Which cpu for my upgrade 8700k or 7800x

Morgan MLGman · August 28, 2017

2 minutes ago, porina said:

I do believe in buy the right tool for the job. To me my 1600 system isn't at all comparable to my 7800X system. The 1600 is ok for what I call light loads, but comparing stock voltage overclocks (essentially "free" performance), the 1600 managed 3.6 GHz, the 7800X does 4.3 AVX stable, possibly it would go higher in non-AVX but I've not explored it at stock voltage yet. On top of that, Intel has the 2x IPC advantage over Ryzen in AVX. Sure, Ryzen is a lot cheaper, but it is a lot less CPU to me in those areas. I know for most they don't care about that difference, which is fair enough. Get the Ryzen for a lot less, but don't write off Intel on value alone. Of course, 7800X is not without its problems. To get the overclock I do need a decent watercooling system, whereas the 1600 reaches its low voltage limit on bundled cooler. Combined that for gaming (which is the excuse I gave to myself to buy it) it turned out to be worse than a 7700k...

#firstworldproblems

I mentioned pricing because what most people ask me about when they want advice regarding tech purchases is "is it worth it to buy it" and well, as you said the watercooler also adds cost to the platform so it's probably even more than twice as expensive overall to go X299 so it makes it hard for me to recommend the 7800X to almost anyone

Judging by the performance numbers in games, an i7-6800K is faster than the 7800X despite having lower IPC (or an i7-5820K, this one is even faster once overclocked because it overclocks higher than Broadwell-E), maybe that's the route you should've gone

Of course, Haswell-E or Broadwell-E don't have AVX-512 but is it really that necessary?

porina · August 28, 2017

5 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

I mentioned pricing because what most people ask me about when they want advice regarding tech purchases is "is it worth it to buy it" and well, as you said the watercooler also adds cost to the platform so it's probably even more than twice as expensive overall to go X299 so it makes it hard for me to recommend the 7800X to almost anyone

That's fair enough. If the extra stuff isn't need, why pay for it?

As a parallel in the other world, my car is like a Ryzen. I don't use it enough to pay a lot for something "nicer" and it gets me to work no worse than something a lot more expensive. There are higher end ones with different advantages, but I decided it wasn't worth it for me. I can spend the money saved on unnecessary computer accumulation.

5 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

Judging by the performance numbers in games, an i7-6800K is faster than the 7800X despite having lower IPC (or an i7-5820K, this one is even faster once overclocked because it overclocks higher than Broadwell-E), maybe that's the route you should've gone

I really debated swapping the 6700k with a 7700k but kept telling myself not to be silly. I also almost bought a 5820k, but it was a dodgy seller on ebay and never happened. Side note: the 7800X (OC) is roughly equivalent in compute performance as a 14 core Xeon I have on X99, but the Xeon is much lower clock and isn't my 1st choice for gaming.

5 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

Of course, Haswell-E or Broadwell-E don't have AVX-512 but is it really that necessary?

For most, no. For me, it should in theory offer double the peak IPC again over AVX2, if I can keep it cool, and if software I use gets updated to use it. Reports so far are it runs CPU even hotter than AVX2, and I'm not holding my breath on software updates. This will be long term...