Ryzen 5900X vs 5950X future usability

[Rajivrocks]

Hi guys,

 

So I'm going to make a new build soon, I was about to buy the 5950X. cuz the 5900 was 100 euro over MSRP, but I see the MSRP dropped to 599 euro here. So I bet soon it will be back to MSRP here.

My question though now is. If i do go with the 5950X, how long will the 5950X be viable compared to the 5900X?

 

For comparison, I'm still running an i7 3770K. And I just this year decided to upgrade. So I intend to keep the CPU I buy now for a long time.

Will the extra 250+- euro be worth it in the long term when I go with the 5950x? Or will the 5950X and the 5900X be deprecated around the same time?

 

For some context, I intend to game on this ofc, but I'm also a software engineer who runs a lot of heavy IDE's and sometimes servers to test stuff on, I also develop games and edit some vids. I don't know what I will do in the future since I'm working on my dissertation for graduation. But yeah, maybe it would be smart to go with the more powerful option, but I saw that the difference between the 5950X and 5900X performance is not worth the extra money in comparison to the performance you gain from the 5950X.

 

Hope I was clear enough in explaining my situation and my concern. 

[Bombastinator]

23 minutes ago, Rajivrocks said:

Hi guys,

 

So I'm going to make a new build soon, I was about to buy the 5950X. cuz the 5900 was 100 euro over MSRP, but I see the MSRP dropped to 599 euro here. So I bet soon it will be back to MSRP here.

My question though now is. If i do go with the 5950X, how long will the 5950X be viable compared to the 5900X?

 

For comparison, I'm still running an i7 3770K. And I just this year decided to upgrade. So I intend to keep the CPU I buy now for a long time.

Will the extra 250+- euro be worth it in the long term when I go with the 5950x? Or will the 5950X and the 5900X be deprecated around the same time?

 

For some context, I intend to game on this ofc, but I'm also a software engineer who runs a lot of heavy IDE's and sometimes servers to test stuff on, I also develop games and edit some vids. I don't know what I will do in the future since I'm working on my dissertation for graduation. But yeah, maybe it would be smart to go with the more powerful option, but I saw that the difference between the 5950X and 5900X performance is not worth the extra money in comparison to the performance you gain from the 5950X.

 

Hope I was clear enough in explaining my situation and my concern. 

No one knows.  You’re talking about the future.  The difference between the 5950 and the 5900 is one has 12/24 cores the other has 16/32 otherwise they’re basically the same.  Both are over 8/16 which is what even the most conservative estimates think could be needed for gaming through the life of the new consoles.  Both the 5950 and 5900 are really difficult to get atm. Back when they came out before the chip shortage the 5900 was considered a better deal than the 5800 because the price was nearly the same.

[Chris Pratt]

Both are chips for productivity and creators. No game even remotely uses this many cores and won't for a long time. That's why the 5600X is so popular, its 6 cores is pretty much perfect for pure gaming builds.

 

Long and short, you should judge which you should buy on everything you do, *besides* gaming, such as video editing, programming, etc., and then determine if the extra cores and threads is worth it for your workflow. If you don't do any of those things, then both chips are overkill.

[Rajivrocks]

9 minutes ago, Chris Pratt said:

Both are chips for productivity and creators. No game even remotely uses this many cores and won't for a long time. That's why the 5600X is so popular, its 6 cores is pretty much perfect for pure gaming builds.

 

Long and short, you should judge which you should buy on everything you do, *besides* gaming, such as video editing, programming, etc., and then determine if the extra cores and threads is worth it for your workflow. If you don't do any of those things, then both chips are overkill.

Yeah like I said in my post I do a lot of productivity related work. But what I was more wondering is if they will hold up well in the future, and which one would last the longest and if the 5950X would outlast the 5900X by how long and if that would be worth the extra money you pay. But I realize also after what @Bombastinatorsaid that I'm trying to look into the future which is impossible, but I hoped some of the more knowledgeable people here had some good insights based on past happenings.

 

I intend to use this for 7+ years so if the 5900X falls over way sooner than the 5950X for example I'd consider getting the 5950X. What I'm basicaly trying to avoid is that i'll have to upgrade after 6 years. Preferably I wanna keep this CPU almost as long as I did my 3770K so like 8-9 years. I know this is kind of a stretch though. So buying overkill now so that in the future i'm set

[Kilrah]

For something you intend to keep that long I'd go with 5950X, more headroom. 

 

That said the next big thing in CPUs may be something that none of today's ones do and it might still prompt an upgrade earlier, nobody knows.

[Rajivrocks]

1 minute ago, Kilrah said:

For something you intend to keep that long I'd go with 5950X, more headroom. 

