Productivity CPU

[testcy]

In separate topics I was advised to get Ryzen 9 7900 (instead of 7900X) and Intel Core Ultra 7 265K for productivity. If there is no much price difference (using the 7900 stock cooler and buying a basic air cooler for 265K) what would you get? AM5 seems more future proof, but I don't plan to change the CPU for several years anyway. 

[podkall]

Both CPUs are on new platform. And both can do what you ask them to do.

 

What does "productivity" mean? In current context you can get anything, or cheapest option.

[testcy]

18 minutes ago, podkall said:

What does "productivity" mean?

Not sure if it is the best term, no gaming, running multiple work tasks, using more cores to save time.

[OddOod]

1 hour ago, testcy said:

Not sure if it is the best term, no gaming, running multiple work tasks, using more cores to save time.

What workloads are you trying to optimize for? Are you doing rendering or photo editing or video editing or cad or what?

 

[podkall]

1 hour ago, testcy said:

Not sure if it is the best term, no gaming, running multiple work tasks, using more cores to save time.

How many? Multitasking can be done by mediocre 6 core processor.

[ItTakes2ToMango]

1 hour ago, testcy said:

Not sure if it is the best term, no gaming, running multiple work tasks, using more cores to save time.

No, that part is understood. We're asking for the type of productivity YOU specifically plan to use it for. 

[NumLock21]

All CPUs can be used for whatever your intended purpose is, it can be for gaming or productivity. If you're going just by the name, like some how a AMD Ryzen 9 7900X screams gaming and not productivity, then find a CPU with a name that sounds like it's for productivity, such as Intel Celeron. 

[podkall]

13 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

All CPUs can be used for whatever your intended purpose is, it can be for gaming or productivity. If you're going just by the name, like some how a AMD Ryzen 9 7900X screams gaming and not productivity, then find a CPU with a name that sounds like it's for productivity, such as Intel Celeron. 

Celeron doesn't rhyme with productivity at all

[NumLock21]

1 minute ago, podkall said:

Celeron doesn't rhyme with productivity at all

then what does it rhyme with?

[podkall]

11 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

then what does it rhyme with?

Modern CPUs, even Ryzen 7600x?

[NumLock21]

15 minutes ago, podkall said:

Modern CPUs, even Ryzen 7600x?

So Ryzen and Celeron sounds like they belong to the same group? 

[testcy]

2 hours ago, OddOod said:

What workloads are you trying to optimize for? Are you doing rendering or photo editing or video editing or cad or what?

 

 

2 hours ago, podkall said:

How many? Multitasking can be done by mediocre 6 core processor.

 

2 hours ago, ItTakes2ToMango said:

No, that part is understood. We're asking for the type of productivity YOU specifically plan to use it for. 

 

1 hour ago, NumLock21 said:

So Ryzen and Celeron sounds like they belong to the same group? 

Photo, audio, video editing, 4K streaming. More core the better? I was thinking about 6 or 8 cores (9600X or 9700X), but why not more if not paying a lot more (7900 or 265K)? 

[BillBill]

4 hours ago, testcy said:

In separate topics I was advised to get Ryzen 9 7900 (instead of 7900X) and Intel Core Ultra 7 265K for productivity. If there is no much price difference (using the 7900 stock cooler and buying a basic air cooler for 265K) what would you get? AM5 seems more future proof, but I don't plan to change the CPU for several years anyway. 

Go with the intel core ultra. It has better productivity vs the Ryzen 9   

[podkall]

23 hours ago, NumLock21 said:

So Ryzen and Celeron sounds like they belong to the same group? 

Nope

 

 

22 hours ago, testcy said:

 

 

 

Photo, audio, video editing, 4K streaming. More core the better? I was thinking about 6 or 8 cores (9600X or 9700X), but why not more if not paying a lot more (7900 or 265K)? 

I'd get at least 8 cores if you plan to do moer things at once, for example one creative program running while other creative program is being actively used.

 

More cores, more spread, less likely to get caught busy with all cores because something is being processed.

 

Photo doesn't need many cores, everything else does.

 

Also great amount of not-slow RAM is good for these multi-tasking/heavy uses.

