I7 7700k should I buy?!

[Jono8]

Be wary of cpu gaming benchmarks. Where you see them all equal, it just means the game is not cpu intensive and the bottleneck is not there. You need to be looking at the benches where they are all different to see where the real performance lies when you will need it.

The i7 7700k will be decently faster in cpu bound games compared with a 1600x. How often you will notice it depends on the games you play though.

 

[subbytna]

Be wary of cpu gaming benchmarks. Where you see them all equal, it just means the game is not cpu intensive and the bottleneck is not there. You need to be looking at the benches where they are all different to see where the real performance lies when you will need it.

The i7 7700k will be decently faster in cpu bound games compared with a 1600x. How often you will notice it depends on the games you play though.

Yes that's true, but is the 7700 worth the extra £100 cost over the 1600x? Performance to money tells me that no it's not worth the extra cash. OP's decision though.

 

[Panos]

And lets not forget, 7700K does show on good fps on specific scenario. 1080p without any other background application running, on the game benchmark environment.
Anything away from those parameters and is irrelevant.

Imho better buy the 1600X, and get a better GPU for the extra money

 

[Jono8]

Yes that's true, but is the 7700 worth the extra £100 cost over the 1600x? Performance to money tells me that no it's not worth the extra cash. OP's decision though.

Depends. I have come across quite a few games where at certain points the CPU takes over and you need every last ounce of performance from it. Whether having that for an extra £100 is as you say, the OP's choice.

I don't think he could go wrong with either, for different reasons

 

[TheF34RChannel]

I don't understand either the AMD or 7700K recommendations. Wait for Coffee Lake-S which just around the corner; you'll have the cores, frequency and IPC. All three!

 

[humbug]

£350 and its not going to be any faster than the 7700K ^^^^ if it takes its architectural lead from SkyLake-X it'll be even slower...

Am I correct to say it that with slower card i.e. GtX 1070 you wouldn't see the difference between those processors ?

Correct...

Be wary of cpu gaming benchmarks. Where you see them all equal, it just means the game is not cpu intensive and the bottleneck is not there. You need to be looking at the benches where they are all different to see where the real performance lies when you will need it.

The i7 7700k will be decently faster in cpu bound games compared with a 1600x. How often you will notice it depends on the games you play though.

Thats very true, and fortunately in the review i linked there is only one game where all CPU's result the same, well nearly all, the 7800X being the one struggling to keep up with the pack, its not a CPU bottleneck but rather a frame cap, but still, its only one, linked below...

The 7700K does get more performance out of the 1080TI, yes, but only 10% more @4.9Ghz....

Here is the one game where they are all but the 7800X the same.

 

[Coowhan]

I was planning on upgrading to a 1080Ti in the near future but right now it's not in my build as the price is pretty ridic at the moment. Talking about another like £600 alone just for that card. Just going with a 1060/1070 to keep the cost down right now. Everything else I am going pretty all out.

Bit unsure about AMD. People seem to bash on the Ryzen a lot. It does enable me to buy a stronger GPU straight off though so am considering it. No idea how upgradable an AMD build would be though looking forward, know nothing about them.

If I was to stream games would the Ryzen be better for example?

 

[humbug]

I was planning on upgrading to a 1080Ti in the near future but right now it's not in my build as the price is pretty ridic at the moment. Talking about another like £600 alone just for that card. Just going with a 1060/1070 to keep the cost down right now. Everything else I am going pretty all out.

Bit unsure about AMD. People seem to bash on the Ryzen a lot. It does enable me to buy a stronger GPU straight off though so am considering it. No idea how upgradable an AMD build would be though looking forward, know nothing about them.

If I was to stream games would the Ryzen be better for example?

You can use nVidia shadowplay to stream games and that has no effect on the CPU, however people who are serious about streaming prefer the high image quality software encoding gives in OBS, for that Ryzen is the only CPU outside of silly money enthusiast level CPU's that will do it and do it well, if you do look at enthusiast level CPU's like the i9's or X99 stuff you would have to spend no less than 5 or £600.

