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CPU debate - sighh

mast3r

mast3r

mast3r

Soldato
Joined
28 Jan 2007
Posts
2,558
Location
Wilmslow, Cheshire
Hello to one and all,

I am back, after 4/5 years break from PC Gaming i am making a bit of a return, my clan is still going and i am getting a bit more of a taste for games again (more so the banter with my buddies).

I am still on my old 2600K rig and i am planning a new build in the next week or so and i just really cant decide on what to do.

I spend all day every day working with IT (server/citrix) and i just have not had the brain energy to keep up with consumer hardware etc so i am hoping for some pointers.

I am really unsure on AMD or Intel, One minute im all for TR then im reading "No! TR is no good for gaming, get the 9900k" then i look at the 9900K and i see "Dont waste the money get a Ryzen"...

My main use of the PC is admin work, the odd VM for UAT and gaming - reason for this more than anything is i bought BF5 the other week and once installed... "NAH" - CPU and GFX is a no no.

I do like a nice new project and i am spending more and more time in the office too. so if i dont get the use out of gaming i will from VM Ware.

Can anyone shed any light on this for me.


I will be starting another thread under General HW for the rest of the build but i cant do this until i know my CPU / Chipset

Budget is £2k but ideally less.

Thanks
 
mast3r said:
Hello to one and all,

I am back, after 4/5 years break from PC Gaming i am making a bit of a return, my clan is still going and i am getting a bit more of a taste for games again (more so the banter with my buddies).

I am still on my old 2600K rig and i am planning a new build in the next week or so and i just really cant decide on what to do.

I spend all day every day working with IT (server/citrix) and i just have not had the brain energy to keep up with consumer hardware etc so i am hoping for some pointers.

I am really unsure on AMD or Intel, One minute im all for TR then im reading "No! TR is no good for gaming, get the 9900k" then i look at the 9900K and i see "Dont waste the money get a Ryzen"...

My main use of the PC is admin work, the odd VM for UAT and gaming - reason for this more than anything is i bought BF5 the other week and once installed... "NAH" - CPU and GFX is a no no.

I do like a nice new project and i am spending more and more time in the office too. so if i dont get the use out of gaming i will from VM Ware.

Can anyone shed any light on this for me.


I will be starting another thread under General HW for the rest of the build but i cant do this until i know my CPU / Chipset

Budget is £2k but ideally less.

Thanks
Click to expand...

AMD has a new line up of mainstream Zen 2 (Ryzen 3) cpus coming out over the next 5 months which will be going all way up to 12 and more likely 16 cores.

So my proposal is either wait or buy now a 2700X save money to upgrade to 3800X in summer.
9900k while good only shines at 1080p with a graphic card which will eat more than half your budget (2080ti). If you use lesser gpu or higher resolution the difference is tiny if any.
 
Thanks for the responses guys.

I use:
2X 24" Dell U2414H
1x 27" Dell U2715H

I will be looking to get the 2070 not 2080.

I dont really want to wait any longer, as it stands i cant play the games i have bought :-(
 
My suggestion, if you really cant wait, is to go for a 2700X/2700, good set of Samsung B-Die single rank RAM (~3200MHz is a the sweet spot for Ryzen at the moment) then look for a board with a good VRM (with a decent VRM heatsink) and BIOS. If you get everything correct and have decent cooling, then you should be able to just let PBO/XFR do its thing to manage the clock speeds for you, no need to faff about with a manual overclock.
I went from a 3570K to 2700X and it was a very noticeable bump in smoothness in games, and general zippyness around windows.

You could go for an Intel platform if you really want to get those extra few frames at 1080p/1440p (if you're not GPU bound), but to me, the extra cost is not worth it. The 2700X is ~£300 and the 9900K is ~£450... big premium to pay for a few extra FPS.
At least with the AMD platform you're likely to get at least 1 more generation of upgrade in your existing motherboard, I very much doubt intel will offer anything else in LGA1151.

