Any point to Intel X-Series CPUs?

[Gavin786]

Sorry guys for my nooby questions.

Intel X-series CPUs are supposted to be their top tier offering for consumer right?

Now why then according to : https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i9-9900X-vs-Intel-Core-i9-9900KS/m639130vsm929964

Are the K series which are cheaper and supposed to be inferior beating the X series?

Is there any point to the X series at all ?

Do these series letters even mean anything ?

Thanks for all/any who take the time to answer.

Gavin786

 

[Gavin786]

I know AMD are currently slightly better multi-core performance than Intel at the moment.

For me reliability is an important concern, and my experience with AMD in the past is that there has always been the odd compatibility issues, and in the case of their graphics card, bad driver support, games not working, etc, etc.

And that is something that as time gets on, frankly, I just cant be bothered with.

I am happy to take a hit in price or performance to get something that is a bit more rock-solid without compatibility issues.

That is why I am looking at Intel and am loathe to consider AMD, even though they might be slightly better right now.

So I would kind of still like an answer to my questions regarding the X-series CPUs, what is the point of them, should I really consider them over just the KS ?

I would like to maybe try a hackintosh(lol and I was complaining about compatibility issues), so I think I need one K or KS with integrated GPU. And anyone who knows about this topic, advice would also be greatly appreciated.

I probably will wait later in year till buying, as I dont want to buy before the next gen Nvidia graphics cards come out, but am itchy to buy as soon as I can.

 

[Gavin786]

Also I dont really get the difference between the 10 and the 9 series. They are priced pretty much identically. Are they basically just the same thing with different numbers as a marketing gimmick ?

 

[Gavin786]

@faceman123 @IntMD Thank you guys for answering, I tried to find somewhere to give u an upvote but dont see it on the forum UI.

 

[Gavin786]

@Tetras thanks, that is really helpful, I didnt know the X series needed a different chipset than the Z390.

Looks like its really not worth it.

 

[Gavin786]

Ok, so you guys had me pretty much convinced to go with AMD and forget about buying Intel.

Then I check out this : https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i9-9900KS-vs-AMD-Ryzen-9-3950X/m929964vs4057

Basically its saying that for any use case except in which I have 8 cores fully maxed out in usage the Intel is going to be the better CPU? For all performance scenarios upto and including 8-core performance, the Intel is the better chip?

Am I interpreting this right ?

Is anyone actually doing something that needs 9 cores/18 threads? I usually run a few VMs and my laptop 4core/8thread CPU seems to be fine(with my use cases anyway), I did buy a hefty chunk of RAM, but CPU seems like not a bottleneck.

Mostly I am going to be gaming/developing. And potentially dual or triple-boot system, depending on whether I can get away without windows. Which is why compatibility is a factor for me. I have not looked into whether I can get away with an AMD CPU for a hackintosh, but I know the Intel 9900KS is compatible.

I do like the PciE Gen 4 on the SSD, but this seems to be the only solid advantage the AMD is going to have for normal usage scenarios. Are there any games or software that seriously take advantage of this massive parallelism? Mostly games run on 2 cores at most, as far as the ones I play goes, which only 3AAA game is Elite pretty much. KSP is something else I play and is single-threaded performance is most important for it?

What am I missing, am I seeing the numbers wrong?

I am not trying to argue btw, just dont know its why Im asking, I dont have a position, I am trying to find out.

And thank you for everyone who has taken the time to reply so far.

 

[Gavin786]

You are interpreting the charts correctly. The problem is the charts are ******* trash, almost to the point of outright lies.

Userbenchmark has been heavily messed with to pander to Intel. Never, ever, ever use it.

I didnt know that.

What benchmarks are the correct ones, are they available?

How, specifically, are userbenchmark fiddling their results? I know in the past(coming up 20 years ago now lol), there was Intel Performance Primitives which was a set of libraries that did a lot of mathematical functions, and was great at speeding up certain core inner-loop critical stuff. It turns out that the library was deliberately designed not to work with AMD CPUs, reverting to a much slower version. And when it was cracked/modified to run on AMD it performed as good as equivalent Intel. TLDR; it was synthetically tampered with to make AMD run worse. So if this type of thing is used in a 'benchmark' then I can see that skewing things a lot, and I know it is a trick Intel pulled in the past.

I see the CPU clock cycle numbers there, and I am having a lot of trouble understanding them. It says AMD runs at 4.7 GHz, somewhere it says a lot lower than that, and the overclockers said they could only get 4.3(?) which is lower than the advertised speed? I dont know what is going on. For the Intel, I got one here, and I overclock it to 42x on the multiplier and it will run quite happily at that speed ~4200 on all the cores according to cpu-z(remember I dont know jack **** about serious over clocking, I am just using the tools with the msi and not even the bios). What is going on with AMD clock cycle numbers? What is going to be the actual real clock-speed I can expect?

It seems tho that the 9900KS can reach lets say 5.1 overclocked. People, even amateurs can get this consistently. I certainly would expect this if I buy. And this number seems easy to understand, no fiddling with it.

Let us assume for a moment that these figures are correct and the Intel is running at 5.1 and the AMD at 4.7, all CPU across all cores. This would mean that for the AMD to match the Intel, it would need to do more per cycle than the Intel, or else have something else going on, on the board say, that would compensate for lower clocks. Performance up to 8-core, one would assume, would be better on the Intel, especially in applications which are not parallelised well.