 

That said the next big thing in CPUs may be something that none of today's ones do and it might still prompt an upgrade earlier, nobody knows.

yeah, its a guessing game at this point with me looking that far ahead

[OfficialTechSpace]

54 minutes ago, Rajivrocks said:

My question though now is. If i do go with the 5950X, how long will the 5950X be viable compared to the 5900X?

Any CPU is viable until it doesn't meet your demands. Age doesn't naturally make anything slower unless you're suffering from Chip Degradation. Unless your workflow substantially increases in process difficulty over the years, I wouldn't see the need to upgrade from either for a good while. My point is, no one chip will last longer than the other if the only difference between them is more/less cores. If a 5900X meets your workflows demands in 2021, what's to say it won't in a few years? And what's to say a few more cores would help?

53 minutes ago, Rajivrocks said:

Will the extra 250+- euro be worth it in the long term when I go with the 5950x? Or will the 5950X and the 5900X be deprecated around the same time?

It wouldn't be worth it. Since when has more cores made CPUs viable for longer durations? That's like someone in 2014 asking if an E5-2698 v3 (16 Core) Xeon will be more relevant than a E5-2697 v2 (12 Core) Xeon in the future. No, both are old, both are slow, and more cores did not help the Xeon keep up by modern standards.

 

Just buy what works now, and upgrade when you need to. Don't go overkill trying to think long-term, you'll actually lose money with that mindset.

[Bombastinator]

25 minutes ago, Rajivrocks said:

yeah, its a guessing game at this point with me looking that far ahead

The 5950 may be impossible to get currently anyway so this whole question may be moot.  Part of the issue is the ability to keep a cpu for as long as you managed to keep the last one was something of an aberration based on intel not being able to pull their thumb out of icelake. It wasn’t normal.  I’ve got a 4770k which is close to the same chip and ive had that for an unreasonably long time too.  When I bought it I expected it to need replacing several years ago.  Looking at what chips are being developed though I’m not seeing 12 or 16 core stuff I’m seeing 124 core stuff.  Also imho SOI will never hit 6ghz on ambient, so it’s about thread count.  my suspicion is the 5950 will have a bit more time than the 5900 but not a whole lot.  My personal move would be to go 8 core and see what happens.  I’m a gamer though.  “Productivity” is a different animal.

Edited May 6, 2021 by Bombastinator

[Chris Pratt]

42 minutes ago, Rajivrocks said:

Yeah like I said in my post I do a lot of productivity related work. But what I was more wondering is if they will hold up well in the future, and which one would last the longest and if the 5950X would outlast the 5900X by how long and if that would be worth the extra money you pay. But I realize also after what @Bombastinatorsaid that I'm trying to look into the future which is impossible, but I hoped some of the more knowledgeable people here had some good insights based on past happenings.

 

I intend to use this for 7+ years so if the 5900X falls over way sooner than the 5950X for example I'd consider getting the 5950X. What I'm basicaly trying to avoid is that i'll have to upgrade after 6 years. Preferably I wanna keep this CPU almost as long as I did my 3770K so like 8-9 years. I know this is kind of a stretch though. So buying overkill now so that in the future i'm set

First off, 7+ years is an absolute eternity for a PC. There's nothing really that's going to survive that long (from a being able to actually run the programs and games you want to run perspective), even if you buy the absolute top tier stuff at the time. For context, 7 years ago so saw the introduction for the 4th gen Intels and the GTX 980. Now, those are probably passable still today, but remember also that we were stuck in a computing plateau for a long period during that time. The breakthroughs even just in the last couple of years foreshadow a far greater difference 7 years from now.

 

Then, the only meaningful difference here is core count. In 7 years, the difference between 12 and 16 is not what's going to make or break you one way or another. Again, it comes down to how many actual cores and threads you need now. Having more cores doesn't make it go faster unless you have workloads that are actually doing 32 things at once, and thus only being able to do 24 things at once is artificially limiting. That's not something that really changes with time, at least at this type of core/thread counts.

[Kilrah]

15 minutes ago, OfficialTechSpace said:

Since when has more cores made CPUs viable for longer durations?

Well that depends on the number of them, 12 vs 16 not yet, but for sure when I bought my 8-core 5960X in 2014 it got many more years of relevance than if I had gone for the standard quad core of the day... heck it's still decent today and wasn't surpassed by the "consumer" line until 2019.

[OfficialTechSpace]

6 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Well that depends on the number of them, when I bought my 8-core 5960X in 2014 it got many more years of relevance than if I had gone for the standard quad core of the day...

I'm aware, I don't dispute that

I'm just questioning the thought of disapproval in a 12 core CPU within the next many years (which is not likely).

