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5900x or 5800x for gaming?

Pricing aside, I assume the 5950X is 8+8? If so and the argument about single core CCX design being more effective holds true AAAND the next generation of games are designed to optimise 8 cores (per consoles), then surely the 5950X will be faster in future than the 5900X?

Speak slowly, I'm not very clever.

Games may be optimised to ‘use all 8 cores’ but there will be very few that can fully utilise all 8 cores. Most games are in fact hobbled by one thread which maxes out one core while the rest have far lower utilisation.


For gaming you want to get the CPU with enough cores that has the highest single threaded performance. That’s why up until now intel have always been ‘better at games’. Having 12 slower cores is not as good as having 10 faster ones at a gaming workload. It’s slightly more complex than that but in principle it’s correct for almost all gaming workloads. Ashes of the Singularity is not really representative of gaming :D

When you are comparing the same architecture like 5800 vs 5900 you basically want to choose the one with the highest boost clock which I think is the 5900/5950. 5600 has enough cores but it doesn’t clock as high, 5800 will be better but 5900 and 5950 will be better still (with significant demonising returns when price per performance is considered).

It also doesn’t consider overclocking. If you can get a 5800 and 5900 up to the same clock speed when overclocked, they’ll perform pretty much the same in games. Same goes for a 5600, if you can get it up to the same clocks speed there isn’t really anything that needs the two extra cores because something will be maxing one core and the other 5 are more than enough to pick up the rest.

In reality I don’t think you’ll see many other than golden 5600s getting up to the 5900 speeds though as the 5900 will get all the best 6 core chiplet’s (assuming both are overclocked).

All of the above assumes you are also cpu limited which isn’t normally the case.
 
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Thanks, that's useful. So
Edit: I am in same boat, trying to talk myself to go for 5950X instead of 5800X
My reason is just 5GHz stock boost :(

Thanks, that's useful. I thought 5950x was 4.9Ghx boost clock and 5900x was 4.8Ghz?

Conversely, the 5900x has a higher base clock.

...or is that what you're saying?
 
Games may be optimised to ‘use all 8 cores’ but there will be very few that can fully utilise all 8 cores. Most games are in fact hobbled by one thread which maxes out one core while the rest have far lower utilisation.


For gaming you want to get the CPU with enough cores that has the highest single threaded performance. That’s why up until now intel have always been ‘better at games’. Having 12 slower cores is not as good as having 10 faster ones at a gaming workload. It’s slightly more complex than that but in principle it’s correct for almost all gaming workloads. Ashes of the Singularity is not really representative of gaming :D

When you are comparing the same architecture like 5800 vs 5900 you basically want to choose the one with the highest boost clock which I think is the 5900/5950. 5600 has enough cores but it doesn’t clock as high, 5800 will be better but 5900 and 5950 will be better still (with significant demonising returns when price per performance is considered).

It also doesn’t consider overclocking. If you can get a 5800 and 5900 up to the same clock speed when overclocked, they’ll perform pretty much the same in games. Same goes for a 5600, if you can get it up to the same clocks speed there isn’t really anything that needs the two extra cores because something will be maxing one core and the other 5 are more than enough to pick up the rest.

In reality I don’t think you’ll see many other than golden 5600s getting up to the 5900 speeds though as the 5900 will get all the best 6 core chiplet’s (assuming both are overclocked).

All of the above assumes you are also cpu limited which isn’t normally the case.

Thanks that's really helpful.
 
I thought 5950x was 4.9Ghx boost clock and 5900x was 4.8Ghz?
It looks like (from Geekbench5 data) Zen 3 boost above declared value by about 130-140MHz.
So that brings 5950X to 5.03GHz for light loads
No I don't need any more than 8 cores. Yes, 200MHz difference is almost nothing. But 5GHz!
 
It looks like (from Geekbench5 data) Zen 3 boost above declared value by about 130-140MHz.
So that brings 5950X to 5.03GHz for light loads
No I don't need any more than 8 cores. Yes, 200MHz difference is almost nothing. But 5GHz!

