The self debate that I can't seem to win.

[Am_VonWarMajor]

  As the Ryzen reviews are coming out and the debacle that surrounds it I need to ask this. If I'm buying a GTX 1070 and planning on playing games on high in 1080p is there any reason to buy an R7 1700?

  My plan is to first build a game computer, second use it to create content and third school. Mostly Youtube videos and maybe if "the stars a line" stream my content and create videos out of that or just post the whole thing on Youtube I don't know yet. I'm just trying to make sense of what I need to do, which is the reason for this post. As I see more and more results I'm moving toward a 7700K because It's flat out beating the R7 1800X in gaming and it's WAY out of my price range. The Z270 boards are also more reasonably priced as well, plus I see that Ryzen doesn't overclock well while Kabylake you really don't need to overclock to get great results.

  

What are your thoughts on the direction I need to go? Cause I don't know...

[ARikozuM]

That's quite the opponent you have. 

[RadiatingLight]

R7 is not really for gaming.

it's for people who want to video edit, stream LOL or DOTA, without buying a 1K 6900K.

 

the R5 series will be better for the mainstream, because it will be cheaper, and still have 6 cores.

[SCHISCHKA]

have a look for overclocking. Comparing a quad core to a 8 core; benchmarks are still coming out and turning off cores looks promising.

[Am_VonWarMajor]

1 minute ago, SCHISCHKA said:

have a look for overclocking. Comparing a quad core to a 8 core; benchmarks are still coming out and turning off cores looks promising.

 

I have looked at what Paul over at Pauls Hardware has done and I've read many reports on it overclock ability, Gamerz Nexus has a good article but it seems as if it can't unless you have a water cooled system and I'm not doing that to save my life. Besides that I'm in a toss-up and if it on par with my laptop that I'm currently using then there no way I'm getting Ryzen period. 

[SCHISCHKA]

Just now, MajorOfWar13 said:

I have looked at what Paul over at Pauls Hardware has done and I've read many reports on it overclock ability, Gamerz Nexus has a good article but it seems as if it can't unless you have a water cooled system and I'm not doing that to save my life. Besides that I'm in a toss-up and if it on par with my laptop that I'm currently using then there no way I'm getting Ryzen period. 

the 1700 or the 1800X? the 1700 is rumoured to achieve 4GHz on air but its too early and all rumours

[SpaceGhostC2C]

I think your use case is more tilted towards gaming now, and other things as maybe, which would make the 7700K your choice at that price range. I say that price range because it seems to me (and we still need more info to confirm this) that the Ryzen alternative for you would be the 1700, and then overclock it (you don't need an x370 board for that), rather than getting the already-clocked-higher 1800x. You could wait a few days for the dust to settle and get a better sense of where the 1700 stands. I think the odds are in favor of the 7700K remaining the best choice for you at current prices.

 

That's the way I see it if you need to buy now, and if we freeze information at what we have now. I'm really interested to see what a 6-core Zen can do for you in terms of being a "middle-ground", by still being better at multithreaded loads while being more game-friendly than the R7s due to higher clocks (i.e., better single thread performance), at a much more interesting price point. Having said that, bear in mind that the 7700K will be better at gaming no matter what: there's nothing planned by AMD for this generation of Zen that can match it. So the question regarding R5s is how much of a performance loss in games you get, vs how much money you save, vs what can it buy you in the other use cases you want to get into.

 

[Am_VonWarMajor]

14 hours ago, SCHISCHKA said:

the 1700 or the 1800X? the 1700 is rumoured to achieve 4GHz on air but its too early and all rumours

The 1700, that's what is in my price range for the cpu. 

14 hours ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

I think your use case is more tilted towards gaming now, and other things as maybe, which would make the 7700K your choice at that price range. I say that price range because it seems to me (and we still need more info to confirm this) that the Ryzen alternative for you would be the 1700, and then overclock it (you don't need an x370 board for that), rather than getting the already-clocked-higher 1800x. You could wait a few days for the dust to settle and get a better sense of where the 1700 stands. I think the odds are in favor of the 7700K remaining the best choice for you at current prices.

