Which AM4 CPU is the GOAT?

[YoungBlade]

The AM4 platform is undeniably the GOAT CPU platform. It has had some of the greatest CPUs of all time. Now that it's basically done - even though AMD keeps creating new SKUs somehow - I would like to get the community's perspective on which single CPU is the GOAT of the GOAT platform.

 

I kept it to 10 11 choices - it's crazy to think that I'd like to add more - so I had to make some decisions.

 

Here's my blurb for each one showing why I wanted it on the list:

 

The Ryzen 7 1700 - the OG value productivity beast, GN called it "Ryzen's Champion" for a reason.

 

The Ryzen 5 1600 - the mid-range do-it-all chip that changed consumer perceptions of what a "5" series CPU should be.

 

The Ryzen 3 1200 - the entry level chip that pushed the budget segment past 2 cores.

 

The Ryzen 3 2200G - possibly the best value APU of all time. Unbeatable for its price-to-performance for budget gaming and HTPCs.

 

The Ryzen 5 2600 - the Zen+ chip that made Intel's core increases with the 8000 series seem insufficient.

 

The Ryzen 5 3600 - the value king of its generation, period.

 

The Ryzen 9 3900X - the chip that spelt doom for Intel's HEDT platform.
 

The Ryzen 9 5950X - the 16 core beast with insane efficiency.

 

The Ryzen 7 5700G - the most powerful APU on the platform, giving you decent gaming without a GPU plus enough CPU power to handle adding one.

 

The Ryzen 7 5800X3D - next generation gaming performance on a last generation platform. The ultimate in-socket upgrade for high framerates and low frame times.

 

The Ryzen 5 5600 - the best value end-game gaming chip for AM4. 

[Likwid]

where ryzen 5600? best upgrade from previus x600

[emothxughts]

I may be biased (peep signature), but I vote R5 3600, next upgrade is gonna be AM5 though.

[GuiltySpark_]

No one will remember anything but 5800x3D. They just won't. 

 

The sockets legacy defining CPU.

[YoungBlade]

2 minutes ago, Likwid said:

where ryzen 5600? best upgrade from previus x600

Fair point. I've added it.

 

I was mainly thinking about the quality of the chips at the time of release. The 5600 was a bitter-sweet chip, coming out way later than expected into a bad market. Its reception was pretty lukewarm compared to the previous Ryzen 5 non-X parts.

 

However, it's become a great value option in the last year, and certainly deserves the mention.

[Agall]

14 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

The AM4 platform is undeniably the GOAT CPU platform. It has had some of the greatest CPUs of all time. Now that it's basically done - even though AMD keeps creating new SKUs somehow - I would like to get the community's perspective on which single CPU is the GOAT of the GOAT platform.

 

I kept it to 10 choices - it's crazy to think that I'd like to add more - so I had to make some decisions.

 

Here's my blurb for each one showing why I wanted it on the list:

 

The Ryzen 7 1700 - the OG value productivity beast, GN called it "Ryzen's Champion" for a reason.

 

The Ryzen 5 1600 - the mid-range do-it-all chip that changed consumer perceptions of what a "5" series CPU should be.

 

The Ryzen 3 1200 - the entry level chip that pushed the budget segment past 2 cores.

 

The Ryzen 3 2200G - possibly the best value APU of all time. Unbeatable for its price-to-performance for budget gaming and HTPCs.

 

The Ryzen 5 2600 - the Zen+ chip that made Intel's core increases with the 8000 series seem insufficient.

 

The Ryzen 5 3600 - the value king of its generation, period.

 

The Ryzen 9 3900X - the chip that spelt doom for Intel's HEDT platform.
 

The Ryzen 9 5950X - the 16 core beast with insane efficiency.

 

The Ryzen 7 5700G - the most powerful APU on the platform, giving you decent gaming without a GPU plus enough CPU power to handle adding one.

 

The Ryzen 7 5800X3D - next generation gaming performance on a last generation platform. The ultimate in-socket upgrade for high framerates and low frame times.

 

The Ryzen 5 5600 - the best value end-game gaming chip for AM4. 

For high performance gaming, the 5800x3D.

 

For budget gaming, the 3600/5600.

 

For HEDT replacement with easy ECC support, the 3950x/5950x.

 

Its a hard choice because AM4 is probably as good as we've ever seen for a platform. Outside of the terrifying nature of PGA, it was effectively perfect.

 

AM5 has its potential, especially having an iGPU that allows for a lot more options for general purpose use. The G series for AM4 served just fine though in this role at least.

[YoungBlade]

9 minutes ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

No one will remember anything but 5800x3D. They just won't. 

 

The sockets legacy defining CPU.

I expect it to win, but I think it's still worth remembering that, beyond the 5800X3D, there were many CPUs that went into making the platform so great.

 

While I agree with you that the 5800X3D will have the enduring legacy, I think the Ryzen 5 1600 is probably the best chip ever released. Period.

 

The Ryzen 5 6c/12t parts completely changed consumer expectations around CPUs - they were the key to the destruction of the Intel four-cores-forever strategy. And it all started with the Ryzen 5 1600 - the ultimate, original, all-rounder.

 

Now, I imagine there's someone on this forum who went from a Ryzen 5 1600 straight to a Ryzen 7 5800X3D. I'd love to hear from that person on this, because they basically got the best consumer CPU experience of all time.