I see... haha. I'm also one of the numpties who pre-ordered an RTX3090, so I'm pretty much obliged to buy a 5950X !! hah
 
I find this review embargo business quite frustrating, I'm sure I want a Zen3 part but never in the history of owning PCs having I been this uncertain as to what the right part to buy actually is?
 
I hope not, I've already exorcised my PC twice this year.


Of course it will, the higher priced skus will have the best performing chiplets and boost higher but the diminishing returns will hit very hard.

The chances are your not CPU limited anyway so going from a 5600 to 5950 may make zero difference. Sounds like you already have a decent CPU anyway so upgrading has limited benefits.
 
I find this review embargo business quite frustrating, I'm sure I want a Zen3 part but never in the history of owning PCs having I been this uncertain as to what the right part to buy actually is?

Agree 100%, hope it is the day before but no doubt it will be 2pm on Thursday. It just adds that extra bit of spice to us not being able to buy something on launch, once the websites crash until 10pm.
 
I'm in a dilemma of going with a 5950x but that will leave my budget to only afford a 3070/6800 or get a 5900x and be able to get a 3080/5900 amd card.

But I only need for the graphics card to last a couple years then I'll upgrade to a better card, I'm thinking I'm better off going for the best and last CPU of the am4 line.
 
I'm in a dilemma of going with a 5950x but that will leave my budget to only afford a 3070/6800 or get a 5900x and be able to get a 3080/5900 amd card.

But I only need for the graphics card to last a couple years then I'll upgrade to a better card, I'm thinking I'm better off going for the best and last CPU of the am4 line.

Ordinarily, I would always say spend the money on the GPU and not the CPU, but on the basis that these are the last ever AM4 chips, you might as well future-proof yourself on the CPU side. If you're looking to play games at 1080p or 1440p then 3070/6800 will be more than enough horsepower for the next couple of years. It's really only if you want 4k that you need to really push it... and even then HDMI 2.1 monitors aren't readily available yet.
 
I'm in a dilemma of going with a 5950x but that will leave my budget to only afford a 3070/6800 or get a 5900x and be able to get a 3080/5900 amd card.

But I only need for the graphics card to last a couple years then I'll upgrade to a better card, I'm thinking I'm better off going for the best and last CPU of the am4 line.
What is your use case? Gaming only? If so, i say bag a 5600X/5800X and get the 6800XT.
 
do you know what time nda will be lifted for reviews to come out? is it going to be the same time as zen3 will be available to purchase?

EDIT: I'm still leaning toward 5900x (over 5800x) due to the "small" price difference for extra 4 cores. I wish there was a clear price cut between 8 core and 12 core.... If there only was 5700x 65w at $379USD :P
 
Of course it will, the higher priced skus will have the best performing chiplets and boost higher but the diminishing returns will hit very hard.

The chances are your not CPU limited anyway so going from a 5600 to 5950 may make zero difference. Sounds like you already have a decent CPU anyway so upgrading has limited benefits.

I think you missed the joke. :p
 
Ordinarily, I would always say spend the money on the GPU and not the CPU, but on the basis that these are the last ever AM4 chips, you might as well future-proof yourself on the CPU side. If you're looking to play games at 1080p or 1440p then 3070/6800 will be more than enough horsepower for the next couple of years. It's really only if you want 4k that you need to really push it... and even then HDMI 2.1 monitors aren't readily available yet.

I have a simple solution to that... Upgrade when you've basically got double the performance on offer at a reasonable price. That way it matters less about a few % or a few hundred £ here or there because you get such large gains.

You have people on this forum agonising over 3080/90 GPUs when they are already rolling with a 2080 and Zen2 owners compulsively upgrading to Zen3 as soon as humanly possible for 10's of % compute gains which they will hardly notice in GPU bound games. Computer hardware and tech stuff is like crack dust to some people it never ceases to amaze me :D
 
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