 

That's the way I see it if you need to buy now, and if we freeze information at what we have now. I'm really interested to see what a 6-core Zen can do for you in terms of being a "middle-ground", by still being better at multithreaded loads while being more game-friendly than the R7s due to higher clocks (i.e., better single thread performance), at a much more interesting price point. Having said that, bear in mind that the 7700K will be better at gaming no matter what: there's nothing planned by AMD for this generation of Zen that can match it. So the question regarding R5s is how much of a performance loss in games you get, vs how much money you save, vs what can it buy you in the other use cases you want to get into.

 

You are correct sir! My problem right now is my laptop is not the spring chick she once was and I'm running into issues on low settings in modern games and medium settings in older games. Also the usb 2.0 ports short circuit the system if I plug anything into them... Joy, so I'm looking to try to replace it asap and hopefully by the end of this month. All I need left thought is the cpu cooler, cpu, board and the 1070. I'm not impressed by ryzen at the moment but I don't want to let the possibility of something that could be beneficial to me later slip by. Understand what I'm saying? I'm definitely going to by a 7700K by the end of the month if the 1700 doesn't pan out. 

[Rohime]

34 minutes ago, MajorOfWar13 said:

  As the Ryzen reviews are coming out and the debacle that surrounds it I need to ask this. If I'm buying a GTX 1070 and planning on playing games on high in 1080p is there any reason to buy an R7 1700?

  My plan is to first build a game computer, second use it to create content and third school. Mostly Youtube videos and maybe if "the stars a line" stream my content and create videos out of that or just post the whole thing on Youtube I don't know yet. I'm just trying to make sense of what I need to do, which is the reason for this post. As I see more and more results I'm moving toward a 7700K because It's flat out beating the R7 1800X in gaming and it's WAY out of my price range. The Z270 boards are also more reasonably priced as well, plus I see that Ryzen doesn't overclock well while Kabylake you really don't need to overclock to get great results.

  

What are your thoughts on the direction I need to go? Cause I don't know...

Go 7700K for now.

If the stars do align later, get a separate rig to offload the streaming functions.

[i_build_nanosuits]

35 minutes ago, MajorOfWar13 said:

  As the Ryzen reviews are coming out and the debacle that surrounds it I need to ask this. If I'm buying a GTX 1070 and planning on playing games on high in 1080p is there any reason to buy an R7 1700?

there is no reason to buy a R7 1700 unless you want a ''cheaper'' workhorse CPU for a rendering/editing/workstation machine.

other than that there is absolutely no valid reason to buy an AMD CPU right now...at least...for now.

[kuggy]

I had been on a it 4670k and the itch was so bad after waiting for Ryzen 7 to come out that there was no way I was going to just wait for Ryzen 5. I wanted to upgrade, and not just to a new cpu but a tier up. That's always been my approach, is that at the bare bare min I would match my current tier with a newer launch, but I've always tried to jump up a tier if I could. I5 is great, has been so good to me, but that also left me with a very open field when it came to the Ryzen 7 and i7 Kaby Lake cpu.

 

I ended up voiding my 1800x and went with a 7700k, and got the motherboard I actually wanted and not the only motherboard I was "sigh" going to have to settle for if I went AM4. I expect to use my cpu for at least 3 years before I change them out and like to wait 4 if I could.

 

AMD Single core > Intel core 2 duo > Intel I5 > and now Intel I7. 

 

In the end I knew I'm just a guy who uses his pc to chill and game, listen to music and watch some nice movies. Sometimes I'll start randomly clicking youtube videos until it's russian and see how far down the rabbit hole I can go before I decide to get off the choo choo train. All in all, I'm a mainstream consumer who has a hobby with computers.

 

But the hobby thing is also what kinda killed it for me in regards to Ryzen...

