3900x vs 9900x Is there any point in going quad channel/INTEL?

[Wizwerd]

I've been trying to decipher on whether or not to go a 3900x w/ dual channel mobo or pony up the cash for an i9 9900x/10900x with a quad channel mobo.

 

I could get a 3900x and the mobo for $750-$800 while a single i9 9900x is $749 by itself.

 

Is quad channel really worth it for the extra frames?

 

In some videos I see an average of 25-30 frames more on an I9 quad channel and in other videos its a 5 average frame difference with maybe 10 more frames on the 1% and .1%'s

 

Maybe I'm just an intel fanboy since my current rig is intel and its done me very well over the last 3-4 years but going for the next gen as it stands right now would seem foolish unless if quad channel is really all its cracked up to be.

 

Couple of benchmark games I currently play are:

 

RDR2 (I get about 120-140 fps on average)  until the game bugs to 22 fps.  Playing in borderless window seems to fix this for whatever reason.

 

GTAV  (62 fps average 50 fps low 1%  45 low .1%)

 

Mordhau 160-165 fps average  with 90 fps low 1%)

 

Sea of Thieves  144 fps average at sea, 60 low 1%

 

I'm currently on a quad channel i7 6800k and I'm wondering if going a 3900x would not really net me that much more when most games don't use more than 6 cores atm.

 

Maybe if Intel is still the best I should wait until they release their next gen stuff later this year and see if the price drops on the 9900x?

 

What do you guys think?

 

 

[The_russian]

What is your use case? If it is just gaming, going with an HEDT chip is basically a waste of money. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

quad channel alone seems to have a very small impact on gaming, but its hard to tell.

 

If gaming if your main goal, am4 or 1200 is a much better platform.

[Wizwerd]

1 minute ago, The_russian said:

What is your use case? If it is just gaming, going with an HEDT chip is basically a waste of money. 

yeah Gaming.  this video in particular shows the difference between dual & quad on the same chip that I have.  30 frames higher on average and the lows.  That's a huge difference but I'm not 100% sure it scales on the higher end processors/mobos.

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

quad channel alone seems to have a very small impact on gaming, but its hard to tell.

 

If gaming if your main goal, am4 or 1200 is a much better platform.

but how much better?  some videos show 10 fps difference between intel and amd on averages and lows.  I play a lot of fighting games and the lows matter.  If you get a low drop and it lasts 100-150 ms that could be the difference between landing a hit, getting hit, and blocking.

[Mateyyy]

If you're just gaming, going with 2066 or sTRX4 is a literal waste of money.

Quad-channel memory won't make up for the worse single-core performance these HEDT chips offer compared to their consumer grade counterparts.

[Wizwerd]

1 minute ago, Mateyyy said:

If you're just gaming, going with 2066 or sTRX4 is a literal waste of money.

Quad-channel memory won't make up for the worse single-core performance these HEDT chips offer compared to their consumer grade counterparts.

Is there another way to measure 1-6 core performance from an am4 or LGA 1151 vs an HEDT/ LGA 2066 chipset?

 

I thought the main way was to compare the single - 6 core GHz

[talklogan]

6 minutes ago, Wizwerd said:

Is there another way to measure 1-6 core performance from an am4 or LGA 1151 vs an HEDT/ LGA 2066 chipset?

 

I thought the main way was to compare the single - 6 core GHz

You also could wait for intel 11th gen, they might have quad channel support and (maybe) 7nm

[Electronics Wizardy]

6 minutes ago, Wizwerd said:

Is there another way to measure 1-6 core performance from an am4 or LGA 1151 vs an HEDT/ LGA 2066 chipset?

 

I thought the main way was to compare the single - 6 core GHz

There is no easy single way to measure performance, but in almost all benchmarks, the hedt intel chips are a good amount slower than the am4 and 1200 chips. Look here for a example 

 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15785/the-intel-comet-lake-review-skylake-we-go-again/17

[Slayer3032]

Quad channel really isn't the point of HEDT, you have more than twice the pci-e lanes enabling you to actually use the expansion on your board instead of being limited to 1 16x and 1 4x which the later is generally cut in half when you enable some sata ports and god forbid you buy a high end motherboard which has a bunch of other things integrated into it which use pci-e lanes. You have ECC support(I assume), larger cpu choices, more robust components, power delivery, ect. too.