Anyway, I guess if the userbenchmark score is wrong, are the right scores anywhere? How do clock cycle numbers compare, are the CPUs like-for-like on clock cycle, or does one have more effective speed-per-cycle? I know clock cycle is not the be-all as some instructions take more than 1 clock, some can be parallelised, etc.

Thanks guys, I know I am probably annoying some of you by now with my n00by questions.

 

[Gavin786]

Threadripper VM machine maybe? Run all the systems at the same time?

Id love to do that, it would be the perfect solution. Problem is I have had right trouble virtualizing Mac OSX in the past. It is extremely slow, the graphics does not virtualize at all well, and the graphics card seems just not to be used full-stop. Running direct on the hardware is night and day. However, I would be wise to have another go at doing this before I commit to buying a more expensive board for a hackintosh. I have never been in the situation where I needed a top-level hypervisor like vsphere to use the graphics card in the VMs. It might be worth looking into if this works nowadays, or the graphics card is still virtualized. Thank you.

 

[Gavin786]

Thanks to all the guys who posted links and gave their valuable opinions on the topic. I have read all and gave consideration.

So I have looked into things and it certainly seems that userbenchmark are not playing fair and altered their scoring mechanism when AMD Ryzen came out so that Intel would continue to come out on top of their rankings. Which is very unfair. However, this does not necessarily mean their results are wrong for the typical use-case of Gamers/Devs. As far as I can see, having looked into it now, that AMD only wins out when doing rendering for YouTube videos, or some extreme networking testing where a dozen VMs are in use at the same time. Also AMD wins in synthetic benchmarks in which more than 8(9?) threads are simultaneously utilised or there is no thread limit. Which, given how rare these scenarios are going to be for me, is seriously not worth a drop of 15%-30% on regular day-to-day performance. I dont do any rendering of 3D graphics and if I was, I could do it while I am asleep if it was going to hog my CPU for hours at a time.

I checked the gamernexus video @RavenXX2 kindly provided(thank you), and it does seem that the Intel chips(esp 9900K(S)) beat the AMD in every real-world scenario. Sometimes there is even a 30% improvement in games for the Intel chip vs the AMD I would want to buy (3950x is my AMD shortlist winner).

Seems like, even though they played a dirty trick on AMD, the userbenchmark score is consistent with the results gamersnexus got and reflects most people's real-world use-case and experience.

I know this conclusion is probably going to annoy a lot of people, but the numbers is usually what I go with over opinions, and they are all saying the Intel is better, except in the most extreme and rare circumstances/synthetic benchmarks utilising 9+ threads.

I have been the victim myself of reviewers skewing results in favour of their favourites, and ignoring unique features/advantages of my products, so I know how miserable and unfair this is, and I do keep this in mind. And I do want to slant things a little bit in AMD's favour, esp based on the opinions above, and the misbehaviour of userbenchmark, but the figures just dont support this, and I cant make them fit the scenario where AMD will be a better choice for me. The only way this could change is if games suddenly started supporting massive parallelism, which really does not seem like it will happen in the next 3 years or so.

So conclusion seems to be that if your main thing is video rendering/3d graphics rendering and certain editing tasks, then the AMD 3950x is the way to go. For every other thing, esp gaming, the Intel 9900KS is the best chip.

People seem to be saying that the numbers are wrong and that AMD is the better chip, but I have yet to see any cogent argument that supports that position. I care about PCIe gen4 and the faster SSDs, but I dont think this is enough to sway me.

All this really begs another question though : Are Intel/AMD likely to release another chip this year? Is there any good reason to buy now, or is waiting till later the best move?

 

[Gavin786]

I suspect this thread is thinly veiled excuse to promote an expensive EOL Intel CPU. I wouldn't spend too much time trying to convince anyone. One attempt is all they get from me then it's caveat emptor.

If you've done your research the answer is obvious. I bought an expensive motherboard for a reason, the 4950X. Try that with LGA1151...

I assure you sir, I do not have any agenda. IF AMD seems to be the better choice for me then I will go with that. I am asking questions because I dont know the answer, not because I already have a position which I am trying to promote. My reasoning/conclusions/information is leading me down a certain path, if this is wrong, then please do provide the facts/figures/reasons. All the numbers are saying the Intel 9900KS seems to be the best CPU for people who have a primarily gaming/development use-case which is what I have. I have never heard of the 4950x or seen it anywhere.

 

[Gavin786]

OK, troll thread is trolling now. I can't see how you've done all this research and come to the conclusion you have.

I'm out.

I am not trolling. Both userbenchmarks and gamersnexus video which was provided above give benchmark results which show that for gaming/art programs, and I would assume development also, that the 9900 series chips beat out the AMD offerings, sometimes as much as 30%. I know people seem to be very passionate and very convinced the AMDs are the better chip. So please explain this to me? I just dont get how people are saying one thing(and it does seem to be everyone on the thread), yet the numbers tell the opposite story. The only use-cases, based upon what I have seen where the AMD becomes the better chip is where there is a highly threaded workload, and this is not normal, I seriously doubt there will ever be the scenario where I will use 9 threads to full capacity for an extended period of time.

You are forgetting I am not an expert, I have a very good mind for numerical thinking, but on CPUs definitely not an expert. So this is a circle that is hard to square for me. I assure you, I do not have an agenda, and I do not wish to offend or upset anyone on this thread, especially as people have been kind enough to spend their time answering/helping me.