[Rajivrocks]

44 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

The 5950 may be impossible to get currently anyway so this whole question may be moot.  Part of the issue is the ability to keep a cpu for as long as you managed to keep the last one was something of an aberration based on intel not being able to pull their thumb out of icelake. It wasn’t normal.  I’ve got a 4770k which is close to the same chip and ive had that for an unreasonably long time too.  When I bought it I expected it to need replacing several years ago.  Looking at what chips are being developed though I’m not seeing 12 or 16 core stuff I’m seeing 124 core stuff.  Also imho SOI will never hit 6ghz on ambient, so it’s about thread count.  my suspicion is the 5950 will have a bit more time than the 5900 but not a whole lot.  My personal move would be to go 8 core and see what happens.  I’m a gamer though.  “Productivity” is a different animal.

Yeah atm here the shortage for CPUs is seemingly dissapearing, atm you can buy a 5950X for MSRP and a 5900X for 599 euro so soon back at MSRP As well. But you guys make a good point, The reason i managed to keep a hold of my old CPU So long was because intel was slacking hard af. Now that AMD and Intel both woke up it will go a lot faster.

 

I think I'll wait for next week, I'm sure the price will than return to MSRP for the 5900X and I'll just buy that. Its just gonna suck cuz I'll need to buy a new Mobo again when I upgrade. And probably new RAM

[DobertRownySr]

Don't ever buy computer parts while worrying about "future" usability.

In 5 years, the current best stuff will be mid-low end.

[Rajivrocks]

Just now, DobertRownySr said:

Don't ever buy computer parts while worrying about "future" usability.

In 5 years, the current best stuff will be mid-low end.

Yeah, this is very true, I'm just trying to get the most time out of my stuff, but that doesn't mean the most expensive stuff ofc

[Bombastinator]

49 minutes ago, Rajivrocks said:

Yeah atm here the shortage for CPUs is seemingly dissapearing, atm you can buy a 5950X for MSRP and a 5900X for 599 euro so soon back at MSRP As well. But you guys make a good point, The reason i managed to keep a hold of my old CPU So long was because intel was slacking hard af. Now that AMD and Intel both woke up it will go a lot faster.

 

I think I'll wait for next week, I'm sure the price will than return to MSRP for the 5900X and I'll just buy that. Its just gonna suck cuz I'll need to buy a new Mobo again when I upgrade. And probably new RAM

That’s how it goes.  Every time.  The biggest argument for the 5950 imho is actually resale.  Because it’s the fastest chip that can be put on the board it will hold value better. I doubt it will hold $250 of value though.

[Rajivrocks]

2 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

That’s how it goes.  Every time.  The biggest argument for the 5950 imho is actually resale.  Because it’s the fastest chip that can be put on the board it will hold value better. I doubt it will hold $250 of value though.

Yeah indeed, nah I'll just go with the 5900X. Now its just a waiting game for the 50 euro drop back to MSRP

[Chris Pratt]

On 5/6/2021 at 12:51 PM, Bombastinator said:

That’s how it goes.  Every time.  The biggest argument for the 5950 imho is actually resale.  Because it’s the fastest chip that can be put on the board it will hold value better. I doubt it will hold $250 of value though.

It's actually not, if you don't run at stock. The 5900X has the potential to boost as good as, if not better than the 5950X because it has less cores per CCX, and thus a little more power and thermal headroom. I undervolted my 5900X with the PBO2 curve optimizer and now it boosts to 4.95GHz. The only real benefit to the 5950X is literally having more cores/threads, which if you don't actually need to do 32 things at once, isn't buying you anything.

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, Chris Pratt said:

It's actually not, if you don't run at stock. The 5900X has the potential to boost as good as, if not better than the 5950X because it has less cores per CCX, and thus a little more power and thermal headroom. I undervolted my 5900X with the PBO2 curve optimizer and now it boosts to 4.95GHz. The only real benefit to the 5950X is literally having more cores/threads, which if you don't actually need to do 32 things at once, isn't buying you anything.

But then it’s an overclocked chip.  And as such has a reduced value.

[Chris Pratt]

23 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

But then it’s an overclocked chip.  And as such has a reduced value.

But in the aftermarket, this is what people will be looking for, i.e. the chip they can tweak the most performance out of, not the one claims some number on the tin.

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, Chris Pratt said:

But in the aftermarket, this is what people will be looking for, i.e. the chip they can tweak the most performance out of, not the one claims some number on the tin.

Makes assumptions about behavior that are the opposite of what has happened in the past. “Never been overclocked” is a monicker  that has cash value.

[Kilrah]

To some maybe, to others "overclocks more than average" has more.

[Bombastinator]

4 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

To some maybe, to others "overclocks more than average" has more.

That One persons trash is another persons treasure has supported a lot of businesses over the course of history. If you can spin an overclocked chip as being well binned instead of being potentially burned up have at it.  I’m just looking at the over all trend.  Well done and well cooled OCing doesn’t damage chips so you are potentially correct.  The question is how do you tell?