 

This means when you want to buy a few nvme's 4-5 years down the road as games expand to 200gb. Maybe slap in a spare video card for extra displays or vm's along with a couple usb cards for usb4, usb69 and whatever future things that say your Fractal Define R99 is going to have for I/O. There won't be a well, pick one or buy a new computer choice you have to make just because you wanted a new case and wanted to use your sata and nvme at the same time.

 

I'd recommend HEDT to people who are looking for long term platforms, someone who isn't worried about having 11/10th's single core performance and having the latest cpus. I've been running X58 for over 10 years now, which is an 11 year old platform pretty much at this point. It's seen like 4 gpu upgrades and a couple cpu upgrades, and I boot from nvme and have a working front USB3, which as far as I'm concerned my board doesn't support anyways. I have a GTX 1080 and get significantly limited by the GTX 1080 in 1440p on RDR2.

 

HEDT also out of the box runs more conservatively, overclocking is generally expected for gaming. As far as a stock 6800k to a 3900x. The 3900x is better in every way unless you're specifically looking for memory bandwidth or pci-e lanes. The pci-e 4.0 boards seem to be able to split them down into 3.0 lanes though so it's probably in the realm of what Intel HEDT users would likely use.

[Wizwerd]

2 minutes ago, Slayer3032 said:

Quad channel really isn't the point of HEDT, you have more than twice the pci-e lanes enabling you to the expansion on your board instead of being limited to 1 16x and 1 4x which the later is generally cut into when you enable some sata ports and god forbid you buy a high end motherboard which has a bunch of other things integrated into it which use pci-e lanes. You have ECC support(I assume), larger cpu choices, more robust components, power delivery, ect. too.

 

This means when you want to buy a few nvme's 4-5 years down the road as games expand to 200gb. Maybe slap in a spare video card for extra displays or vm's along with a couple usb cards for usb4, usb69 and whatever future things that say your Fractal Define R99 is going to have for I/O.

 

I'd recommend HEDT to people who are looking for long term platforms, someone who isn't worried about having 11/10th's single core performance and having the latest cpus. I've been running X58 for over 10 years now, which is an 11 year old platform pretty much at this point. It's seen like 4 gpu upgrades and a couple cpu upgrades, and I boot from nvme and have a working front USB3, which as far as I'm concerned my board doesn't support anyways.

 

HEDT also out of the box runs more conservatively, overclocking is generally expected for gaming. As far as a stock 6800k to a 3900x. The 3900x is better in every way unless you're specifically looking for memory bandwidth or pci-e lanes. The pci-e 4.0 boards seem to be able to split them down into 3.0 lanes though so it's probably in the realm of what Intel HEDT users would likely use.

I'm currently on an x99 but the newer x299's force me to go i9 x series chipset.  On my current rig I'm being bottleneck'd by my CPU/mobo and I can't just throw anything else in there because I'm at the top end for the current setup.  At this point I have to choose amd or intel...  I like having quad channel memory on my current board as that means I won't experience such low low's as dual channel boards.  Some of the I9 9900x's clock up to 4.7 GHz so from what I've seen so far is intel should still be top dog for gaming even on the HEDT.

 

 

10 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

There is no easy single way to measure performance, but in almost all benchmarks, the hedt intel chips are a good amount slower than the am4 and 1200 chips. Look here for a example 

 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15785/the-intel-comet-lake-review-skylake-we-go-again/17

The example seems...wrong.  None of the x series chips are 9900x + and the 9900k's use newer motherboards.  Also (this might just be me) but between my OC from 3.4 to 4.2 going from 2133 to 3200 ram and a GTX 1070 - 2080 TI  I gained no significant performance when I run a GTA benchmark test on max settings.  I'm not sure if I need to configure something differently but my Utilization didn't increase either and I seem to be capped at 63 fps even when I change it to full screen, v-sync on, G-sync compatible on, 165 monitor refresh rate. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Wizwerd]

19 minutes ago, talklogan said:

You also could wait for intel 11th gen, they might have quad channel support and (maybe) 7nm

Yeah I'm reading up on this right now.  I figure they'll still charge very high prices for 11th gen so when they release it I only hope they drop the price on the 9900x series to something reasonable.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Wizwerd said:

he example seems...wrong.  None of the x series chips are 9900x + and the 9900k's use newer motherboards.  Also (this might just be me) but between my OC from 3.4 to 4.2 going from 2133 to 3200 ram and a GTX 1070 - 2080 TI  I gained no significant performance when I run a GTA benchmark test on max settings.  I'm not sure if I need to configure something differently but my Utilization didn't increase either and I seem to be capped at 63 fps even when I change it to full screen, v-sync on, G-sync compatible on, 165 monitor refresh rate. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What seems wrong? Most games want high clock speeds and lower latencies, and thats what 1200 and am4 give you.