 

What you get is what you get. They pushed that stuff as hard as it can go and the ceiling is about the same across the board. But I game at 1440- and have a 144hz monitor, and I also plan to upgrade my gpu within the next year or two depending on how that stuff all goes. The upcoming games I want to play so bad use, for instance, Unity 5 engine. Ryzen will never be able to get me above what the 7700k can get me for what i need, whether it's the 1700 or the 1800x.

 

But then again I'm a selfish consumer, not a creator. I'd rather read in a few hours what took someone weeks or months of work than reverse those roles, and if you wish to create some content for other people then you have different priorities than I and the Ryzen 7 may indeed be better for you.

 

Just remember that what you choose should reflect how you view your own money's worth to you. As a gamer you should be researching the games coming up, their engines and how each engine has a benefit and limitation, and plan accordingly.

 

There is no such thing as future proofing, just blindness or ignorance to a google search.

[unSatisfied]

2 hours ago, i_build_nanosuits said:

there is no reason to buy a R7 1700 unless you want a ''cheaper'' workhorse CPU for a rendering/editing/workstation machine.

other than that there is absolutely no valid reason to buy an AMD CPU right now...at least...for now.

 

 

 

 

 

There are plenty of valid reasons to go with an R7 1700 over an i7 7700k, and in fact, I'd be willing to say you'd be stupid not to unless you plan on using your PC for gaming only. I realize that this is what you essentially meant, but it shouldn't be understated that Ryzen CPUs are a fantastic choice for many that will continue to get better as software is optimized toward the new architecture.

[i_build_nanosuits]

8 hours ago, unSatisfied said:

There are plenty of valid reasons to go with an R7 1700 over an i7 7700k, and in fact, I'd be willing to say you'd be stupid not to unless you plan on using your PC for gaming only. I realize that this is what you essentially meant, but it shouldn't be understated that Ryzen CPUs are a fantastic choice for many that will continue to get better as software is optimized toward the new architecture.

you have to understand that 90%+ of the people coming on this forum asking for PC recommendations are people that are gamers...people who should ignore ryzen and go straight to intel.

[unSatisfied]

3 hours ago, i_build_nanosuits said:

you have to understand that 90%+ of the people coming on this forum asking for PC recommendations are people that are gamers...people who should ignore ryzen and go straight to intel.

 

 

 

I highly disagree that gamers should ignore Ryzen, unless they are literally only interested in gaming. Ryzen has only been out for a few days and performance should increase significantly once software issues with Windows 10, BIOS, etc. are ironed out. With that said, however, Intel will always be better in a CPU bottleneck situation due to the higher IPC and clock speeds and the lack of support for 8c/16t utilization. That's just the thing most people don't understand, though, this is in CPU bottlenecked situations. The vast majority of people will always be bottlenecked by their GPU, and as a result of that, Ryzen and Intel don't have that much of a difference at all. What does have a HUGE performance difference is any multitasking/CPU intensive tasks that have good threading support.

[joshforester]

Right now the Ryzen lineup is more geared towards the mixed user, whereas some of Intel's current and previous i5/i7 lineup is geared towards in game performance. 

[kuggy]

14 hours ago, unSatisfied said:

There are plenty of valid reasons to go with an R7 1700 over an i7 7700k, and in fact, I'd be willing to say you'd be stupid not to unless you plan on using your PC for gaming only. I realize that this is what you essentially meant, but it shouldn't be understated that Ryzen CPUs are a fantastic choice for many that will continue to get better as software is optimized toward the new architecture.

Ryzen IS a success, and everyone for many different reasons will win from it. But success isn't the same as being the winner, and I'm afraid for the same reasons that Ryzen has gotten such harsh criticism is of the same idea that Ryzen is some flower yet to blossom. It is what it is, and the more successful Vega is the less successful Ryzen shall be in gaming. Bios updates and some software optimization won't change what a revision does, just like how it was with Intel.

 

GPU advancements are still climbing at a far greater rate then CPU, and Ryzen's climb from Bulldozer is more of a scoff towards Bulldozer than a cut and dry applause for Ryzen.

