Why I switched from a 3700X to a 9700K (a reaction to Linus' Why I still love Intel video)

[DaemonXHUN]

So the general consense right now between PC users is that there's not really a point of buying an Intel product over an AMD one, because AMD offers better price to performance ratio and their CPUs are generally more future-proof thanks to their multithreaded nature. Also, they consume less power and they are way more versatile: even though you have a little bit less FPS in games compared to a similar Intel CPU, Ryzen CPUs are better in pretty much every other thing (video editing, multitasking, etc.).

 

However, my main choice still remained Intel after all these years and I did something that most people would call me crazy for: I sold my 3700X to buy a 9700K. I explain why.

 

• I'm first and foremost a hardcore gamer who plays intensive single player games (and also a lot of indie titles, but they don't require a ton of performance). A 3700X has 0.1% lows in a lot of games that are below 60FPS and if I spend that much money on a CPU, this is basically unacceptable to me. A 9700K doesn't have this problem.
• Also, I don't just play PC games, but I emulate PS3, Wii U, Switch and other console titles and in general, Intel CPUs are better for emulation because of their architecture and because of the higher single core clocks.
• It's also an important thing that I use an NZXT Kraken X62 liquid cooler which is arguably one of the best, if not the best AIO on the market, yet it couldn't do anything with the Ryzen 7 3700X because of its weird architecture and it lead to a lot of sudden and extreme temperature spikes and fan speed spikes - and the latter one was extremely annoying to hear. I want my PC to be as quiet as possible, not as loud as possible. While the 3700X ran at 40-50C or more at idle, my 9700K runs at 25C or even below.
• Finally, with Intel products, I experienced a more consistent and stable experience in terms of using Windows.

 

These are the CPUs I had in the past five years: i5 6500, i5 6600K (OC'd to 4.5GHz on all cores), Ryzen 5 2600, i5 9600K, Ryzen 7 3700X and finally, i7 9700K.

 

 

[5x5]

Just wounds like you messed up your cooling mount and didn't even bother fixing it. Since the 3700X runs perfectly fine on the stock cooler

[AshRiver]

A big downgrade. You should have gone with i9 9900k instead. i7 9700k is a big scam. No hyperthreading cpu is a no good investment. Some current triple A games are almost max out i7 9700k.

[SavageNeo]

3700x has better 0.1% and 1% lows than i7 9700k. WDYM

[SavageNeo]

that is huge downgrade

[DaemonXHUN]

Just now, 5x5 said:

Just wounds like you messed up your cooling mount and didn't even bother fixing it. Since the 3700X runs perfectly fine on the stock cooler

No, I reinstalled my cooler multiple times and reapplied the thermal paste multiple times. Also most people I have asked reported the same thing. But even if the temps would have been better, I would have still picked a 9700K.

[5x5]

Just now, DaemonXHUN said:

No, I reinstalled my cooler multiple times and reapplied the thermal paste multiple times. Also most people I have asked reported the same thing. But even if the temps would have been better, I would have still picked a 9700K.

Don't know what to tell you, I have an i7 and I prefer using the 3700X my friend has. Guess you messed up somewhere as his funds much more stable gaming performance and lower thermals than mine

[AshRiver]

3 minutes ago, DaemonXHUN said:

No, I reinstalled my cooler multiple times and reapplied the thermal paste multiple times. Also most people I have asked reported the same thing. But even if the temps would have been better, I would have still picked a 9700K.

You downgrade your cpu a lot. Going 8cores/16threads to 8cores/8threads .

[Tetramino]

Yeah that's fair, i bought an i5 9400f to then later when i have the money for a i9 9900k i will swap to that. since it has the highest performance in game compared to a similar ryzen cpu

[BenOver]

13 minutes ago, DaemonXHUN said:

So the general consense right now between PC users is that there's not really a point of buying an Intel product over an AMD one, because AMD offers better price to performance ratio and their CPUs are generally more future-proof thanks to their multithreaded nature. Also, they consume less power and they are way more versatile: even though you have a little bit less FPS in games compared to a similar Intel CPU, Ryzen CPUs are better in pretty much every other thing (video editing, multitasking, etc.).

 

However, my main choice still remained Intel after all these years and I did something that most people would call me crazy for: I sold my 3700X to buy a 9700K. I explain why.

 

• I'm first and foremost a hardcore gamer who plays intensive single player games (and also a lot of indie titles, but they don't require a ton of performance). A 3700X has 0.1% lows in a lot of games that are below 60FPS and if I spend that much money on a CPU, this is basically unacceptable to me. A 9700K doesn't have this problem.
• Also, I don't just play PC games, but I emulate PS3, Wii U, Switch and other console titles and in general, Intel CPUs are better for emulation because of their architecture and because of the higher single core clocks.
• It's also an important thing that I use an NZXT Kraken X62 liquid cooler which is arguably one of the best, if not the best AIO on the market, yet it couldn't do anything with the Ryzen 7 3700X because of its weird architecture and it lead to a lot of sudden and extreme temperature spikes and fan speed spikes - and the latter one was extremely annoying to hear. I want my PC to be as quiet as possible, not as loud as possible. While the 3700X ran at 40-50C or more at idle, my 9700K runs at 25C or even below.
• Finally, with Intel products, I experienced a more consistent and stable experience in terms of using Windows.

 

These are the CPUs I had in the past five years: i5 6500, i5 6600K (OC'd to 4.5GHz on all cores), Ryzen 5 2600, i5 9600K, Ryzen 7 3700X and finally, i7 9700K.