So for streaming Ryzen 7 is best, it has 8 cores to easily handle the encoding, https://www.overclockers.co.uk/amd-...hz-socket-am4-processor-retail-cp-39x-am.html

People seem to bash on the Ryzen a lot

Can you give me an example of that? there are a lot of fanboys 'on both sides' but right now Intel's fanboys are particular loud because of how good the Ryzen chips are in comparison.

Also, i use a 1070, its a good 1440P card, why do you think you may need a 1080TI?

 

[Coowhan]

Swaying closer and closer towards a Ryzen setup just for the whole future proofing and value for money. (Even though I am mainly going to be playing older games like R6 Siege etc.) But that's not to say I wont be playing newer games obviously. Siege seems to be a pretty cpu intensive game though according to a lot of streamers.

Can basically get a R7 1700 with a 1080 and GB Gaming 3 350 board with the addition of a SSD. For the same price I can get a i7 7700k with a decent z270 board and just a 3gb 1060 and no additional SSD with my HD... Maybe even if I drop to the R5 1600 I could possibly get myself a 1080Ti if I wanted to get silly haha?

Only thing is I'm not sure on motherboard for AMD system. Difference between 350 and 370 boards?

Regards to the bashing comment I'm not sure if it's just ignorance or what but people are quick to dismiss it against Intel for gaming. It is primarily a gaming PC for my needs.

 

[voidshatter]

I don't understand either the AMD or 7700K recommendations. Wait for Coffee Lake-S which just around the corner; you'll have the cores, frequency and IPC. All three!

There is no guarantee about frequency yet... At least not according to the current rumours. It may require some luck to reach 5GHz AVX stable.

However, given that it is around the corner, it could be a wrong decision not to wait until next month and see what happens.

 

[humbug]

Swaying closer and closer towards a Ryzen setup just for the whole future proofing and value for money. (Even though I am mainly going to be playing older games like R6 Siege etc.) But that's not to say I wont be playing newer games obviously. Siege seems to be a pretty cpu intensive game though according to a lot of streamers.

Can basically get a R7 1700 with a 1080 and GB Gaming 3 350 board with the addition of a SSD. For the same price I can get a i7 7700k with a decent z270 board and just a 3gb 1060 and no additional SSD with my HD... Maybe even if I drop to the R5 1600 I could possibly get myself a 1080Ti if I wanted to get silly haha?

Only thing is I'm not sure on motherboard for AMD system. Difference between 350 and 370 boards?

Regards to the bashing comment I'm not sure if it's just ignorance or what but people are quick to dismiss it against Intel for gaming. It is primarily a gaming PC for my needs.

The only major difference between the B350 and X370 boards is SLI, board vendors have to pay nVidia royalties for the technology to run multi GPU's on the board, other than that the X370 are higher end so they have more Voltage Regulation Modules, IO inputs, more M.2 slots.... stuff like that, stuff you don't need unless you're planing on multiple GPU's, to plug in many NVMe type SDDs ecte...

If your priority is gaming, the way i see it is your GPU horsepower, for example if you have enough money for a Ryzen 7 1700X and a GTX 1070 or a Ryzen 5 1600 and a GTX 1080 then i would say get the latter....
However, i wouldn't say get a Ryzen 5 1400 and a GTX 1080, that's an unbalanced system, it would not be a nice experience because the CPU would be working too hard to keep up with the 1080, all its compute threads would be loaded up near 100% and that could cause stuttering.
In that case i would say no take a step down from the GPU and get a Ryzen 5 1600 with a GTX 1070, there is always a balance to be had, that also includes faster drives like SSD's, these days i would recommend a gamer has an SSD boot drive with enough space to put a few of his favourite games on because loading games off a mechanical drive is slow and actually your game-play may not be as smooth as it would with the game installed on an SSD.

So: my advice, The GTX 1070 is a much faster card than the GTX 1060, thats the 6GB variant, the 3GB one is even slower, the GTX 1070 is about 70% faster, the Gigabyte board, yup i don't see a problem with that....

I want to show you something, you say you play mostly older games?

This is me playing and streaming Insurgency with a few mates, all the image quality settings are as high as they will go, including AA at 8x MSAA, the resolution through nVidia's DSR is up-scaled to 4K (3840x2160)
Look at the frame rates in the top left corner, 120 to 150 FPS, again this is 4K maximum IQ settings <150 FPS.
The CPU is an older Intel i5 4690K overclocked to 4.6Ghz
The GPU is an MSI GTX 1070 Quick Silver with a mild overclock, as you will see from the video below it is a monster card, even with the latest and greatest games it chews through them effortlessly, and will for some time.

