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9900k / 9700k or something else

Caporegime
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Location
Notts
From a gamers perspective :I think the point about higher fps at 1080p is future performance at 1440p. Within the lifespan of the cpu, another generation or two of gpu will see that gap appear at 1440p. Possibly adding to the longevity/value.

I would recommend the ryzen to most my friends. It's just really good value and overall a lot better cpu, cores power. But to a serious gamer who is paying out for high end gpu, it is a harder choice.


the problem is not so much the cpus its the new mobo prices. that actually makes intel look better right now.

forget older boards run these cpus. most people want new boards with new features and being more secure for the future. £200 budget boards with whiny fans on is what will hurt sales of these new amd chips. not the actual chips themselves.

take a 3700x its £329 if you can find stock. then a £200 mobo yes i know you can buy a older £80 board but thats not without headaches or less features. then ram. say £100 to be nice.
now you can go get a i7 9700k for a tiny bit more but then a cheaper mobo and say same ram and it will be faster at games period. no headaches and simply just work. also no stupid little tiny fan.

the x570 platform needs to come down to realistc prices. or they simply wont sell.
 
Associate
Joined
26 Mar 2007
Posts
1,604
9700K, best gaming CPU out there for the price, and performs noticeably better than 3700x
No arguing from a pure gaming perspective Intel still rules but the gap has closed!

I complied a table using numbers taken from the GN 3700X video using the 3600 baseline to compare;

ox30MKT.jpg

Basically based upon the highlighted games;

3700X - 2% improvement over 3600 @ 1440p
3900X - 3%
9700k - 14%
9900k - 12%

Things are better for Intel @ 1080p with less of a gpu bottleneck, for AMD the higher tier cpus gain around 1%. Nothing wrong with the AMD numbers though, the 3600 at sub £200 is a bargain!

Board prices based upon;
AMD - MSI B450 Gaming Carbon Pro AC
Intel - Gigabyte X390 Aorus Master
 
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Associate
Joined
4 Jul 2016
Posts
275
No arguing from a pure gaming perspective Intel still rules but the gap has closed!

I complied a table using numbers taken from the GN 3700X video using the 3600 baseline to compare;

ox30MKT.jpg

Basically based upon the highlighted games;

3700X - 2% improvement over 3600 @ 1440p
3900X - 3%
9700k - 14%
9900k - 12%

Things are better for Intel @ 1080p with less of a gpu bottleneck, for AMD the higher tier cpus gain around 1%. Nothing wrong with the AMD numbers though, the 3600 at sub £200 is a bargain!

Board prices based upon;
AMD - MSI B450 Gaming Carbon Pro AC
Intel - Gigabyte X390 Aorus Master

I agree 3600 is good for £200, but then you good pick up an 9600k for gaming, and you'd be back to the same position.

3600 is best suited up to 2060 for mid-range gaming.

2070 above is high refresh territory, which you'd be looking at 9700k.
 
Associate
Joined
4 Jul 2016
Posts
275
the problem is not so much the cpus its the new mobo prices. that actually makes intel look better right now.

forget older boards run these cpus. most people want new boards with new features and being more secure for the future. £200 budget boards with whiny fans on is what will hurt sales of these new amd chips. not the actual chips themselves.

take a 3700x its £329 if you can find stock. then a £200 mobo yes i know you can buy a older £80 board but thats not without headaches or less features. then ram. say £100 to be nice.
now you can go get a i7 9700k for a tiny bit more but then a cheaper mobo and say same ram and it will be faster at games period. no headaches and simply just work. also no stupid little tiny fan.

the x570 platform needs to come down to realistc prices. or they simply wont sell.

Nice to see someone else sees that as well.

9700k, and Z390 can be had for £470, or £420 if you went with an older board.

3700x and X570, and you're looking at £500, or £400 with an older board.

The 9700k would be the sensible option for gamers, and works out cheaper.
 
Associate
Joined
26 Mar 2007
Posts
1,604
I agree 3600 is good for £200, but then you good pick up an 9600k for gaming, and you'd be back to the same position.

3600 is best suited up to 2060 for mid-range gaming.

2070 above is high refresh territory, which you'd be looking at 9700k.
Agree completely, a 9700k is still the king of gaming, no question imo. King of budget gaming it is the 3600 and the 3700X / 3800X make an odd fit unless they tick other boxes in terms of workloads.


I'm actually tempted at a 9900k and disabled HT while pure gaming and enable them for beneficial productivity workloads. Best of both worlds :)
 
Soldato
Joined
9 Nov 2009
Posts
24,841
Location
Planet Earth
Nice to see someone else sees that as well.

9700k, and Z390 can be had for £470, or £420 if you went with an older board.

3700x and X570, and you're looking at £500, or £400 with an older board.

The 9700k would be the sensible option for gamers, and works out cheaper.

Wrong - the Core i7 9700K costs more as a CPU and you forgot it needs a CPU cooler.

I like how you are on purpose ignoring the X570 has PCI-E 4.0 and the Z390 is more like the cheaper X470 motherboards.

