi guys,

 

For a new build I've been given a budget of £1500. I've never worked at this price point before so I just want to ask for a bit of guidance. I don't want to let the client down. He wants everything to be bought new, and he wants everything to last him long into the future. He wants me to stay away from AMD GPU's, but he isn't bothered about the CPU. 

 

I've been looking at the 2070S and 2080S, and there doesn't seem to be enough performance increase to justify an extra £150. So solely looking at the 2070 and 2070S now. I am thinking of pairing this with an i5-9600k (overclocked) or the i7-9700k.

 

Which card (and/or cpu) would you guys with experience at this budget recommend? I was also looking at the Ryzen 7 3800x but as he will only ever be gaming, and apparently the intel cpu's are better for that, I have kind of stopped considering it.

 

Cheers!

[Niklos]

3800X is a better allrounder overall. But, if its only for gaming, I'd go for the i5 9600k and the best GPU he can afford. 2070S or 2080S or even 2080Ti. Or wait for 3***

[nick name]

8 minutes ago, Niklos said:

3800X is a better allrounder overall. But, if its only for gaming, I'd go for the i5 9600k and the best GPU he can afford. 2070S or 2080S or even 2080Ti. Or wait for 3***

Nobody worth listening to recommends Intel CPUs without hyperthreading anymore.  If you want 6 cores then get the Ryzen 3600. 

[Niklos]

Well, as you can see in every benchmark, the i5 is pretty much as good as the 3800X in games while being a lot cheaper so... I'd still go for i5 for games even with "only" 6 cores and put more money in the graphics card.

[Xkillerpn]

3600 + 5700xt best combo you can get for the money you will spend. 

 

B450 max board and 32g of 3200mhz ram cheap ram no need for rgb cant go wrong there. 

[GoldenLag]

3 minutes ago, Niklos said:

Well, as you can see in every benchmark, the i5 is pretty much as good as the 3800X in games while being a lot cheaper so... I'd still go for i5 for games even with "only" 6 cores

the same can in some cases be said about the 3600. the issue with the 9600k is its stuttering in certain titles due to lack of threads. and we do know its down to a lack of threads by looking at the 4c/8t offerings not encountering the issue. 

 

and if you for some reason swear by a certain brand, then there is 10th gen which will deliver HT more or less across the board. so atm there is no good reason to get the 9600k, or 9400f for that matter. 

 

24 minutes ago, Niklos said:

2070S or 2080S or even 2080Ti.

in the matter of balacing builds, you really should start spending a touch extra on the CPU instead of the GPU once you have the oppertunity to get the 2080. especially since that is the nature of budgets at these pricepoints. 

 

i just dont see a justification to get a "mid range" non-ht or non-smt parts with the current offerings on the market. 

[Niklos]

Well, it's up to you... But all benchmarks says clearly that i5 9600k is pretty much as good as 3800X in game while being like twice as cheap.

But yes, I definitly agree that for the same price, AMD options are quite better for pretty much everything but gaming.

I definitly don't swear by any brand... Actually, I have right now an NVidia GPU and AMD CPU... Just leaving an intel CPU and AMD GPU... I mean, I just take whatever I feel like is better for what I do.

And right now, I believe that Intel CPU's are better for gaming than AMD CPU's at the price (all included, Mobo/RAM/Proc). I don't really know about the new AMD GPU's so, I would not make any guess about them but I think (definitly not sure on that one) that they are still pretty good in the low range but are not as good as the 2070S for the same price. But, again, I did not double check on that one so I am definitly not sure at all !

[eth_jones]

@Xkillerpn @GoldenLag @Niklos

Thanks for your help guys. The guy doesn't want AMD GPU because he has had plenty of bad experiences with them in the past apparently. I won't try and change his mind, it's his money lol.

 

With regards the CPU then, does the i7-9700k support hyperthreading? And if not, would it be worth going with the 2070s, and the i9-9900k?

 

I'm looking at a Z390 board for all this too. 

[Niklos]

4 minutes ago, eth_jones said:

does the i7-9700k support hyperthreading? And if not, would it be worth going with the 2070s, and the i9-9900k?

No and... I believe no. For GAMING.

I'd go with i5 9600K or i7 9700K and upgrade later. The 9900K is awesome, but not worth it for gaming I believe. I think you'd better go with 9600K or 9700K and keep the money for upgrading with 12700K or 13700k or whatever is good for gaming when an upgrade is needed.

[GoldenLag]

11 minutes ago, eth_jones said:

With regards the CPU then, does the i7-9700k support hyperthreading? And if not, would it be worth going with the 2070s, and the i9-9900k?

 

I'm looking at a Z390 board for all this too. 

9700k does not support HT, but at this time does not have any stuttering issues.

 

Is the 3600/3700x not options? As those are much better pairings eith the 2070s. 

 

And if they arent, then i highly siggest waiting untill next gen intel

[eth_jones]

@Niklos @GoldenLag

 

Thanks guys! The reason I got put off the 3700x and actually the 3800x too is because I read this: "Comparing the 3700X to Intel’s i7-9700K shows that, when overclocked, the 3700X is 26% faster at 64-core computations but 13% slower for gaming and desktop (sub eight core performance).... the 3700X offers reasonable value to full time media encoders but general desktop users, gamers and even streamers should look elsewhere."