 

For games hedt and quad channel makes almost no sense.

[Wizwerd]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What seems wrong? Most games want high clock speeds and lower latencies, and thats what 1200 and am4 give you.

 

For games hedt and quad channel makes almost no sense.

an I9 9900x has high clock speeds though.  up to 4.7 GHz.  Doesn't having more ram bandwidth help with lower latencies?  I know it is harder to OC 4 ram sticks on a single channel than dual but isn't manual OC on ram sticks a very small rate of return? something like 4% on average over xmp.

 

Sorry if I don't know better but I'm not that familiar with these ryzen/ am4 chipsets.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Wizwerd said:

an I9 9900x has high clock speeds though.  up to 4.7 GHz.  Doesn't having more ram bandwidth help with lower latencies?  I know it is harder to OC 4 ram sticks on a single channel than dual but isn't manual OC on ram sticks a very small rate of return? something like 4% on average over xmp.

 

Sorry if I don't know better but I'm not that familiar with these ryzen/ am4 chipsets.

the other issues is how the cores are arranged, ring vs mesh bus. And the 9900k goes to 5gh.

 

the hdet chips have always been a pretty bad pick for games.

 

If you moslty want to play games Id get something like a 10600k, much faster than any hedt chip, and almost as fast as you can get for games.

[GoldenLag]

7 hours ago, Wizwerd said:

I like having quad channel memory on my current board as that means I won't experience such low low's as dual channel boards

What lows?

 

Quad channel really doesnt make sense for gaming as you are chasing lower latency for the memmory, not bandwidht. 

 

It makes no sense to go HEDT and quad channel for your usecase. As other products fit your requirements better. 

[HM-2]

If you have to ask the question of whether HEDT is better for your use case, chances are it isn't. The current X299/Comet Lake-X stuff is really only "better" than the consumer AM4/1200 in a few very specific niche use cases:

• Clock speed dependent applications using more than 8 but less than 24/28 threads (or 36 if you're taking the 10980x but that cuts awfully close to Threadripper 2 costs) and which don't take advantage of newer instruction sets
• Multi-GPU/multi-PCI-E systems (think 3+ GPUs or 2 GPUs and 3+ M.2 drives)
• Hobbyists and tinkerers as they're really the last bastion of "big overclocking gains" given that Ryzen/TR often loses performance when all core overclocked and the current Intel's boost to 5GHz plus easily

Most Comet-Lake X processors will clock up to 4.8-5GHz all core but the power draw in doing so is absurd and keeping them cool is a nightmare without custom solutions, and core for core they're still slower than Ryzen in most applications even taking into account the higher clocks.

 

Comparing the 12 core 10920x to the 12 core 3900x, the 10920 will perform worse at stock speeds and about the same overclocked, at a circa 30% higher platform cost (X570 vs X299)  and pushing double the power draw. The quad channel advantages pale in comparison to the drawbacks..

 

Also:

 

On my current rig I'm being bottleneck'd by my CPU/mobo and I can't just throw anything else in there because I'm at the top end for the current setup. 

 

This isn't true either. I've got a pretty decent boost in performance (circa 35% clock for clock) moving from a 5820K to 6900K, what with two cores/four threads more and better IPC. You're literally at the bottom of the Broadwell-E pecking order; you might find a 6900K/6950X offers a good deal more punch for a comparatively low upgrade cost.

[Wizwerd]

15 hours ago, GoldenLag said:

What lows?

 

Quad channel really doesnt make sense for gaming as you are chasing lower latency for the memmory, not bandwidht. 