The only reason to go for TR over AM4 is if you have a specific need for the PCI-E lanes, you're heavily using multiple VMs and need them to have dedicated cores, or you're doing a lot of scientific/rendering or other thread intensive workload. I run a few VMs, do a fair bit of rendering/graphics work, some control systems software testing (which uses threads heavily) and I still found AM4 to be perfectly suitable.
 
Unless you have money to burn and really need single core performance than its definitely AMD.

CPU's are way cheaper, boards are cheaper (because the mid range chipset is fully featured unlike intel where you have to get Z chipset for o/c) and you get more cores in same product placement.

I think you may get some replies tho telling you to just "wait" its always the "wait" LOL because something better is coming later in the year. But you have that urge now, that itch, so I wouldnt wait.

For best value for money it will be the Ryzen 2600 and a b450 board, the board I got was the asrock b450 pro 4, which should still be a healthy upgrade over your sandy bridge.

2700(X) is poorer value for money and for gaming purposes offers little performance advantage over the 2600 chips.
 
Best gaming CPU is the 9900k if you can't stretch to that there are plenty of options

I guess the gaming pecking order is something like below, you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between these chips out side of bench marks unless you are one of those elitist 144hz gamers, then only Intel will do.

9900k (16T)->8700k(12T) ->9700k(8T)->2700k(16T)->2600k(12T)

I'd stick with an 8 thread minimum as it sounds like you are not going to be an upgrader. I tend to build a machine around the GPU I need as that is more often than not my bottleneck at 4k and CPU is pretty much irrelevant.
 
well this gets very interesting doesn't it, haha.

There will be no waiting i am afraid, just like you say Chrcoluk, i have the itch now, not in 5/6 months, we will deal with that itch then....

Ill have to have a look at the AMD Avenue again by the sounds of it.
 
No way i would touch intel right now with Zen2 only a few months away unless i had a 2080ti and wanted to game at 1080p
If you cannot wait i would spend on a really good AM4 motherboard and get a 2600, this will do you until the new line comes out later in the year which will be much more powerful - then the new cpu's are a drop in replacement.
 
Personally I'd scratch the itch by preparing for the future.

Invest in a heavy-duty AM4 400 series board like the B450 Tomahawk or X470 Crosshair VII and decent RAM that uses Samsung B die. That will give you a good basis for Ryzen 3000 later in the year.

For the here and now, it's up to you if you want to go Ryzen 2600 or Ryzen 2700 (don't bother with the X for now), so check benchmarks for the games you want to play to see how these CPUs perform. Then later in the year you can grab a Ryzen 3000 and sell on your existing Ryzen 2000.

From everything we've seen so far, Ryzen 3000 really is worth the wait; Intel is arguably the "best" right now, but they won't be in a mere 6 months, and I fear it's largely a waste of money to get the "best" Intel kit now which will have no upgrade path and beaten for less money in half a year.
 
As those monitors are 60Hz I would just go with a gpu for the short term. This is assuming you are sticking with them and not buying a high refresh rate panel.

The i7 2600K is still a decent cpu, so overclock it if it is at stock and just go with a 2070 or Vega 64. Then decide on a new cpu/board in Summer once Ryzen 3000 is released.
 
LePhuronn said:
Personally I'd scratch the itch by preparing for the future.

Invest in a heavy-duty AM4 400 series board like the B450 Tomahawk or X470 Crosshair VII and decent RAM that uses Samsung B die. That will give you a good basis for Ryzen 3000 later in the year.

For the here and now, it's up to you if you want to go Ryzen 2600 or Ryzen 2700 (don't bother with the X for now), so check benchmarks for the games you want to play to see how these CPUs perform. Then later in the year you can grab a Ryzen 3000 and sell on your existing Ryzen 2000.

From everything we've seen so far, Ryzen 3000 really is worth the wait; Intel is arguably the "best" right now, but they won't be in a mere 6 months, and I fear it's largely a waste of money to get the "best" Intel kit now which will have no upgrade path and beaten for less money in half a year.
Click to expand...

Yep thats what i would do, put the foundations down for a great Zen2 build and run it with a 2600 for now which will be more than adequate.
Or just hold off until the big boys do get released later this year, one way or other i suspect most folk are going to want to be gaming on AMD this summer.
 
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