The Ryzen 7 3700X consumes less power than a Ryzen 5 2600X so it will even work fine in a £70 motherboard.

A lot of MSI B450/X470 motherboards have BIOS flashback as standard so don't even need a CPU to update the BIOS.

So the Core i7 9700K is the more expensive option.
 
Caporegime
Joined
1 Jun 2006
Posts
33,507
Location
Notts
it isnt that much more and less hassle and faster than any amd option for gaming.

to make the amd option attractive they have to lower the prices of the x570 boards.

its probably £50 more to have a i7 9700k over a 3700x maybe even less because you ideally need dearer ram for the 3700x. even at £50 more for the i7 you probably going to have that set up 3 - 5 years. £50 more to have a faster system over 3-5 years.
 
Soldato
Joined
6 Oct 2007
Posts
22,284
Location
North West
8 theads and more expensive and people are considering it v the 16 thead 3700.

tenor.gif
 
Associate
Joined
4 Jul 2016
Posts
275
Wrong - the Core i7 9700K costs more as a CPU and you forgot it needs a CPU cooler.

I like how you are on purpose ignoring the X570 has PCI-E 4.0 and the Z390 is more like the cheaper X470 motherboards.

The Ryzen 7 3700X consumes less power than a Ryzen 5 2600X so it will even work fine in a £70 motherboard.

A lot of MSI B450/X470 motherboards have BIOS flashback as standard so don't even need a CPU to update the BIOS.

So the Core i7 9700K is the more expensive option.

A cheap cooler will do for the 9700K, and something a lot of people willfully ignore....the cooler on Zen would need to be replaced if doing decent level overclocking.


£324 for 9700K on rainforest, and £75 for a Z370 board (That will handle OC on the 9700K) That's £399 in total.

£320 for 3700x and £74 for a cheap (but capable) and that's £394.

£5 for better gaming performance
 
Associate
Joined
26 Mar 2007
Posts
1,604
8 theads and more expensive and people are considering it v the 16 thead 3700.

tenor.gif
There are totally cases where the 3700X trounces the 9700K due to the core count and SMT mostly in productivity workloads / synthetics. For gaming the facts are it falls behind and it is on par with its much cheaper cousin the 3600. By the time that 8 / 16 package will really be taken advantage of and be a telling feature we'll be another generation or two ahead.
 
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Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
14,150
Location
West Midlands
Ok, here's a challenge spend £1500 on a whole system, purely for gaming and the most FPS possible at 1080p and 1440p. Any money not spent, can be saved for an upgrade half way in to the life of the system which is between years 2-3 of a 5 years cycle, and will be a budget of £350 + what ever is left (if anything). The idea it to have the best FPS for the most amount of time, over the total of the 5 years the system will be owned, and to have spent the least on the system, so you can spend more on games. :)
 
Soldato
Joined
9 Nov 2009
Posts
24,841
Location
Planet Earth
A cheap cooler will do for the 9700K, and something a lot of people willfully ignore....the cooler on Zen would need to be replaced if doing decent level overclocking.


£324 for 9700K on rainforest, and £75 for a Z370 board (That will handle OC on the 9700K) That's £399 in total.

£320 for 3700x and £74 for a cheap (but capable) and that's £394.

£5 for better gaming performance

I just checked on there - nearly £360 there actually with most retailers being between that and £380:
https://charts.camelcamelcamel.com/...ired=false&legend=1&ilt=1&tp=all&fo=0&lang=en

Also not in stock.

OcUK sell the OEM one with 12 months warranty for £340,and its most likely crap overclockers,going from what people have hinted at.

This is the cheapest Z370 motherboard and has a 4+2 phase VRM:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/giga...cket-1151-ddr4-atx-motherboard-mb-566-gi.html

£80 to £90 at most retailers.

I don't think I would trust an overclock to 5GHZ on that if there wasn't active VRM cooling - my mate who has a Core i7 8700K used something a bit better than that,and the VRMs still felt a bit toasty.

But if we add the other places prices with a cheap Z370 motherboard,its still nearly £440 to £450 for that combination(at £360 CPU cost) or £420 to £430 for the OEM one. Also a cheap cooler for stock for a Core i7 9700K - a Hyper 212.

A Hyper 212 is £30 and a good estimation of the stock cooling for Ryzen in a relative manner:
https://www.reddit.com/r/intel/comments/a5jwfx/i79700k_hyper_212_evo/

It can just about cool a Core i7 9700K at stock for that and Reddit was hit and miss on it. So that is at least £450 to £480 there.

Just comparing stock to stock,with a B450 Tomahawk(£90) or B450M Mortar(£80) as Buildzoid said the VRMs were OK and had OK heatsinks(for at least running at stock clockspeeds), the Ryzen 7 3700X setup will be £400 to £410. The Core i7 9700K will be £50 to £70 more just at stock.

Considering that the Ryzen 7 3700X apparently does not overclock well anyway,it barely adds anything anyway. So improve the cooler on the Core i7 9700K to get a better overclock,and maybe a bit better motherboard its more money.