 

It makes no sense to go HEDT and quad channel for your usecase. As other products fit your requirements better. 

yah that makes sense, thank you bro

 

13 hours ago, HM-2 said:

If you have to ask the question of whether HEDT is better for your use case, chances are it isn't. The current X299/Comet Lake-X stuff is really only "better" than the consumer AM4/1200 in a few very specific niche use cases:

• Clock speed dependent applications using more than 8 but less than 24/28 threads (or 36 if you're taking the 10980x but that cuts awfully close to Threadripper 2 costs) and which don't take advantage of newer instruction sets
• Multi-GPU/multi-PCI-E systems (think 3+ GPUs or 2 GPUs and 3+ M.2 drives)
• Hobbyists and tinkerers as they're really the last bastion of "big overclocking gains" given that Ryzen/TR often loses performance when all core overclocked and the current Intel's boost to 5GHz plus easily

Most Comet-Lake X processors will clock up to 4.8-5GHz all core but the power draw in doing so is absurd and keeping them cool is a nightmare without custom solutions, and core for core they're still slower than Ryzen in most applications even taking into account the higher clocks.

 

Comparing the 12 core 10920x to the 12 core 3900x, the 10920 will perform worse at stock speeds and about the same overclocked, at a circa 30% higher platform cost (X570 vs X299)  and pushing double the power draw. The quad channel advantages pale in comparison to the drawbacks..

 

Also:

 

On my current rig I'm being bottleneck'd by my CPU/mobo and I can't just throw anything else in there because I'm at the top end for the current setup. 

 

This isn't true either. I've got a pretty decent boost in performance (circa 35% clock for clock) moving from a 5820K to 6900K, what with two cores/four threads more and better IPC. You're literally at the bottom of the Broadwell-E pecking order; you might find a 6900K/6950X offers a good deal more punch for a comparatively low upgrade cost.

 

22 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

the other issues is how the cores are arranged, ring vs mesh bus. And the 9900k goes to 5gh.

 

the hdet chips have always been a pretty bad pick for games.

 

If you moslty want to play games Id get something like a 10600k, much faster than any hedt chip, and almost as fast as you can get for games.

ty for the chipset advice.  It got me curious and I'm currently set on getting an i7-10700k.  It has 4.8 GHz boost and I think i can get to 5.1 GHz with a good OC.  8 cores is plenty even for the newer games coming out.  The z490 motherboards may not have pcie 4.0 compatiblity but pcie 3.0 isn't going anywhere anytime soon. I found a board + cpu that works with my price range and I'm looking forward to getting the right custom water cool setup for it.  Big thanks man.

 

13 hours ago, HM-2 said:

If you have to ask the question of whether HEDT is better for your use case, chances are it isn't. The current X299/Comet Lake-X stuff is really only "better" than the consumer AM4/1200 in a few very specific niche use cases:

• Clock speed dependent applications using more than 8 but less than 24/28 threads (or 36 if you're taking the 10980x but that cuts awfully close to Threadripper 2 costs) and which don't take advantage of newer instruction sets
• Multi-GPU/multi-PCI-E systems (think 3+ GPUs or 2 GPUs and 3+ M.2 drives)
• Hobbyists and tinkerers as they're really the last bastion of "big overclocking gains" given that Ryzen/TR often loses performance when all core overclocked and the current Intel's boost to 5GHz plus easily

Most Comet-Lake X processors will clock up to 4.8-5GHz all core but the power draw in doing so is absurd and keeping them cool is a nightmare without custom solutions, and core for core they're still slower than Ryzen in most applications even taking into account the higher clocks.

 

Comparing the 12 core 10920x to the 12 core 3900x, the 10920 will perform worse at stock speeds and about the same overclocked, at a circa 30% higher platform cost (X570 vs X299)  and pushing double the power draw. The quad channel advantages pale in comparison to the drawbacks..

 

Also:

 

On my current rig I'm being bottleneck'd by my CPU/mobo and I can't just throw anything else in there because I'm at the top end for the current setup. 

 

This isn't true either. I've got a pretty decent boost in performance (circa 35% clock for clock) moving from a 5820K to 6900K, what with two cores/four threads more and better IPC. You're literally at the bottom of the Broadwell-E pecking order; you might find a 6900K/6950X offers a good deal more punch for a comparatively low upgrade cost.

alright, that makes sense.  But I actually am capped on my i7-6800k / x99 asrock board.  The motherboard doesn't support higher chipsets according to the Manufacturer website.  They even claim that the ram sticks can be OC'd up to 4k but it becomes unstable on frequencies higher than 3200 with the current 3600 sticks I have in right now.  Its probably better I get an upgraded motherboard anyway as the newer boards have more power, easier to OC, and have extra m.2 slots. 

