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8 core vs 12 core

adrichardson81

adrichardson81

adrichardson81

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Cambridge
Hi everyone

I've decided to give my rig a mid-life upgrade and switch my 3700x for either a 5800x or 5900x. My 3700x is 1st gen silicon and a bit of a dog - it took an undervolt and a lot of PBO tuning just to hit 4.3GHz single core and it won't post if I go over 3200 on the ram.

My main uses are photo editing (42mp raws in DXO PL, and tiffs in Photoshop and Alien Skin/Nik collection) and gaming (targeting 4K 60fps).

Question is am I better off with 8 cores and a single ccx for better latency or upgrading to 12 cores? I know the next gen consoles are 8 core, but they are also more resource light so I'm wondering if having 4 cores free for Windows to faff around with in the background is preferable.

Any thoughts?
 
Im certainly no expert, but Ive been watching a lot of videos on 3xxx to try and see how 5xxx will look.
the single CCX 3xxx vs 2 CCX in the benchmarks I saw, seem to have almost identical frame times. Which I think is where the 'latency' would show.

Im going for a 5900x currently. Ive not read (for gaming) that 2 CCX design made it worse for the 3xxx series. The 3900 and 3950 beat all of the 3xxx for fps. Maybe not value, for money. But Ive not seen anything blowing the top end chips away in games, because they were single CCX.
 
DxO batch processing likes more threads,and the Ryzen 9 5900X is cheaper per core than a Ryzen 7 5800X too,and has a slighly higher boost clockspeed too. It also wouldn't surprise me if the Ryzen 9 5900X is easier to cool,as the heat distribution should be even on both sides of the CPU.

Having said that - I do wonder if you are better served waiting until Zen4 and DDR5.
 
I know DXO hammers the cores pretty hard, it will eat as many cores as you want to throw at it (there is a setting in there you can select how many cores to be utilised).

Nik, I havent used for a long time. Adobe, i dont think it is that core intensive.

All of the softwares are extremely memory hungry. the CPU grunt is really shown during live preview of any editing you are doing or final export.

the 3700x still should be plenty for what you need to do tbh in terms of photo editing. more cores are highly productive for video editing and rendering workloads.

in terms of games, @4K it wont be CPU limited. you are better served with a high end GPU (which you have). than a high end CPU different story of course if you are talking lower res gaming.

last bit to add, in conclusion, wait a bit and see how you get on in games and if you really feel the need to upgrade to 5000 ryzen you can - but wait for the price to come down and proabbly go with an 8Core as opposed to the 5900x as i very much doubt you will see that much benefit in having 4 more physcial cores in games or in your edit work

also have a play with the Ryzen Clock Tuner see if that can help you with either better overclocking or lower those volts.

https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/clocktuner-for-ryzen-download.html
 
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The sweet spot is the Ryzen 9 5900X,not the Ryzen 7 5800X. The former has 50% more cores and a higher boost clock for £100 more. Also,most modern game engines will be coded for the 4+4 CCX design of the console CPUs as time progresses. Its older engines and older games which have issues with the 4+4 CCX design,and a Ryzen 9 5900X will have six cores per CCX and CCD. Many of these older games and older engines seem to show poor scaling past six cores anyway.
 
The Old School Gamer said:
I totally 100% disagree with you.
12 cores is overkill for gaming imho.
Click to expand...

Read the OP - they use DxO like me which scales very well with more cores during batch exports. OP doesn't just game.

Also again you don't seem to appreciate the consoles are using 4+4 CCX design Zen2 8 core CPUs based on Renoir. Every new generation game engine will have to take that into consideration. Newer generation engines seem to place Zen2 much closer to Intel. Those new generation engines will scale past 8 cores.

If anything if you actually look at the games where Zen2 falls down in its those based on older engines. I run some of those games myself - most of them don't scale past 6 cores at all.

This is why in ALL of those games,a six core Core i5 is virtually the same speed as the 8 and 10 core Intel CPUs. The same when a overclocked Ryzen 5 matches a Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 9 in them. So a 6+6 design won't limit performance in older generation games.

