Intel or Ryzen

[N3v3r3nding_N3wb]

2 hours ago, Enderman said:

8 cores (aka threads) of an i7 will be enough for all games in the next half decade.

I agree with your general statement, but cores by no means equal threads.  They are very different and the eight cores (and 16 threads) of a 1700 will outperform the 8 threads of an i7, without contest (assuming a situation that utilizes that many threads).

[brob]

2 hours ago, COTG said:

is there any chance that with further optimisation in games that ryzen might be able to overtake the 7700k in gaming?

I don't think it a terribly good idea to buy today based on a promise of delivery at some future point. In other words, Ryzen game optimizations may or may not appear. They may or may not be enough to push the cpu beyond current Intel cpu. Ryzen BIOS improvements may or may not resolve the serious issues that are evident in the current crop of motherboards. All in all, its possible current Ryzen builds may have improved performance and compatibility. It's also possible that new game optimizations for Kaby Lake will appear.

 

I suspect optimal choices boil down to budget and use case. A budget restricted gaming and streaming build is likely better off with an R5. On the other hand, an Autocad heavy system might actually do better with the higher IPC of an i5. I believe that even with recent BIOS enhancements, i7-7700K still outperforms R5 or R7 in pure gaming environments.

 

[Enderman]

1 hour ago, N3v3r3nding_N3wb said:

I agree with your general statement, but cores by no means equal threads.  They are very different and the eight cores (and 16 threads) of a 1700 will outperform the 8 threads of an i7, without contest (assuming a situation that utilizes that many threads).

But if it was 8 cores and 8 threads it would still only be 8 cores and that is not automatically better than 4 cores and 8 threads.

 

When you run a multithreaded task such as a game it cannot distinguish between a core and a thread.

It is the same thing to the program.

[N3v3r3nding_N3wb]

43 minutes ago, Enderman said:

But if it was 8 cores and 8 threads it would still only be 8 cores and that is not automatically better than 4 cores and 8 threads.

 

When you run a multithreaded task such as a game it cannot distinguish between a core and a thread.

It is the same thing to the program.

The performance is entirely different, though.  A logical core doesn't perform as well as a physical core.  It uses whatever resources aren't being used up by the main thread on the physical core.  By your logic, an 8350 should perform identically to an 1800x without SMT because the program can only tell that they both have 8 cores.

 

Spoiler

 "Hyper-threading is no substitute for additional cores, but a dual-core CPU with hyper-threading should perform better than a dual-core CPU without hyper-threading." --(https://www.howtogeek.com/194756/cpu-basics-multiple-cpus-cores-and-hyper-threading-explained/).