The 5900x makes the 5800x look like a terrible buy

[curiousmind34]

The 5900x is selling for 550 (when in stock) while the 5800x is selling for 450. They have the same single core performance, but one has 8 cores and one has 12 cores. Wouldn’t that make the 5900x a much better buy, providing 50% more cores for a 22% price increase. The 22% price increase can be recouped by the cpu being better and lasting for 5 years instead of 4, due to the extra cores. I can already see people replying, “But I only care about gaming and single core!”. If the 5900x was 650, then there would be a reason to buy a 5800x over a 5900x. But just a 100 dollar difference for four more cores? Even if you mainly use single core, it’s so cheap of an add on that it makes sense, for when you are doing multithreaded workloads. Maybe there is something I’m missing, because a lot of people are choosing a 5800x. What do you guys think?

[Guest]

That's been the general consensus the whole time.

It's just that it doesn't matter when you can't reliably buy a 5900X.

[Enderman]

First of all, it's not just gaming, but the majority of programs that exist don't need many cores.

Only entusiasts and video editors and other professionals need many cores.

Most of the world is still running on 2 or 4 core CPUs.

 

Second, not everyone has an extra $100, many people have a set budget and would rather spend that money on storage or a better GPU than more cores that won't help them

 

Third, not everyone lives in the US, and $100 USD is actually a lot more than that in other countries, making the difference even bigger.

[Downkey]

If everything was in stock? Yeah then the 5800x is just a trash buy. But can you find a 5900x? Hell no. The stock issues should end soon if the trend of a single Zen 3 CPU getting massive stock comes, but currently? The 5800x is still the move.

 

Some people don’t want to spend more than $450, or the extra $100 isn’t worth it for some people. Not everyone needs 12 cores, not everyone needs 8.

 

If the pricing wasn’t so bad for the Zen 3 CPUS then the 5800x would be a good value. 
 

 

[curiousmind34]

1 hour ago, Enderman said:

First of all, it's not just gaming, but the majority of programs that exist don't need many cores.

Only entusiasts and video editors and other professionals need many cores.

Most of the world is still running on 2 or 4 core CPUs.

 

Second, not everyone has an extra $100, many people have a set budget and would rather spend that money on storage or a better GPU than more cores that won't help them

 

Third, not everyone lives in the US, and $100 USD is actually a lot more than that in other countries, making the difference even bigger.

For most people, the ryzen 5 5600x is enough for gaming and single threaded, or the ryzen 9 is there for multithreaded workloads, the r7 is priced way to close to the ryzen 9, and the use case for apps that are optimized to more than 6 cores but not 12 is very small. Maybe it makes sense to a small niche of people, but not many.

 

there are people with fixed budgets where you just cannot afford a ryzen 9 but for those who are not on fixed budgets , if 100 dollars on a 2000 dollar build is going to cause financial pain, imo it’s not the time to spend that much on a pc.

 

and foreign pricing is different, that is a valid point.this advice applies to USA 

 

and yes, I know the ryzen 9s aren’t in stock, so if you need a system right now you might have to settle for the 5800x, which is still a good cpu in a vacuum with no ryzen 9s.

[xg32]

5800x isn't really a good deal but it's in stock. The best per core benches i've seen are also on the 5800x (single ccx?), i almost jumped on a 5800x but i'm waiting for a 5950x, never really considered the 5600x or the 5900x, not saying you are wrong at all, just a weird take i guess.

[merrybird12345]

What is the lesser valued proposition:  spending  X + $100  for 4 extra cores you (probably) won't use, or spending x on something you will use?

 

The second one makes more sense to me, that and 5900X wasn't in stock.  $450 for this piece of alien technology that I'll use for (mostly) work and some play for hours a day for several years is $450 well spent.  No regerts.