 

 

my dude why not wait a month for 10700k i'm all about intel too but you could of just wait a bit to get better

[SavageNeo]

i mean 8 threads arent going to cut it. even some modern games stutter with that cpu. I dont know why your ryzen behaved like that but mine doesnt do that. Why didnt you RMA the cpu. you got worse cpu instead.

[GDRRiley]

3 minutes ago, Tetramino said:

Yeah that's fair, i bought an i5 9400f to then later when i have the money for a i9 9900k i will swap to that. since it has the highest performance in game compared to a similar ryzen cpu

intel made 0 sense for you a 3600x on an x570 would have given you a 4000 chip that will smoke a 9900k

 

you've got something wrong with you cooler mount and you downgraded

[KarathKasun]

Going to point out that architecture itself isnt what makes emulation better this time around.  Its the clocks.

 

Ryzen actually pushes more ops/clock than Intel by a tiny amount.

[Tetramino]

3 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

intel made 0 sense for you a 3600x on an x570 would have given you a 4000 chip that will smoke a 9900k

 

you've got something wrong with you cooler mount and you downgraded

i bought it way before ryzen 4 or intel 10th gen was a thing and i dont fancy buing a new motherboard

[GDRRiley]

3 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

Ryzen actually pushes more ops/clock than Intel by a tiny amount.

it isn't a tiny amount a 4.3ghz amd chip is very close to a 5.0ghz+ intel chip on single core.

given zen 3/4000 is expecting higher IPC and clocks intel has 0

 

Just now, Tetramino said:

i bought it way before ryzen 4 or intel 10th gen was a thing

ryzen 4000 isn't a thing yet. my point was you could have spend the money on a decent board and a 3600x and gotten a chip that is faster than a 9900k for way less

[KarathKasun]

2 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

it isn't a tiny amount a 4.3ghz amd chip is very close to a 5.0ghz+ intel chip on single core.

given zen 3/4000 is expecting higher IPC and clocks intel has 0

 Its 7% give or take a little.  That is tiny.

 

4.3ghz -> 5ghz is a 16% increase.  AMD is still ~10% behind in many workloads.

[TrigrH]

21 minutes ago, DaemonXHUN said:

These are the CPUs I had in the past five years: i5 6500, i5 6600K (OC'd to 4.5GHz on all cores), Ryzen 5 2600, i5 9600K, Ryzen 7 3700X and finally, i7 9700K.

WTF

[Blademaster91]

18 minutes ago, DaemonXHUN said:

No, I reinstalled my cooler multiple times and reapplied the thermal paste multiple times. Also most people I have asked reported the same thing. But even if the temps would have been better, I would have still picked a 9700K.

The idle temps don't matter so much as load temps do, you could have offset the fans ramping up by setting a fan profile, a lot of boards also set the voltage too high on ryzen 3000 cpus which can cause temp spikes.

However I do understand why people might prefer Intel as you can plug it in and set an overclock easily.

[GDRRiley]

Just now, KarathKasun said:

 Its 7% give or take a little.  That is tiny.

given intel was yelling look we got you 2% it is big compared to most gains from 4770k to a 9900k

[KarathKasun]

9 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

given intel was yelling look we got you 2% it is big compared to most gains from 4770k to a 9900k

Err, no.  4770k to 7700k (same basic core as 9900k) was actually quite significant in a lot of places.  A 15% gain was not unheard of at similar clocks.

 

I have chips from most intel generations from 2600k to 7600k, the gains were there.  Its just that games didnt always see the largest part of them.

 

Ryzen was such a big jump for AMD because BD/FX was such crap when it was new and didnt get any updates for ~10 years.

[5x5]

As we stand, Zen 2 already has about 8-10% more IPC than Skylake (all current intel CPUs are still a Skylake derivative). Zen 3 is expected to up that to 25-30% more IPC in September. You'll need 6GHz on Intel to match 4.3GHz on AMD soon

[GDRRiley]

4 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

Err, no.  4770k to 7700k (same basic core as 9900k) was actually quite significant in a lot of places.  A 15% gain was not unheard of at similar clocks.

 

I have chips from most intel generations from 2600k to 7600k, the gains were there.  Its just that games didnt always see the largest part of them.

 

Ryzen was such a big jump for AMD because BD/FX was such crap when it was new and didnt get any updates for ~10 years.

It’s not really IPC most of that was other changes and you also had a memory swap in there. 

Each generation of ryzen is looking like ~15% 

(not series but proper generation)

[KarathKasun]

1 minute ago, GDRRiley said:

It’s not really IPC most of that was other changes and you also had a memory swap in there. 

Each generation of ryzen is looking like ~15% 

(not series but proper generation)

We saw that on early Core series CPUs too (Core 2 -> Nehalem -> Sandy Bridge), its just flatlined since the Kabylake.  Ryzen is still a new architecture with lots of low hanging fruit.

[Mister Woof]

9700 is a ripoff. First desktop i7 to lack hyperthreading, only so it could be segmented into a new i9 to make more money.

 

Shit deal and obviously Intel knows it since they have since corrected this with the 10th generation.

[GDRRiley]

Just now, KarathKasun said:

 Ryzen is still a new architecture with lots of low hanging fruit.

It’s not always low hanging fruit. It’s just a push to make the chips actually faster so they can gain market share. they also though have 2 teams working on chips that leapfrog. Intel has at least 4 right now. (Cove, lake, and 2 others I can’t remember)