[porina]

13 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

The Ryzen 7 1700 - the OG value productivity beast, GN called it "Ryzen's Champion" for a reason.

The Ryzen 5 1600 - the mid-range do-it-all chip that changed consumer perceptions of what a "5" series CPU should be.

I owned both of these. They had severe limitations so their credit is mainly due to "moar cores" vs Intel of the time. And Cinebench scores which was the only thing AMD fanboys would look at to demonstrate their "superiority". Half baked FPU, low gaming performance as clocks dropped quickly as you load the cores up. My 4c4t 6600k of the time would beat both in gaming and FP compute.

 

13 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

The Ryzen 5 2600 - the Zen+ chip that made Intel's core increases with the 8000 series seem insufficient.

I had one of those too. Multi-core clock boost got a lot better than 1st gen, but still not even close to a 8700k (I had the 8086k). AMD was cheaper I guess? So value win.

 

13 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

The Ryzen 5 3600 - the value king of its generation, period.

Yup, had one too. This was when Ryzen truly passed Intel's offering at the time as they got rid of the limitations holding them back. It finally had a FPU to match Intel and general improvements all round. Now I could finally say "It's good" without following "but..."

 

Well, there still is a "but" in that it most were split CCX, which wasn't well understood by enthusiasts at that point. Still a consideration through to AM5 and likely beyond.

 

13 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

The Ryzen 9 3900X - the chip that spelt doom for Intel's HEDT platform.

Can I vote for Skylake-X being the most misunderstood release by the gaming/enthusiast media? AMD made the war on core counts, but we have now lost access to consumer affordable higher ram bandwidth and PCIe channels. Thanks AMD.

[YoungBlade]

4 minutes ago, porina said:

I owned both of these. They had severe limitations so their credit is mainly due to "moar cores" vs Intel of the time. And Cinebench scores which was the only thing AMD fanboys would look at to demonstrate their "superiority". Half baked FPU, low gaming performance as clocks dropped quickly as you load the cores up. My 4c4t 6600k of the time would beat both in gaming and FP compute.

I was considering these primarily from the perspective of their release. Obviously, newer CPUs are faster.

 

However, I can't imagine that a 6600K would be better for productivity workloads. I had an i5 4440 when my friend got himself a Ryzen 5 2600 system. It was so much faster for project builds in Unity that it wasn't even funny. Easily 3x faster. I thought it was just about it being newer, assuming an IPC boost was the main reason, and believing that core/thread count wasn't a big deal. I got an i5 9600K system - even that wasn't as fast as his, despite being newer.

 

Granted the 2600 is faster than the 1600, but only by about 10-15% for productivity. I can't imagine that the 6600K would keep up in that use case. It just doesn't have the resources.

[MadAnt250]

I vote for the Athlon 200GE, just to be different and wrong.

[YoungBlade]

18 minutes ago, MadAnt250 said:

I vote for the Athlon 200GE, just to be different and wrong.

Honestly, I considered chucking the Athlon 200GE on there. The issue with them was always availability and overall value. If they were always available at retail for MSRP, they would have been nice budget parts. However, even then, they frankly weren't that good from a value perspective. Spending a bit more to get the Ryzen 3 part was usually worth it - not to mention spending even more to get a Ryzen 5.

 

Additionally, the naming of the 3000G kinda sours the line for me. Its a Zen part, not even Zen+, whose name implies its Zen 2. I've seen people here and on reddit asking if a 3000G is better than some Ryzen part due to it being "newer" which is only a problem because of the name.

 

But overall, the Athlon parts were neat. The 200GE was good for what it was. It just never was able to become a go-to pick for a broader range of buyers.

[jaslion]

Honestly oddly enough the 1400 at launch of 2000 series.

 

It was as low as 55€ new and well that money for a i7 6700 + 65€ for a b350 tomahawk was a STEAL. Got a bunch of people I know to upgrade when their i5's were NOT keeping up at all.

 

But in reality the only cpu people will remember is the ryzen 1700 or 5800x3d.

 

The first cheap consumer true 8 core that sparked a massive change and well the 5800x3d speaks for itself with how big of an impact thats had.

 

[porina]

6 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

However, I can't imagine that a 6600K would be better for productivity workloads.

That's why I specifically mentioned gaming and FP compute. Productivity, in the best case, could follow Cinebench. Cores could scale directly. Threads (HT/SMT), call it about 30% bonus for Cinebench. I saw 50% in the Ryzen Blender benchmark although at the time the main Blender code wasn't using SIMD effectively, so that could be very different now.

 

13 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

I had an i5 4440 when my friend got himself a Ryzen 5 2600 system. It was so much faster for project builds in Unity that it wasn't even funny. Easily 3x faster. I thought it was just about it being newer, assuming an IPC boost was the main reason, and believing that core/thread count wasn't a big deal.

I was thinking Skylake vs Zen 1, since Ryzen was released while Skylake derivatives were current. Anything Skylake to Comet Lake were essentially the same microarchitecture. So your Intel is another gen (or two) behind Skylake. Assuming similar clocks, even without IPC we could be looking around 2x. 3x sounds a bit high but if it hits the right mix of instructions maybe.