 

Are you building entire PC? There's a sub-forum for that here if you haven't already used it.

 

Looking at your profile, you did ask there, but only vaguely, my suggestion would be if you're planning to actually buy/build/upgrade machine, to provide the details, even budget if you have one already. The template in New Builds and Planning is pretty decent.

 

You can even @ me in the new thread if you decide to create it.

 

21 hours ago, BillBill said:

Go with the intel core ultra. It has better productivity vs the Ryzen 9   

"It has better productivity" what does that mean?

[testcy]

21 hours ago, podkall said:

I'd get at least 8 cores if you plan to do moer things at once, for example one creative program running while other creative program is being actively used.

 

More cores, more spread, less likely to get caught busy with all cores because something is being processed.

 

Photo doesn't need many cores, everything else does.

 

Also great amount of not-slow RAM is good for these multi-tasking/heavy uses.

 

Are you building entire PC? There's a sub-forum for that here if you haven't already used it.

 

Looking at your profile, you did ask there, but only vaguely, my suggestion would be if you're planning to actually buy/build/upgrade machine, to provide the details, even budget if you have one already. The template in New Builds and Planning is pretty decent.

 

You can even @ me in the new thread if you decide to create it.

 

I will essentially almost need to build a new PC. I have unused components (case, PSU, SDD), but I will have to buy at least CPU, motherboard and RAM. I almost decided about CL30 6000 DDR5, but from the answers here, I can't decide between AMD (which was the intention) and Intel. And then there is the dilemma with the motherboard, if I should buy a cheaper one, in favor of a CPU with more cores, but so far I haven't found anything I liked.

[podkall]

9 hours ago, testcy said:

I will essentially almost need to build a new PC. I have unused components (case, PSU, SDD), but I will have to buy at least CPU, motherboard and RAM. I almost decided about CL30 6000 DDR5, but from the answers here, I can't decide between AMD (which was the intention) and Intel. And then there is the dilemma with the motherboard, if I should buy a cheaper one, in favor of a CPU with more cores, but so far I haven't found anything I liked.

The thing that makes Intel different from AMD is the core count.

 

Though 265K isn't that different from 7900(x). Because 265K has 20 cores but only 8 of them are "performance cores".

 

So you could have for similar or maybe slightly few more $, a CPU with 12 "performance" cores, because AMD doesn't use efficiency cores.

 

Core count only matters until a certain point, diminishing returns exist, if you buy 64 core CPU you might not even utilize half of it, or quarter of it, it depends what's being worked on the PC.

 

There's instances where you can multitask with 8 cores without any noticeable lag or slowdown, there's instances where you're using specific rendering program that can utilize as much cores as your CPU has.

 

Your programs don't seem to require very great core count, unless there's some requirements/features that makes it better? Audio uses few cores for different stuff, editing uses few cores and some programs can use GPU partially, streaming can be as seamless as having the GPU encode the stream, which puts almost 0 pressure/work on any modern CPU.

 

Photoshop specifically couldn't care less if you had just cores it just wants the cores to be as fast as possible. 

[NumLock21]

On 8/8/2025 at 1:04 PM, podkall said:

Nope

 

 

 

I know it's not the same, Celeron is the bottom of the bin CPU from Intel, while Ryzen is from the top end from AMD. I mentioned Celeron was, OP is looking for a "productivity" CPU, in which somehow to them both Ryzen and Core Ultra don't see to fit into that category and they are only associated with gaming. Does OP have at least $5K just for CPU, yes, then they can definitely get a "Productivity" cpu like Threadripper. 

[podkall]

38 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

I know it's not the same, Celeron is the bottom of the bin CPU from Intel, while Ryzen is from the top end from AMD. I mentioned Celeron was, OP is looking for a "productivity" CPU, in which somehow to them both Ryzen and Core Ultra don't see to fit into that category and they are only associated with gaming. Does OP have at least $5K just for CPU, yet then they can definitely get a "Productivity" cpu like Threadripper. 

Celeron isn't productivity, you're not producing anything on slow CPU with low core count, you are suffering a lagging computer that started installing Windows update in the background.

