Convince Me To Go With 7980XE over 8700K

[rarifiedbovine]

Building computers is my hobby.  I am lucky enough to have reasonable disposable income, and this is my chosen outlet for it.  I love having the newest, latest, best thing.  At the moment, I am looking to upgrade my computer from 5960X.  So I am staring down the barrel of two new platforms: X299 or Z370.

 

Here's the thing.  I want to believe that I need a 7980XE.  As I said, I love having that overkill CPU.  At the same time, as I'm sure you all know, the price difference between that and an 8700K is very great.  I don't do many workstation tasks other than occasionally streaming and somewhat frequently editing videos for YT.  What I DEFINITELY don't want to do is sacrifice gaming performance by going with a 7980XE over an 8700K, but it seems like that would be the case.  Is there ANY conceivable reason to go with the 7980XE in my case (including advantages of the X299 platform)?  Will it at least be equivalent gaming performance, or will it actually be worse?  7980XE reviews made it seem like it was actually pretty good at handling single- or lightly-threaded tasks.

 

Thanks!

[Enderman]

Single core performance is much worse.

If you want the best and latest then get the 8700k.

[TheRandomness]

It'll be worse:
A) You need to delid it to get decent temps (Same with the 8700k tbh)
B) Lower frequencies overall mean less gaming performance
C) You have to buy a rather expensive motherboard to make sure the VRMs don't pop trying to power a CPU that draws about 600-800W depending on how much you overclock

[Thermosman]

4 minutes ago, rarifiedbovine said:

Building computers is my hobby.  I am lucky enough to have reasonable disposable income, and this is my chosen outlet for it.  I love having the newest, latest, best thing.  At the moment, I am looking to upgrade my computer from 5960X.  So I am staring down the barrel of two new platforms: X299 or Z370.

 

Here's the thing.  I want to believe that I need a 7980XE.  As I said, I love having that overkill CPU.  At the same time, as I'm sure you all know, the price difference between that and an 8700K is very great.  I don't do many workstation tasks other than occasionally streaming and somewhat frequently editing videos for YT.  What I DEFINITELY don't want to do is sacrifice gaming performance by going with a 7980XE over an 8700K, but it seems like that would be the case.  Is there ANY conceivable reason to go with the 7980XE in my case (including advantages of the X299 platform)?  Will it at least be equivalent gaming performance, or will it actually be worse?  7980XE reviews made it seem like it was actually pretty good at handling single- or lightly-threaded tasks.

 

Thanks!

Get a dual eypc 64 core system if you are dedicated to overkill

[Lurick]

You could buy the 8700K and take all the rest of the money you would have spent on the 7980XE, pull it out of the bank in all 1 dollar bills, and light it on fire so it feels like you got the 7980XE  

Or invest the money into the future, or anything else really.

[Princess Luna]

the i7 8700k or the i9 7900x if you want the truly best, the i9 7980xe is simply a very long heavy truck... it drives slow despite being able to carry so much at once...

 

The i7 8700k is the ferrari, light can't carry too much but is bloody fast

 

i9 7900x is the between, that sexy SUV that's fast and can carry plenty.

[COUPER MILLAR]

why not get threadripper with triple NVME raid 0?

[Princess Luna]

1 minute ago, COUPER MILLAR said:

?

OP Has Money he has no need for the budget team

[Jurrunio]

Depends on what you do. The 7980XE can run 3 VM at the same time without being slower than the locked 8700, something the 8700k can never do.

 

Though 3 Z370 mobo and 8700k still cost less than one 7980XE and a well-built X299 mobo

[ImNotThere]

for me, if i had the money, i would go 7980xe, not because i need it, but for the purpose of saying to my friends i have an 18 core cpu that has hyperthreading 

[rarifiedbovine]

Thanks to all for the help so far.  Is everyone in agreement that the 8700K is actually better for gaming?

 

18 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

the i7 8700k or the i9 7900x if you want the truly best, the i9 7980xe is simply a very long heavy truck... it drives slow despite being able to carry so much at once...

 

The i7 8700k is the ferrari, light can't carry too much but is bloody fast

 

i9 7900x is the between, that sexy SUV that's fast and can carry plenty.

So you actually think the 7900X is a better/equivalent gaming CPU to the 8700K?

[Princess Luna]

1 minute ago, rarifiedbovine said:

So you actually think the 7900X is a better/equivalent gaming CPU to the 8700K?

If you actually have the money for these builds and really wants to go for it the i9 7900x indeed makes more sense, see if this professional can attend you:

 

@done12many2 he knows any thing there is to know about processors, he'll explain to you that if you want the best processor possible without ever sacrificing gaming performance that should be a good middle ground.

 

Obviously though if you have no use for the cores I still think that burning the money on an i7 8700k + a nVidia TITAN Xp would be "cooler"  to have.

[done12many2]

18 minutes ago, rarifiedbovine said:

Thanks to all for the help so far.  Is everyone in agreement that the 8700K is actually better for gaming?

 

So you actually think the 7900X is a better/equivalent gaming CPU to the 8700K?

 

The 8700k would be better for overall gaming use.  Sure there are going to be the rare occasions when a game comes along that is actually optimized for more than 6 cores, but it will be so rare that the majority of time you would have been better off using a higher clocked 8700k.

 

Sure, the 7980XE can game very well.  Not quite as well as the 8700k overall, but it will crush the 8700k in other workloads.

 

Bottom line, gaming is your priority.  Go with the CPU that fits your priority.  It's what you need, not what you want.  Good luck bud.

[rarifiedbovine]

2 hours ago, done12many2 said:

 

The 8700k would be better for overall gaming use.  Sure there are going to be the rare occasions when a game comes along that is actually optimized for more than 6 cores, but it will be so rare that the majority of time you would have been better off using a higher clocked 8700k.

 

Sure, the 7980XE can game very well.  Not quite as well as the 8700k overall, but it will crush the 8700k in other workloads.

 

Bottom line, gaming is your priority.  Go with the CPU that fits your priority.  It's what you need, not what you want.  Good luck bud.

Thanks so much!  How do you feel about the suggestion above re a 7900x that can do both well?

[rarifiedbovine]

2 hours ago, Princess Cadence said:

Obviously though if you have no use for the cores I still think that burning the money on an i7 8700k + a nVidia TITAN Xp would be "cooler"  to have.

Already have two of those

[TahoeDust]

I was going to say just go with the 8700k...then I saw you already have two Titan XPs.  Go with the 7900x.  The 44 PCI lanes will let you run them at full 16x 16x.  It will probably end up being a better gaming setup then if you paired them with the 8700k.

[rarifiedbovine]

27 minutes ago, TahoeDust said:

I was going to say just go with the 8700k...then I saw you already have two Titan XPs.  Go with the 7900x.  The 44 PCI lanes will let you run them at full 16x 16x.  It will probably end up being a better gaming setup then if you paired them with the 8700k.

Awesome.  So better that than the 7980XE (or any other Skylake-E)?

[TahoeDust]

2 minutes ago, rarifiedbovine said:

Awesome.  So better that than the 7980XE (or any other Skylake-E)?

For SLI gaming I would say a delidded highly clocked 7900x is probably the best you could buy.  You love overkill, so maybe a delidded and binned 4.8GHz 7900x from Silicon Lottery.

[rarifiedbovine]

10 minutes ago, TahoeDust said:

For SLI gaming I would say a delidded highly clocked 7900x is probably the best you could buy.  You love overkill, so maybe a delidded and binned 4.8GHz 7900x from Silicon Lottery.

A wonderful idea.  Thanks!