A GTX 1080 is about 15 to 20% faster than the 1070, its what you want, along with a nice fast M.2 SSD, 16GB of nice fast RAM and the Ryzen 7 1700 for Gaming and gaming + software encoded streaming, the Ryzen 1700 BTW would hand my 4690K its ass in gaming, and i couldn't use it for software encoded streaming, its would grind to a halt.

PS: what can happen when you don't have enough CPU....

 

[David Bisset]

Be wary of cpu gaming benchmarks. Where you see them all equal, it just means the game is not cpu intensive and the bottleneck is not there. You need to be looking at the benches where they are all different to see where the real performance lies when you will need it.

The i7 7700k will be decently faster in cpu bound games compared with a 1600x. How often you will notice it depends on the games you play though.

This advise has unfortunately always been wrong - it sounds nice (we're testing the CPU, let's make it the only limiting factor) but doesn't survive either theoretical inspection or historical retrospectives.

If they all perform the same then they all perform the same. Artificially forcing differences only tells you which CPU does better in that artificially forced scenario not actual games with real systems.

The theory sounds nice - you'll know which is faster when games require more CPU. Except, you won't as there are too many variables in changing requirements. If looking at benchmarks look at ones as close to what you'll have and consider changing to as possible - so if you've got e.g. a GTX 1070 and a 1080p screen then look primarily at CPU benches that run a 1070 and 1080p screen. If you're thinking of going for a 4k screen but keeping your GPU then look at benches that do this. Yes, in most cases that'll decrease the difference between CPUs as it puts more bottleneck on the GPU but the response is significantly non-linear so you can't just guess what it will be based on some idiot test run at 480x320.

 

[Jono8]

This advise has unfortunately always been wrong - it sounds nice (we're testing the CPU, let's make it the only limiting factor) but doesn't survive either theoretical inspection or historical retrospectives.

If they all perform the same then they all perform the same. Artificially forcing differences only tells you which CPU does better in that artificially forced scenario not actual games with real systems.

The theory sounds nice - you'll know which is faster when games require more CPU. Except, you won't as there are too many variables in changing requirements. If looking at benchmarks look at ones as close to what you'll have and consider changing to as possible - so if you've got e.g. a GTX 1070 and a 1080p screen then look primarily at CPU benches that run a 1070 and 1080p screen. If you're thinking of going for a 4k screen but keeping your GPU then look at benches that do this. Yes, in most cases that'll decrease the difference between CPUs as it puts more bottleneck on the GPU but the response is significantly non-linear so you can't just guess what it will be based on some idiot test run at 480x320.

It is sound advice and I speak from a lot of experience. I was once told a 2500k overclocked was the be all and end all because all the benches showed it was as good as everything else.....until I played the part in Crysis 3 with all the grass and my framerate and gpu usage tanked. Swapped it out for a similarly clocked 3770k and framerates nearly doubled in the same area.

Even up until recently everyone said you don't need anything more than a 2500k at 4.5ghz....sure in most situations, until you hit the part of that one game where the framerate tanks because of it...

Most cpu bench reviews prove nothing. There will always be parts in some games where the cpu becomes the limiting factor, either due to thread/core count, or single core IPC.

All I was telling the OP to do was study the benches with scrutiny, and decide what games he is looking to play, as the 7700k does show large gains in over the 1600x in some situations.

Personally for the price difference, and if he knows he may have more of a bottleneck in some games, I think he should get the 1600 as it is a very well priced and competent gaming cpu.

 

[humbug]

It is sound advice and I speak from a lot of experience. I was once told a 2500k overclocked was the be all and end all because all the benches showed it was as good as everything else.....until I played the part in Crysis 3 with all the grass and my framerate and gpu usage tanked. Swapped it out for a similarly clocked 3770k and framerates nearly doubled in the same area.

Even up until recently everyone said you don't need anything more than a 2500k at 4.5ghz....sure in most situations, until you hit the part of that one game where the framerate tanks because of it...