The fact is the Ryzen 7 5800X isn't a sweetspot - its £430 for 8 cores. The Ryzen 9 5900X is £530 for 50% more cores and also because its dual dies,it most likely will be easier to cool,and hence boost better with decent cooling.

The Ryzen 5 and 7 CPUs have one single offset chiplet which makes them more finicky with coolers.

Plus if you really want to go with the sweetspot for gaming - it will be the Ryzen 5 5600 non-X which is apparently $220 and the Ryzen 7 5700X whenever its released.

ATM,both the Ryzen 5 5600X and Ryzen 7 5800X cost more per core than a Ryzen 9 5900X.
 
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Wait for benchmarks. They will answer your question correctly without the guessing and speculation.

Although if you're a gambling man, then go for the 5800X because that's where I think the performance sweetspot will be.
 
CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
Read the OP - they use DxO like me which scales very well with more cores during batch exports. OP doesn't just game.
Click to expand...

thats one piece of software from his work flow that will use all the cores and hammer them. I dont think having 8 more logical cores compared with 16 will reduce much time on his entire photo work flow. PS will probably be the most time consuming bit due to manual editing. the DXO stuff can be background stuff as long as you dont assign all the cores to it to be used then you can't do anything other than wait in the line for DXO to finish.

I am assuming ofc he s using DXO instead of LR for all the pre-processing and then going into PS for specific edits and then choosing Nik effects.
 
Thanks everyone! I use dxo for the heavy lifting on my photo editing, so it looks like that would be an argument in favour of more threads.

Likewise Nik doesn't seem overly impressed with the gpu upgraded, so I'm assuming it's cpu bound too.
 
adrichardson81 said:
Likewise Nik doesn't seem overly impressed with the gpu upgraded, so I'm assuming it's cpu bound too.
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Nik might just be a very poorly optimised software. however i havent used it for over 6 yrs. and it wasnt part of DXO suit then.

I found at the time most of its effects you can achieve in PS with Actions with more control and better results at times.
 
DeathStorm said:
What timescale do you honestly expect this to matter by? If it's not in the next couple of years it really shouldn't be a major concern for most of us...
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It's already starting to happen. Also last time I checked most people buying an expensive £400~£500 CPU now keep it for a few years. Then also have people not considered,all those things such as the fancy audio,storage,etc in consoles is handled by dedicated chips. On PC those will be partially offloaded to the CPU. So if you are going to be spending £400+ on a CPU,an expensive GPU,expensive monitor,etc I am not sure trying to save £100 makes much sense here. PC generally has more going on in the background.

The problem is the Ryzen 7 5800X pricing is terrible,as the Ryzen 9 5900X is not that much more,and you get much more in return. For the Ryzen 7 5800X to have the same per core pricing as the Ryzen 9 5900X it would need to be £350. If it were £350 you could argue that £180 is a bigger difference to justify and buy a Ryzen 7 instead.

Also,have you looked at the comparisons of the single chiplet Ryzen 7 and dual chiplet Ryzen 9 Zen2 CPUs:
https://tpucdn.com/review/amd-ryzen-7-3800xt/images/relative-performance-games-1280-720.png

The Ryzen 9 CPUs seem to push slightly ahead in games which don't always thread as well. So as much as one chiplet is lower latency,it seems the better binned chiplets in the Ryzen 9 CPUs seem to boost better,which negates it with modern games. It's mostly those games based on older engines(such as Fallout 4 or Skyrim) which seem to have problems with the 4+4 config due to zero Zen optimisations,but I think with 6 cores in one CCX/CCD they should be fine.Those games by their very nature won't really need more than 6 cores but also are not reviewed anymore.

The Ryzen 9 5900X seems the best mix of performance and price in the current stack. It will need the Ryzen 5 5600 non-X and possibly the Ryzen 7 5700X to beat it per core price.