 

You can spin this however you wish, and I am happy that some of you and rightfully so are so invigorated by AMD's comeback, but you really have to stop discounting where gamers spend their money as far as pc goes. They WILL spend more on their GPU and upgrade more often than their CPU, and that does not help Ryzen in gaming in the least.

 

Ryzen is superb for casual content creators and casual gamers. It's a great way for serious but somewhat less financially stable content creators to jump up a tier or two where time is a major factor that a very casual creator wouldn't really appreciate. AMD has for too many years been the poor man's intel, in both price and performance, and with Ryzen AMD can at least stand on it's own with a price/performance that's not so... discountable.

 

I can only suggest Ryzen to people whom I know are serious enough content creators that also enjoy some gaming on the side. That which could saves them minutes, compound into hours, that might otherwise mean missing out on life but lack the money to save up for x299.

 

Likewise, I cannot suggest to someone who games like a savage Ryzen when they can spend less and get the 7700k, because if they have the funds to actually get a wicked setup at 4k gaming then they also have the money to hit x299 when it lands as well. Even 2k resolutions the 7700k is a better buy/performance, and it only goes up the lower resolution you go.

 

Ryzen is still very much a niche product, you just don't have to give up nearly as much as you used to.

[unSatisfied]

24 minutes ago, kuggy said:

Ryzen IS a success, and everyone for many different reasons will win from it. But success isn't the same as being the winner, and I'm afraid for the same reasons that Ryzen has gotten such harsh criticism is of the same idea that Ryzen is some flower yet to blossom. It is what it is, and the more successful Vega is the less successful Ryzen shall be in gaming. Bios updates and some software optimization won't change what a revision does, just like how it was with Intel.

 

GPU advancements are still climbing at a far greater rate then CPU, and Ryzen's climb from Bulldozer is more of a scoff towards Bulldozer than a cut and dry applause for Ryzen.

 

You can spin this however you wish, and I am happy that some of you and rightfully so are so invigorated by AMD's comeback, but you really have to stop discounting where gamers spend their money as far as pc goes. They WILL spend more on their GPU and upgrade more often than their CPU, and that does not help Ryzen in gaming in the least.

 

Ryzen is superb for casual content creators and casual gamers. It's a great way for serious but somewhat less financially stable content creators to jump up a tier or two where time is a major factor that a very casual creator wouldn't really appreciate. AMD has for too many years been the poor man's intel, in both price and performance, and with Ryzen AMD can at least stand on it's own with a price/performance that's not so... discountable.

 

I can only suggest Ryzen to people whom I know are serious enough content creators that also enjoy some gaming on the side. That which could saves them minutes, compound into hours, that might otherwise mean missing out on life but lack the money to save up for x299.

 

Likewise, I cannot suggest to someone who games like a savage Ryzen when they can spend less and get the 7700k, because if they have the funds to actually get a wicked setup at 4k gaming then they also have the money to hit x299 when it lands as well. Even 2k resolutions the 7700k is a better buy/performance, and it only goes up the lower resolution you go.

 

Ryzen is still very much a niche product, you just don't have to give up nearly as much as you used to.

 

 

 

The R7 1700 price difference is negligible (it is $30 cheaper in terms of MSRP actually), and can be overclocked to near 1800x performance, so I really don't understand why anyone would choose to go with an i7 7700k over an R7 1700 unless that person is only interested in gaming (which, admittedly, is probably the majority of people on this forum).

 

Maybe I do just fit into a niche, but I truly believe that many users (again, probably not the majority on this forum, however) can benefit from the workstation benefits that Ryzen does provide with the additional 4 cores and 8 threads.

 

With that all said, you seem to be over exaggerating the performance discrepancy between the i7 7700k and Ryzen 7 and are making it seem like hardcore gamers cannot play games on it which simply isn't true.

