Photographer/Videographer & Gaming - Intel to AMD Switch Questions

[JS75]

Hello all,

 

First post here, I did some searching and searching off the forums too and I feel like I can't quite get a definitive answer on anything and I really don't want to go into this in the dark.

 

I haven't done anything yet but I am considering switching from my 12700K to a AMD CPU like the 7800X3D or 7900X or non-X. I built my PC myself and I have that background knowledge but switching motherboards and CPUs is a whole new ballgame for me. 

 

My main questions are:

 

1. I have seen most places I need to backup my information on my main SSD and reinstall windows, it seems the fresh installation is started the first time booting up after installing new CPU and Motherboard? This doesn't scare me too much, just trying to ascertain the full process of doing this.

2. As the title says, I am a semi-professional photographer and videographer and I use this machine for editing photos and videos as well as gaming. I have a 2 TB M.2 SSD, 4 TB M.2 SSD, and an 8 TB 2.5" SSD installed on my computer strictly for storing photos and videos there is nothing else on them. I have a 3rd 2 TB M.2 SSD that has games and the Windows installation on it.  Does anything need to be re-formatted here if I clean install Windows? or will the drives work properly as soon as booted up on the new Motherboard?

I was looking to find a good guide to doing this well, the guides I have found so far feel incomplete or generally lack proper information both on Youtube and in written format. That is why I turned to asking the question here.

 

I greatly appreciate any help or push to a proper guide, I haven't made any decisions yet. I have a 12700K and 3080 GPU and I have been considering upgrading one or the other this fall and I haven't decided which but needed this information before proceeding any further! Or frankly my research could lead me to no upgrades, we will see!

[venomtail]

7950X3D exists for best of both words, except price and cooling.

[TimedPing]

Greetings!

 

For your platform switch, any reason to change? both platform is quite recent, and depends of your workload, you doesn't really need to upgrade, atleast until ryzen 8000 or 15th gen Intel core series CPU released. One thing you need to note is you gonna loose Intel Integrated GPU features called QuickSync, which help you in video editing and transcoding, despite you also have dedicated card plugged in (depending on the program).

 

And for your other question:

1. Yes, doing clean installation after doing platform upgrade is highly recommended, you can backup all the data you stored in your system drive to other drive. Usually most user saved their data on the users folder directory in C:\ drive. You can just copy and paste it by going to C:\users\(Your account name)\ and backup folder like document, music, downloads, etc if you have any data in it.
2. No, you doesn't need to reformatted other drive that doesn't contain the windows system file

My recommendation for you is just hold on, just wait a more, unless you really those extra performance and features, like AV1 encoding on RTX 4000 and Radeon RX 7000 series GPU.

[SupaKomputa]

1. No need to reinstall for win10 and up. You just plug and play, out of 10 or more machines that i upgraded (swap), i never encounter any (install) problem. Windows is very good at managing this. Only fresh install when you have a problem. Believe me, it sucks to reinstall programs and plugins from the start.

 

Another thing you can do is fresh install on a new drive, and just let the old drive as is. can be useful for backups OS.

 

2. If you move windows to windows, you dont need a reformat.

 

Just build the PC and put everything at the same location, you'll be fine.

BTW 12700 + 3080 is pretty good for what you do. I would hold 2-3 more years to upgrade.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Is there a reason why you want to upgrade? The 12700k is still a very good chip, and the ryzen 7000 isn't enough of a performance differnce to upgrade for me. And the 12700k has a igpu that supports some codecs to make editing much better if you use h.265 422 10bit.

[JS75]

I appreciate the fast replies, you all brought up the last point I should've included, and thats that maybe I should just hold out for awhile before making any changes/updates. I also appreciate walking through the upgrade process a bit more, I will file that away for future use. Interesting to still see what I found which is slightly differing views on reinstalling windows or not.

 

I think I just got excited about following all the new releases andthe AMD hype and thought about AM5 future-proofing and upgrading early. But that said you all talked some sense into me that I should just let it be and use this setup for awhile. See my current setup below:

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/JS75/saved/7czrMp

 

Got the GPU when prices crashed last year as well, its pretty funny that a 3080 costs over $300 more than last year. 

 

Thank you all for the input!

[Zando_]

2 hours ago, JS75 said:

AM5 future-proofing

What future-proofing? AFAIK they have not confirmed any long-term support like they did for AM4. 

[JS75]

6 hours ago, Zando_ said:

What future-proofing? AFAIK they have not confirmed any long-term support like they did for AM4. 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/17192/ces-2022-amds-nextgen-am5-platform-to-have-long-term-support

 

Just saw it places like this but I’ll admit I didn’t read incredibly in depth into it. 

[Zando_]

2 minutes ago, JS75 said:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/17192/ces-2022-amds-nextgen-am5-platform-to-have-long-term-support

 

Just saw it places like this but I’ll admit I didn’t read incredibly in depth into it. 

That doesn't look terribly solid. They said similar about sTRX4 (3000 series Threadripper platform with a cool ~$2000+ entry point for mobo + CPU) only to dump it after a single generation of chips (https://hothardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-threadripper-strx4-zen-2-trx40). AMD does have a better track record with their mainstream platforms, but I'm not huge on trusting them unless they say something more concrete. I guess you are more likely to get a longer running platform than with Intel though, so it is a safer bet.

[KaitouX]

1 hour ago, Zando_ said:

AMD does have a better track record with their mainstream platforms, but I'm not huge on trusting them unless they say something more concrete.

They did try to backtrack on the long term AM4 support multiple times. But they ended up doing the right thing(after a lot of backlash) and adding Zen2 support to B350/X370 boards and Zen 3 support to B450/X470 and later B350/X370.

[Zando_]

28 minutes ago, KaitouX said:

They did try to backtrack on the long term AM4 support multiple times. But they ended up doing the right thing(after a lot of backlash) and adding Zen2 support to B350/X370 boards and Zen 3 support to B450/X470 and later B350/X370.

To be fair to AMD, I do believe a lot of that was poor planning, not malicious. The old boards had tiny BIOS ROMs, they're now in a weird spot where to update for current chip support removes support for older chips, and most motherboards do not like flashing an older BIOS, so you cannot easily go back and run older chips. I'd hope they learned from that with AM5 if they do intend to support the boards themselves, and not just the socket. See Intel's Z170/270 and 370/470 boards, they used the same socket but did not support the chips from the other set of boards (though technically you could hack a 9900K onto some Z170 boards).