NbIhHKw.png


Look at the specifications. The Ryzen 7 5800X base clock is only 100MHZ higher than the Ryzen 9 5900X,but it has a worse boost clockspeed. The TDP is the same. So it tells me the 6 core chiplets used in the Ryzen 9 5900X is better quality than in the Ryzen 5 5600X and Ryzen 7 5800X(42.5W per 6 core chiplet).


pc-guy said:
thats one piece of software from his work flow that will use all the cores and hammer them. I dont think having 8 more logical cores compared with 16 will reduce much time on his entire photo work flow. PS will probably be the most time consuming bit due to manual editing. the DXO stuff can be background stuff as long as you dont assign all the cores to it to be used then you can't do anything other than wait in the line for DXO to finish.

I am assuming ofc he s using DXO instead of LR for all the pre-processing and then going into PS for specific edits and then choosing Nik effects.
Click to expand...

It's also incredibly time consuming too and when you have 100s of images it starts to add up. 50% more cores,higher clockspeed and more IPC,would be noticeable over a Ryzen 5 5800X which would be more of a sidegrade. Plus the clockspeed and IPC/PPC improvements might also help with filters too.

In top of this with 12 cores,you could literally dedicate to concurrent DxO processing whilst doing other stuff.

So for me its either getting the Ryzen 9 5900X or staying put with the Ryzen 7 3700X. OFC,IF the OP can wait until Zen4(or whatever Intel has by then) the improvements might even be larger. However,since they asked which CPU was the better buy,its quite clearly the Ryzen 9 5900X at least compared to the Ryzen 7 5800X.

adrichardson81 said:
Thanks everyone! I use dxo for the heavy lifting on my photo editing, so it looks like that would be an argument in favour of more threads.

Likewise Nik doesn't seem overly impressed with the gpu upgraded, so I'm assuming it's cpu bound too.
Click to expand...

Also the problem with the Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 CPUs is the offset single chiplet. It means heat distribution over the IHS is uneven and certain coolers don't appear to play as well with this,ie,they don't make proper contact over the single chiplet.

So some of these issues you have with the Ryzen 7 might be down to the cooler design too.

The Ryzen 9 CPUs,due to dual chiplets have a much more even thermal distribution over the IHS in theory.
 
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CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
It's also incredibly time consuming too and when you have 100s of images it starts to add up. 50% more cores,higher clockspeed and more IPC,would be noticeable over a Ryzen 5 5800X which would be more of a sidegrade. Plus the clockspeed and IPC/PPC improvements might also help with filters too.

In top of this with 12 cores,you could literally dedicate to concurrent DxO processing whilst doing other stuff.
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i know i use DXO also. it is excellent but needs a lot of CPU horse power, like i said, i dont allow it to have all the cores. then that way I can still work on PS while that software working at the background. RAM allocation is really my issue as with 32GB ram sometimes it will struggle. I don't get into any situation of waiting around for image to be processed in DXO and waiting to be post-processed in PS tho.
 
pc-guy said:
i know i use DXO also. it is excellent but needs a lot of CPU horse power, like i said, i dont allow it to have all the cores. then that way I can still work on PS while that software working at the background. RAM allocation is really my issue as with 32GB ram sometimes it will struggle. I don't get into any situation of waiting around for image to be processed in DXO and waiting to be post-processed in PS tho.
Click to expand...

That is kind of the advantage of 12~16 cores it gives you options if you are heavy user. This is why I wouldn't upgrade to a Ryzen 7 5800X from a Ryzen 7 3700X in this case,as its more of the same!!
 
adrichardson81 said:
Thanks everyone! I use dxo for the heavy lifting on my photo editing, so it looks like that would be an argument in favour of more threads.

Likewise Nik doesn't seem overly impressed with the gpu upgraded, so I'm assuming it's cpu bound too.
Click to expand...
There's a single thread topic here, (where humbug wrongly bragged his Ryzen 3600 was faster than my 9700k in DXO - it was 35% slower) in it you will see the comparisons I did using DXO.
If you are doing single photos at a time then DXO will only use a max of 8 threads. This is why my 8/8 clocked 9700k is faster in DXO then my very well tuned 12/24 3900X.
For the 3900X to be faster I need to batch export at least 2 photos.

I use NikTools and Photoshop but these generally don't take advantage of multi-core and rely more on single thread speed.

I will be testing out both the 5800x and 5900x to see which one is better overall in our scenarios but I would probably opt for the 5900x if making a pre-review decision.
 
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