Most cpu bench reviews prove nothing. There will always be parts in some games where the cpu becomes the limiting factor, either due to thread/core count, or single core IPC.

All I was telling the OP to do was study the benches with scrutiny, and decide what games he is looking to play, as the 7700k does show large gains in over the 1600x in some situations.

Personally for the price difference, and if he knows he may have more of a bottleneck in some games, I think he should get the 1600 as it is a very well priced and competent gaming cpu.

Well, In that grass in Crysis 3 you would have been a little better off with the FX-8350, of course we all know that ain't true, and yet by your measure.........

 

[Jono8]

Well, In that grass in Crysis 3 you would have been better off with the FX-8350, of course we all know that ain't true, and yet by your measure.........

Not at all. As I said, the benches to be studied carefully to see where their pros/cons lie.

 

[David Bisset]

It is sound advice and I speak from a lot of experience. I was once told a 2500k overclocked was the be all and end all because all the benches showed it was as good as everything else.....until I played the part in Crysis 3 with all the grass and my framerate and gpu usage tanked. Swapped it out for a similarly clocked 3770k and framerates nearly doubled in the same area.

Even up until recently everyone said you don't need anything more than a 2500k at 4.5ghz....sure in most situations, until you hit the part of that one game where the framerate tanks because of it...

Most cpu bench reviews prove nothing. There will always be parts in some games where the cpu becomes the limiting factor, either due to thread/core count, or single core IPC.

All I was telling the OP to do was study the benches with scrutiny, and decide what games he is looking to play, as the 7700k does show large gains in over the 1600x in some situations.

Personally for the price difference, and if he knows he may have more of a bottleneck in some games, I think he should get the 1600 as it is a very well priced and competent gaming cpu.

So if your framerate nearly doubled it wasn't the same and benchmarks at the settings you had should have shown that. Benchmarks that 'force' differences are as likely to show the 2500k as being the better option as the 3770k as how they force the difference changes the outcome massively.

I agree you do need to pay attention to what is benchmarked and how, as a lot of benchmarks are poor - but in many scenarios it is a valid outcome to say "for this task they are equal as other components are holding things back too much for this bit to matter"

(Game choice is an interesting one e.g. such as some will say x CPU is much better because in Starcraft 2 it's better, while others will argue it's an old and irrelevant. I'd say... if you play the game then it's relevant! Otherwise it's not)

 

[humbug]

Not at all. As I said, the benches to be studied carefully to see where their pros/cons lie.

Yes... after studying this what do you make of it?

And this.....

 

[Jono8]

In the first one I would say the GPU is the likely bottleneck as the framerate is the same, obviously on the Ryzen cpu the load is spread among the cores but the 7770k is nearly maxed out.

Second one, obviously the benefits of 2 more cores/ 8 more threads is helping.

Not sure what point you are trying to make there though as obviously that is a game that seems to benefit from and use as many threads/cores as possible.

 

[humbug]

In the first one I would say the GPU is the likely bottleneck as the framerate is the same, obviously on the Ryzen cpu the load is spread among the cores but the 7770k is nearly maxed out.

Second one, obviously the benefits of 2 more cores/ 8 more threads is helping.

Not sure what point you are trying to make there though as obviously that is a game that seems to benefit from and use as many threads/cores as possible.

It proves that different CPU's resulting similar performance is not necessarily because of a GPU bound situation.

The first one is a Ryzen 7 1700 @ 3.9Ghz vs a 7700K at 5Ghz, with both the GPU's running at 95%, so there is a slight CPU bottleneck and the frame rates on both CPU's are the same.

So the 3.9Ghz Ryzen 1700 has the same performance here as the 5Ghz 7700K.

So my point being not everything you see with similar frame rates is because of a GPU bottleneck, and the Ryzen CPU even with a much lower clock rate is capable of matching the 7700K performance.

The second one, yes its self explanatory and just reinforces the point of what Ryzen can do.

 

[TheF34RChannel]

There is no guarantee about frequency yet... At least not according to the current rumours. It may require some luck to reach 5GHz AVX stable.

However, given that it is around the corner, it could be a wrong decision not to wait until next month and see what happens.

Specs including frequency have been in the CFL thread since 25 July, so there's that That chart you showed is dead wrong Go check it out, you'll like it I'm sure