5900x or 5800x for gaming?

jigger · 25 Oct 2020 at 11:43

old gamer said:
I have been looking to upgrade my ryzen 1700 to a 3700x but as I game on a 38" ultrawide I'm not so sure it's worth it.
I found a vid on youtube testing a nvidia 3080 and at 4k my gains would be between 6 to 10 fps.
My monitor is freesync 75hz so now seems a bit pointless as I can put the money into a better gpu

You would probably be ok with those settings in a lot of titles. You’ll be very graphics top heavy, but if the 1700 can hold 60ish FPS with decent frame times and FreeSync it should be a pretty decent gaming experience.

Mr Oblong · 25 Oct 2020 at 11:56

old gamer said:
I have been looking to upgrade my ryzen 1700 to a 3700x but as I game on a 38" ultrawide I'm not so sure it's worth it.
I found a vid on youtube testing a nvidia 3080 and at 4k my gains would be between 6 to 10 fps.
My monitor is freesync 75hz so now seems a bit pointless as I can put the money into a better gpu

I think you'll be okay in plenty of games, but you'll be pushing the limits of your CPU in others.

Framerates will be good, but you might find frametime consistency is rockier than on a faster CPU.

jigger · 25 Oct 2020 at 12:05

Mr Oblong said:
I think you'll be okay in plenty of games, but you'll be pushing the limits of your CPU in others.

Framerates will be good, but you might find frametime consistency is rockier than on a faster CPU.

Yeah, it will be very game dependent and some games will probably be less then great. FreeSync will help smooth out the bumps to some extent and tuning the memory and IF can also help in some games.

old gamer · 25 Oct 2020 at 12:21

Mr Oblong said:
I think you'll be okay in plenty of games, but you'll be pushing the limits of your CPU in others.

Framerates will be good, but you might find frametime consistency is rockier than on a faster CPU.

Another thing I forgot is I have a rift s which I believe is 1400p, hopefully when the new ryzens come I might be able to pick up a 3700x or 3600 at a decent price

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 25 Oct 2020 at 12:23

I would get the Ryzen 9 5900X as it has 50% cores and a slightly higher boostclock for £100 more.

Mr Oblong · 25 Oct 2020 at 12:24

old gamer said:
Another thing I forgot is I have a rift s which I believe is 1400p, hopefully when the new ryzens come I might be able to pick up a 3700x or 3600 at a decent price

Good shout. I think the best deals will be after the 5600 and 5700X are here, so there's more competition at lower prices.

HACO · 25 Oct 2020 at 12:33

5900X is very likely a 6+6 core CCX design, whereas 5800X is a single 8-core CCX design. So right now I expect very little difference, but once the games start to use full 8 cores, the difference might begin to show.

Mr Oblong · 25 Oct 2020 at 12:38

HACO said:
5900X is very likely a 6+6 core CCX design, whereas 5800X is a single 8-core CCX design. So right now I expect very little difference, but once the games start to use full 8 cores, the difference might begin to show.

Me too, but more cache and clock speed will help. For an intensive 8 core game (that somehow doesn't scale past 8) the 5800X will stand out.

I think it's main strength will be offering very similar gaming performance to the 5900X whilst still having headroom over the 5600X.

jigger · 25 Oct 2020 at 12:40

HACO said:
5900X is very likely a 6+6 core CCX design, whereas 5800X is a single 8-core CCX design. So right now I expect very little difference, but once the games start to use full 8 cores, the difference might begin to show.

I think the difference will start to become more and more apparent as the load on all cores increases. That is part of a larger process though. API’s, OS scheduling, graphics drivers, game engines and graphics hardware also need to be considered.

Mr Oblong · 25 Oct 2020 at 12:44

jigger said:
I think the difference will start to become more and more apparent as the load on all cores increases. That is part of a larger process though. API’s, OS scheduling, graphics drivers, game engines and graphics hardware also need to considered.

But such things could also benefit from having 4 more cores, so I think it might be quite a nuanced situation that varies between even similar use cases.

jigger · 25 Oct 2020 at 13:03

Mr Oblong said:
But such things could also benefit from having 4 more cores, so I think it might be quite a nuanced situation that varies between even similar use cases.

Yeah, and some games will benefit from fewer faster cores. Some games fall apart over 60 FPS .

amd7674 · 25 Oct 2020 at 14:33

Assuming single core scores are very similar across 5xxxx CPUs, potentially at this time 5600x makes the most sense for what you get (perf/$$$). However in a year or two it is hard to predict if games will be optimized for more +6 cores usage or not.
Since this is the "last stand" for AM4 platform and DDR4, IMHO buying the best you can afford is wiser than buying what you need today. Thus I'm going with 32Gb of RAM and leaning toward 5900x ( or at least 5800x ).
If you are one users who likes to upgrade (sell old /buy new) whenever they have need, going with 5600x for now and then upgrading to stronger 5xxxx maybe more sense. I dunno. LOL

SnR3 · 25 Oct 2020 at 15:03

Honestly I see so many ppls comments wait for benchmarks but truth to be told you already answered yourself. If it's 1440p gaming and you going to run 3080 on 165 Hz monitors can't think of any game that would benefit from having 5900x over 5800x. Truth to be told probably even 5600x would max out the FPS for such monitors.
I'd only consider 5900x if they gonna do something else on then PCs other than gaming

CAT-THE-FIFTH · 25 Oct 2020 at 18:45

HACO said:
5900X is very likely a 6+6 core CCX design, whereas 5800X is a single 8-core CCX design. So right now I expect very little difference, but once the games start to use full 8 cores, the difference might begin to show.

The consoles are using Zen2 based CPUs with a 4+4 CCX design. That means every major engine which is used on console games,will have to be programmed to take that into consideration. The games which will benefit the most from the unified CCX are older ones which are latency sensitive IMHO,and have no Ryzen optimisations so don't take the 4+4 design into consideration. So a 6+6 CCX design won't be such an issue with newer engines. So in the end I would take the Ryzen 9 5900X over the Ryzen 7 5800X. For £100 more you get higher boost clocks and 50% more cores too.

Mr Oblong · 25 Oct 2020 at 19:57

jigger said:
Yeah, and some games will benefit from fewer faster cores. Some games fall apart over 60 FPS .

Yep, I mean some console ports are buggy above 30fps!

Chaos666 · 25 Oct 2020 at 20:08

Mr Oblong said:
Yep, I mean some console ports are buggy above 30fps!

it depends how the game was designed .. some engines tie some things to the framerate

Mr Oblong · 25 Oct 2020 at 20:14

Chaos666 said:
it depends how the game was designed .. some engines tie some things to the framerate

Yeah. Less common nowadays but more widespread in Japanese developed games I've found.

zoffster1 · 25 Oct 2020 at 22:38

I think purely for gaming the 5800 may be better as you'll get all 8 cores on a single unit rather than 6+6. Then again there is a minor clock speed bump on the 5900.

Chaos666 · 26 Oct 2020 at 18:57

zoffster1 said:
I think purely for gaming the 5800 may be better as you'll get all 8 cores on a single unit rather than 6+6. Then again there is a minor clock speed bump on the 5900.

I see that a lot..
check 3800x vs 3900x... 3900 is usually better anyway.

Mr Oblong · 31 Oct 2020 at 22:33

Chaos666 said:
I see that a lot..
check 3800x vs 3900x... 3900 is usually better anyway.

Neither of those have a unified CCX, so it's a different comparison surely?