 

What do you guys think of that quote? And what makes these CPU's pair better with the 2070s in your opinion?

[Niklos]

That is exactly what I said earlier. Nowaday, you get better value from AMD CPU's except for gaming. 

That's funny because it was the exact opposite 15 to 20 years ago !

[GoldenLag]

14 minutes ago, eth_jones said:

What do you guys think of that quote? And what makes these CPU's pair better with the 2070s in your opinion?

userbenchmark is not a reliable benchark source. and outside of very rough GPU comparisons within the same architecture id just avoid. especially when it comes to CPUs. 

 

at the moment, the 3600 and 3700x are better buys than the 9600k and 9700k (9700k can be argued for, but when looking at what is happening to the 7600k and 9600k id just spend the money elsewhere). the 9900k is the top chip for gaming atm with a small margin, but below that, there has to be a special reason as to not choose the 3700x and 3600. 

 

(avoid the 95 and 105w TDP variants of the 6 core and 8 core offerings from AMD, they are not worth the money)

[Zberg]

9 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

userbenchmark is not a reliable benchark source. and outside of very rough GPU comparisons within the same architecture id just avoid. especially when it comes to CPUs. 

 

at the moment, the 3600 and 3700x are better buys than the 9600k and 9700k (9700k can be argued for, but when looking at what is happening to the 7600k and 9600k id just spend the money elsewhere). the 9900k is the top chip for gaming atm with a small margin, but below that, there has to be a special reason as to not choose the 3700x and 3600. 

 

(avoid the 95 and 105w TDP variants of the 6 core and 8 core offerings from AMD, they are not worth the money)

This is spot on.  I would recommend the 3600 for pretty much any gaming rig, especially if there is any thought of gaming at 1440p or 4k (where the CPU is used even less).  The 3600 is just so much better value and performance than any i5;  The 9700k is fine for gaming but is too costly for what you get.  The 9900k is also pricey, but its the halo gaming product so it gets that distinction at least (whereas a 3700 does just as good as a 9700k).  

 

If they want it for gaming, put as much money as you can into a big GPU (2080S or 2080ti if they can afford it), and save some money on the CPU.  If you told me I could have an overclocked 8700k/9700k/9900k for gaming, I wouldnt even want it unless I had a 2080ti, and I would take a 3600 plus a GPU upgrade over any of those chips if there was a budget.  You will get more frames and performance upgrading from a 2070S to a 2080S or above with a 3600 (w/ the thought of the savings helping you buy that GPU), than a 2070S or less with a beasty CPU that wouldnt have been bottlenecked anyways.

[eth_jones]

@Zberg @GoldenLag @Niklos You guys are legends. Thanks for helping me out here. I appreciate it a lot.

 

So you're talking about a 3600 right? What about a 3800x with a 2070s? Is that a bit CPU heavy? I'm not presuming it will bottleneck on the GPU, I'm just wondering if I could cut back on that CPU and put the savings into a 2080s.

 

Am I making sense? Sometimes I'm not sure if I word things correctly ahaha

[GoldenLag]

1 minute ago, eth_jones said:

What about a 3800x with a 2070s? Is that a bit CPU heavy?

get the 3700x instead. otherwise 3600 + 2070s iis fine. 

 

 

just pick up an MSI B450 Max board. or an x570 if you grab the 3700x and for some reason need the extra IO

[Niklos]

15 hours ago, eth_jones said:

What about a 3800x with a 2070s

That's what I have and... I could get a 2080Ti no problem.

For gaming, I'd go with i5 9600k and 2080 Super/ti

[Zberg]

23 hours ago, eth_jones said:

@Zberg @GoldenLag @Niklos You guys are legends. Thanks for helping me out here. I appreciate it a lot.

 

So you're talking about a 3600 right? What about a 3800x with a 2070s? Is that a bit CPU heavy? I'm not presuming it will bottleneck on the GPU, I'm just wondering if I could cut back on that CPU and put the savings into a 2080s.

 

Am I making sense? Sometimes I'm not sure if I word things correctly ahaha

I would personally buy a 3600 and put savings into a GPU unless I was doing one of two other things:

 

Buying a 2080ti (likely the only one that will actually give you CPU bottleneck)

Playing high refresh on a 1080p monitor >144hz (this is the other likely thing to put a big tax on the CPU and you might need a better one)

 

3800x is around 340, 3600 is around 175, thats basically double the cost.  Its also very similar to the difference between a 2070S and 2080S.

 

If you have unlimited money, get both (3700x/3800x...hell a 9900k) and a big GPU.  If budget is important I would personally go 2080S, especially if playing anything at 1440p or above

[SteveGrabowski0]

The next gen gaming systems use 8C/16T Ryzen 2 chips, so no way in hell I'd recommend buying an 8C/8T i7-9700k despite it being ~10% faster right now in current gen games designed for the 8C/8T Jaguar cpus in XBox One and PS4. Only two cpus I'd consider are Ryzen 7 3700X and i9-9900k for a client that doesn't want to do an upgrade for a while. And considering the next XBox looks to have an RTX 2080 level gpu in it, you probably want RTX 2080 or better in the system too.