I am not seeing how Intel is cheaper here,even if we buy crapper motherboards which are not so good for overclocking and run all the CPUs at stock speeds. Maybe when that rumoured 15% drop in price happens,this will be the case.

There are totally cases where the 3700X trounces the 9700K due to the core count and SMT mostly in productivity workloads / synthetics. For gaming the facts are it falls behind and it is on par with its much cheaper cousin the 3600. By the time that 8 / 16 package will really be taken advantage of and be a telling feature we'll be another generation or two ahead.

If you watch the Gamersnexus review,their overclocked 5GHZ Core i5 9600K was virtually matching the overclocked Core i7 9700K and Core i9 9900K in many games. So in that case,you can also say the extra cores of the Core i7 9700K are not doing much and you should get a Core i5 9600K.

If you look at their review,in the 11 gaming charts,7 had the overclocked Core i5 9600K equaling the overclocked Core i5 9900K,and in 4 charts it was faster,but 3 were well under 10% at 1080p and only one was 16% at 1080p,but at 1440P the difference was smaller. The game which was 16% faster was Hitman - a stealth game.
 
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Associate
Joined
4 Jul 2016
Posts
275
Ok, here's a challenge spend £1500 on a whole system, purely for gaming and the most FPS possible at 1080p and 1440p. Any money not spent, can be saved for an upgrade half way in to the life of the system which is between years 2-3 of a 5 years cycle, and will be a budget of £350 + what ever is left (if anything). The idea it to have the best FPS for the most amount of time, over the total of the 5 years the system will be owned, and to have spent the least on the system, so you can spend more on games. :)

I did that lol. It's called my 9700K rig, lol.
 
Associate
Joined
4 Jul 2016
Posts
275
I just checked on there - nearly £360 there actually with most retailers being between that and £380:
https://charts.camelcamelcamel.com/...ired=false&legend=1&ilt=1&tp=all&fo=0&lang=en

Also not in stock.

OcUK sell the OEM one with 12 months warranty for £340,and its most likely crap overclockers,going from what people have hinted at.

This is the cheapest Z370 motherboard and has a 4+2 phase VRM:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/giga...cket-1151-ddr4-atx-motherboard-mb-566-gi.html

£80 to £90 at most retailers.

I don't think I would trust an overclock to 5GHZ on that if there wasn't active VRM cooling - my mate who has a Core i7 8700K used something a bit better than that,and the VRMs still felt a bit toasty.

But if we add the other places prices with a cheap Z370 motherboard,its still nearly £440 to £450 for that combination(at £360 CPU cost) or £420 to £430 for the OEM one. Also a cheap cooler for stock for a Core i7 9700K - a Hyper 212.

A Hyper 212 is £30 and a good estimation of the stock cooling for Ryzen in a relative manner:
https://www.reddit.com/r/intel/comments/a5jwfx/i79700k_hyper_212_evo/

It can just about cool a Core i7 9700K at stock for that and Reddit was hit and miss on it. So that is at least £450 to £480 there.

Just comparing stock to stock,with a B450 Tomahawk(£90) or B450M Mortar(£80) as Buildzoid said the VRMs were OK and had OK heatsinks(for at least running at stock clockspeeds), the Ryzen 7 3700X setup will be £400 to £410. The Core i7 9700K will be £50 to £70 more just at stock.

Considering that the Ryzen 7 3700X apparently does not overclock well anyway,it barely adds anything anyway. So improve the cooler on the Core i7 9700K to get a better overclock,and maybe a bit better motherboard its more money.

I am not seeing how Intel is cheaper here,even if we buy crapper motherboards which are not so good for overclocking and run all the CPUs at stock speeds. Maybe when that rumoured 15% drop in price happens,this will be the case.



If you watch the Gamersnexus review,their overclocked 5GHZ Core i5 9600K was virtually matching the overclocked Core i7 9700K and Core i9 9900K in many games. So in that case,you can also say the extra cores of the Core i7 9700K are not doing much and you should get a Core i5 9600K.

If you look at their review,in the 11 gaming charts,7 had the overclocked Core i5 9600K equaling the overclocked Core i5 9900K,and in 4 charts it was faster,but 3 were well under 10% at 1080p and only one was 16% at 1080p,but at 1440P the difference was smaller. The game which was 16% faster was Hitman - a stealth game.

Really appreciate the long response, genuinely not being sarcastic or anything.

The 9700K overclocks, and runs fine on my old coolermaster, which was a £14 cooler, currently have a H115i Pro, which does a better job, obviously.

When I Google 9700k it shows that the ones from Raimforest UK, coming from Rainforest US (inclusive of taxes) are still available for the £324, so the prices are still the same, and again a cheap cooler would be sufficient to get a decent overclock at reasonable temps.

The other thing that a lot of people willfully omit is the fact that those with 1440p monitors aren't likely running at 60hz, so those extra frames do count.

I was hand on heart hoping that AMD would skin Intel for gaming performance, so I was disappointed with performance, and from a gaming perspective, I really couldn't recommend anything else.
 
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