 

Also my current board won't support any of the corsair RGB fans I'm planning on getting so I would need to upgrade anyway.

 

I know amd has really good pricing but I think i've found a sweet deal with this i7 i've been looking at since @Electronics Wizardy got me looking around in other places.

 

For the time being amd has the better $$ per core but what good are the extra cores in gaming if they aren't being used by the games themselves?  We'll see in the future if the newer engines will utilize more cores but until then I think intel is still top dog even if they charge way more.

[GoldenLag]

1 minute ago, Wizwerd said:

The z490 motherboards may not have pcie 4.0 compatiblity but pcie 3.0 isn't going anywhere anytime soon

actually, as far as i know, all the boards support PCIe 4.0 due to the use of PCIe 4.0 switches. however there are no CPUs that support PCIe 4.0 for that chipset yet. 

 

2 minutes ago, Wizwerd said:

have extra m.2 slots.

kinda, depends on the board and chipset. 

 

as consumer linups have 16 or 16+4 lanes for our own use. rest being 4 lanes to chipset. (the +4 being a m.2 slot on the AM4 plattform). 

[Wizwerd]

1 minute ago, GoldenLag said:

actually, as far as i know, all the boards support PCIe 4.0 due to the use of PCIe 4.0 switches. however there are no CPUs that support PCIe 4.0 for that chipset yet. 

 

kinda, depends on the board and chipset. 

 

as consumer linups have 16 or 16+4 lanes for our own use. rest being 4 lanes to chipset. (the +4 being a m.2 slot on the AM4 plattform). 

the Asus Z490 gaming E should work with the 11th gen intel chips that would use the pcie 4.0 (i hope) but I don't think its that big of a deal atm.

 

2-3 m.2 depending on the board ya.  But 2 is all I really need anyway.  My x99 only has one slot.

[GoldenLag]

35 minutes ago, Wizwerd said:

My x99 only has one slot.

Well since its x99. You can add a expansion card no problem. 

 

As for 2 slots. That usually isnt any issue, providing you dont expect them to run at full speed simultaniusly 

[HM-2]

3 hours ago, Wizwerd said:

alright, that makes sense.  But I actually am capped on my i7-6800k / x99 asrock board.  The motherboard doesn't support higher chipsets according to the Manufacturer website. 

Really? Got a link? It seems very strange for a motherboard to be limited to a single processor and not be compatible with others using the same socket.

 

Instability in memory speeds above 3000/3200 is very common in X99. It's more down to the memory controller on the chip rather than the motherboard. My chip will only do 3000 despite otherwise being a pretty good overclocker

[Wizwerd]

On 6/27/2020 at 6:33 PM, HM-2 said:

Really? Got a link? It seems very strange for a motherboard to be limited to a single processor and not be compatible with others using the same socket.

 

Instability in memory speeds above 3000/3200 is very common in X99. It's more down to the memory controller on the chip rather than the motherboard. My chip will only do 3000 despite otherwise being a pretty good overclocker

link

 

click on the cpu support list tab and scroll down to the bottom of the list.

 

Actually just got a blue screen playing RDR2 at 4.2 GHz OC

 

restarted and loaded my 4.2 profile and immediately crashed at desktop.

 

Seems to be running fine when I lowered it down to 4.1

 

Strange that It was running fine for weeks until today. : /

[HM-2]

3 minutes ago, Wizwerd said:

link

 

click on the cpu support list tab and scroll down to the bottom of the list.

The 6900K and 6950X are on that list along with the 5960X.

[Wizwerd]

9 minutes ago, HM-2 said:

The 6900K and 6950X are on that list along with the 5960X.

6900k and 6950x

 

 

why would I upgrade to that chip when my mobo won't support higher frequencies with my current ram?

 

I'm 100% better off spending $340 on a i7-10700k and $300 on a newer mobo that supports up to 4600 OC ram.

 

those two chipsets aren't that big of an upgrade compared to a newer mobo/cpu.

 

also the fact that Intel isn't selling those chipsets..

[HM-2]

20 minutes ago, Wizwerd said:

Why would I upgrade to that chip when my mobo won't support higher frequencies with my current ram?

I don't recall suggest you should, I was simply pointing out that you aren't locked to the 6800K by your motherboard and could increase core count of you so wanted. 

 

The net benefits of the jump in RAM speed are actually pretty small anyway, the IPC improvements are the bigger factor with the newer chips.