[kuggy]

30 minutes ago, unSatisfied said:

The R7 1700 price difference is negligible (it is $30 cheaper in terms of MSRP actually), and can be overclocked to near 1800x performance, so I really don't understand why anyone would choose to go with an i7 7700k over an R7 1700 unless that person is only interested in gaming (which, admittedly, is probably the majority of people on this forum).

 

Maybe I do just fit into a niche, but I truly believe that many users (again, probably not the majority on this forum, however) can benefit from the workstation benefits that Ryzen does provide with the additional 4 cores and 8 threads.

 

With that all said, you seem to be over exaggerating the performance discrepancy between the i7 7700k and Ryzen 7 and are making it seem like hardcore gamers cannot play games on it which simply isn't true.

 

I'm not exaggerating with malice intent, I'm just being rational. Also for what you went and have in bold I clear read the first time. It's just that I don't agree that the 7700k is bound and trapped in the corner of absolute gaming. I think you, too, are guilty of exaggerating workstation applications for the common person, and fail to understand why I think Ryzen is a niche cpu. A good, a dang good niche cpu, but a niche cpu still.

 

There are some issues with lows from Ryzen 7 in gaming. Generally the averages seem rather acceptable, but I frankly couldn't give a dead rabbit about noticing the good during the good times. What I do care about is that eye catching, music stopping, dip.

 

Take my path of exile for instance, which is multi threaded but not that efficient. I love that game, and at 1440p it's entirely cpu bound. Entirely. Much like warthunder, which I also play. When I upgraded from a 780gtx to a 1080gtx a few months after I went from 1080p to 1440p, those two games didn't give a dead rabbit either, but I certainly take notice when those dips come in and it ruins like fluid gaming experience. Or worse, when you have a Gsync 1440p 144hz monitor, well... lets just say I'm eyeballing the lows more than the insane random high.

 

Just because averages are somewhat relatively similar doesn't mean the experience is. The only thing, and the most important thing to me, is how low can you go.

 

[unSatisfied]

9 minutes ago, kuggy said:

 

I'm not exaggerating, I'm just being rational. Also for what you went and have in bold I clear read the first time. It's just that I don't agree that the 7700k is bound and trapped in the corner of absolute gaming. I think you, too, are guilty of exaggerating workstation applications for the common person, and fail to understand why I think Ryzen is a niche cpu. A good, a dang good niche cpu, but a niche cpu still.

 

There are some issues with lows from Ryzen 7 in gaming. Generally the averages seem rather acceptable, but I frankly couldn't give a dead rabbit about noticing the good during the good times. What I do care about is that eye catching, music stopping, dip.

 

Take my path of exile for instance, which is multi threaded but not that efficient. I love that game, and at 1440p it's entirely cpu bound. Entirely. Much like warthunder, which I also play. When I upgraded from a 780gtx to a 1080gtx a few months after I went from 1080p to 1440p, those two games didn't give a dead rabbit either, but I certainly take notice when those dips come in and it ruins like fluid gaming experience. Or worse, when you have a Gsync 1440p 144hz monitor, well... lets just say I'm eyeballing the lows more than the insane random high.

 

Just because averages are somewhat relatively similar doesn't mean the experience is. The only thing, and the most important thing to me, is how low can you go.

 

 

 

 

I completely agree that 1% and 0.1% minimums matter, which is why I'll be going with Ryzen. In pretty much every review that tested a Ryzen CPU with SMT disabled, the i7 7700k and the Ryzen CPU traded blows in regards to minimums. Once the scheduling issues regarding cache and SMT are fixed, then the minimum frame rates should be even higher. You also seem to disregard that the gaming industry as a whole is moving toward utilizing more cores/threads overall with newer APIs such as DX12 and Vulkan.

[kuggy]

34 minutes ago, unSatisfied said:

I completely agree that 1% and 0.1% minimums matter, which is why I'll be going with Ryzen. In pretty much every review that tested a Ryzen CPU with SMT disabled, the i7 7700k and the Ryzen CPU traded blows in regards to minimums. Once the scheduling issues regarding cache and SMT are fixed, then the minimum frame rates should be even higher. You also seem to disregard that the gaming industry as a whole is moving toward utilizing more cores/threads overall with newer APIs such as DX12 and Vulkan.