[starsmine]

54 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

I know it's not the same, Celeron is the bottom of the bin CPU from Intel, while Ryzen is from the top end from AMD. I mentioned Celeron was, OP is looking for a "productivity" CPU, in which somehow to them both Ryzen and Core Ultra don't see to fit into that category and they are only associated with gaming. Does OP have at least $5K just for CPU, yet then they can definitely get a "Productivity" cpu like Threadripper. 

ryzen and core ultra are not gaming first CPUs. 
gaming CPUs is not even a thing. 

[freeagent]

50 minutes ago, starsmine said:

gaming CPUs is not even a thing. 

X3D? 

[YoungBlade]

5 minutes ago, freeagent said:

X3D? 

I suppose the counter argument would be that X3D was originally created for the server space, so it wasn't technically designed for gaming.

 

But the counter-counter argument would be that it was only brought to the desktop space specifically to give AMD better gaming performance. Very few consumer and professional workloads outside of gaming benefit from the extra cache.

 

It's not like AMD is selling 9800X3D chips for budget-constrained social media startups.

[freeagent]

I was waiting for someone to say that about X3D.

 

Good lad.

 

I don't really give a shit about X3D if I am honest.

[starsmine]

15 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

I suppose the counter argument would be that X3D was originally created for the server space, so it wasn't technically designed for gaming.

 

But the counter-counter argument would be that it was only brought to the desktop space specifically to give AMD better gaming performance. Very few consumer and professional workloads outside of gaming benefit from the extra cache.

 

It's not like AMD is selling 9800X3D chips for budget-constrained social media startups.

I wouldnt say very few. But yes its very much workload dependent. The same way its very workload dependent in the server space. 

[daygeckoart]

19 minutes ago, starsmine said:

I wouldnt say very few. But yes its very much workload dependent. The same way its very workload dependent in the server space. 

Thanks for posting these. Weird format to display this type of data in, but effective once you get used to looking at the lines. The X3d processors are better for more people running the benchmark, which confirms what I've always suspected, that cache does benefit "productivity" despite the common belief that it's just for gaming. Any program that benefits from having more data in level 2 cache is going to perform better. But the tradeoff is wattage, with the stacked cache making cooling harder. 

[testcy]

On 8/18/2025 at 6:53 PM, NumLock21 said:

I know it's not the same, Celeron is the bottom of the bin CPU from Intel, while Ryzen is from the top end from AMD. I mentioned Celeron was, OP is looking for a "productivity" CPU, in which somehow to them both Ryzen and Core Ultra don't see to fit into that category and they are only associated with gaming. Does OP have at least $5K just for CPU, yet then they can definitely get a "Productivity" cpu like Threadripper. 

 

On 8/18/2025 at 7:48 PM, starsmine said:

ryzen and core ultra are not gaming first CPUs. 
gaming CPUs is not even a thing. 

 

On 8/18/2025 at 8:39 PM, freeagent said:

X3D? 

 

On 8/18/2025 at 8:43 PM, YoungBlade said:

I suppose the counter argument would be that X3D was originally created for the server space, so it wasn't technically designed for gaming.

 

But the counter-counter argument would be that it was only brought to the desktop space specifically to give AMD better gaming performance. Very few consumer and professional workloads outside of gaming benefit from the extra cache.

 

It's not like AMD is selling 9800X3D chips for budget-constrained social media startups.

 

On 8/18/2025 at 8:50 PM, freeagent said:

I was waiting for someone to say that about X3D.

 

Good lad.

 

I don't really give a shit about X3D if I am honest.

 

On 8/18/2025 at 8:53 PM, starsmine said:

I wouldnt say very few. But yes its very much workload dependent. The same way its very workload dependent in the server space. 

 

On 8/18/2025 at 9:16 PM, daygeckoart said:

Thanks for posting these. Weird format to display this type of data in, but effective once you get used to looking at the lines. The X3d processors are better for more people running the benchmark, which confirms what I've always suspected, that cache does benefit "productivity" despite the common belief that it's just for gaming. Any program that benefits from having more data in level 2 cache is going to perform better. But the tradeoff is wattage, with the stacked cache making cooling harder. 

Does this mean that now besides cores I should also consider X3D?