Well you're more than free to post those reviews, because it sounds like you were checking out gamingnexus's review and they were not trading blows on the mins, smt1 or smt0 in really any of the benchmarks. They also didn't show the 1% and 0.1% for the 1440p tests, so the 1080p is all we have to go on there. I know it's not from hardocp's review since they did the low resolutions, or the tomshardware either. Couldn't be guru3d's neither.

 

I do love reviews, so feel free to post them, but facts are not in your favor for the lows.

 

So be careful not to hype Ryzen 5 so much that people in the meantime look at Ryzen 7 worse than they are, and then do the same thing on 5's release day. I'm certain Zen+ will improve and I look forward to seeing what they have learned now that they are pumping blood again, but things will be tougher from  Intel when those come out, too.

 

Neither the gamer in me or the PC hobbyist has anything to gain from Ryzen currently, and the industry moving towards fully embracing dx12/vulkan is gonna be a mighty rough rough road. Unreal engine 4 just added vulkan api, and by the time games using all of that get out of development most of us will have new cpu/chipset/gpu. I'm talking AotS quality dx12/vulkan development, triple AAA titles.

 

 

[unSatisfied]

39 minutes ago, kuggy said:

Well you're more than free to post those reviews, because it sounds like you were checking out gamingnexus's review and they were not trading blows on the mins, smt1 or smt0 in really any of the benchmarks. They also didn't show the 1% and 0.1% for the 1440p tests, so the 1080p is all we have to go on there. I know it's not from hardocp's review since they did the low resolutions, or the tomshardware either. Couldn't be guru3d's neither.

 

I do love reviews, so feel free to post them, but facts are not in your favor for the lows.

 

So be careful not to hype Ryzen 5 so much that people in the meantime look at Ryzen 7 worse than they are, and then do the same thing on 5's release day. I'm certain Zen+ will improve and I look forward to seeing what they have learned now that they are pumping blood again, but things will be tougher from  Intel when those come out, too.

 

Neither the gamer in me or the PC hobbyist has anything to gain from Ryzen currently, and the industry moving towards fully embracing dx12/vulkan is gonna be a mighty rough rough road. Unreal engine 4 just added vulkan api, and by the time games using all of that get out of development most of us will have new cpu/chipset/gpu. I'm talking AotS quality dx12/vulkan development, triple AAA titles.

 

 

11

I completely agree that it will be a while until games really benefit from newer APIs such as Vulkan and DX12, but I continue to see people recommending the i7 7700k consistently over the R7 1700 for new builders and people that want to upgrade to a more modern chipset overall. This is fine as long as that user will only be gaming, but it seems that it's a common misconception among many users that Ryzen CPUs are absolutely horrible for gaming, so I just wanted to clear that up.

 

In regards to the minimums, it seems I am mistaken and that the i7 7700k does beat Ryzen CPUs in most games. I would still imagine that these will increase drastically, however, once the SMT and scheduling issues are fixed.

[Am_VonWarMajor]

Well, I've been interested in what you both have been saying. The main reason to pick the R7 1700 is to be able to create content. The reason I would pick the 7700K is it can game well and doesn't seem to have many problems playing at 1080p which is my resolution that I am running. 

 

However, both deserve a fair shot to show what they are capable of. The Intel chip is ahead in satisfying my immediate needs while the AMD chip is something that could be helpful in my futrue endeavors. If I had to buy today it would be the Intel chip based on the current information. The hope that the 1700 will get better in the coming months may be worth the investment but it seems like too much of a stretch that everything will be cleaned up that quickly. 

 

This is bleeding edge technology and as much as I would like to ride the wave I need more information. This post was to simply ask if my use case scenario was going to be beneficial with Ryzen at this price point. nothing more or nothing less.