Intel/NVIDIA vs AMD upgrade advice - CPU and GPU

[Keeca]

Hi everyone,

With it being 'sale' week, I'm looking to build a new toy for gaming - lots of gaming (at 4k).
Budget is up to about £4k, so a fair amount to work with - my current case (Fractal Design Meshify) will be reused, as well as the current CPU cooler (Corsair H115i AIO) if possible - though this can be changed.

My question is this I guess - Is going all out on 14th Gen Intel worth it? And should I pair this with a 4090 for best performance? As far as I understand it, the 7800x3d is a pretty good competitor, as well as the 7900 XTX also being a decent option for half the price - I'm just a little hazy on whether its actually worth going for the former option(s).

Any thoughts or advice would be massively appreciated!

Ta!

 

[Tetras]

For 4K you can easily buy whatever you want, so if you're happy to spend the money then it doesn't matter.

If you do want to save, then the 4090 is getting really expensive (nearing £2K ) and definitely makes the 7900 XTX look better value. Do you care about ray tracing?

The 14700K and 14900K, I'd consider them if you are using the PC for mixed usage, but purely for 4K gaming then the X3D is the CPU I'd get, for the power consumption, efficiency and price (though, you can make the 14th gen CPUs perform significantly better than their stock efficiency, if you're willing to mess with them).

(Corsair H115i AIO)

Can you get the exact model number? From a quick google, it looks like it is not compatible with 1700 (or the kit Corsair supply), but one user said they just used the 1151 mounts and it worked (though maybe their board had dual mounts, like Asus did/do for awhile?

For AM5, it looks like the AM4 mounting mechanism will work with this cooler.

I'm just a little hazy on whether its actually worth going for the former option(s).

We know you want to play at 4K, but what are you expectations? Would you be happy with 60 fps and medium/high details, or do you want 100+ with everything up to max/ultra?

How likely are you to upgrade the CPU and graphics card and in what time frame? (i.e. how long do these parts need to last for playability @ 4K)

Do you do absolutely nothing else with the PC except games?

(Fractal Design Meshify)

Can you link to the spec sheet on the Fractal website? In particular: I'd like to clarify the GPU max length, CPU cooler height and what mounts it has for AIOs.

 

[Keeca]

Hey, thanks for the reply.

Saving is always nice, especially this time of year but if it's worthwhile to go 'all out' on a 4090 then I can push to that. If the difference is marginal then saving money would be a no brainer I guess.

Ray Tracing would be nice but not essential as long as I'm getting decent performance (hopefully that makes some sort of sense). I honestly don't do much else other than gaming, browsing and watching the occasional stream, though gaming is the main joy.
Expectations wise, 100+ at max is preferable. I probably won't be upgrading again for the next 3-4 years or so, though if the cheaper options will suffice, upgrades can always happen sooner (currently running an 8700k with 2080ti which has served its purpose for the last 4-5 years).

Cooler is a Corsair Hydro Series H115i RGB Platinum 280mm Radiator (if there are no kits out there to make this compatible, it can be replaced).
Can't find anything on Fractal's website (its a pretty old case I guess) but here's some specs from a quick search - https://pcbuilder.net/component-details/case/fractal-design-meshify-s2-fd-ca-mesh-s2-bko-tgd/

 

[Rroff]

7800x3D very strong gaming performance, the platform has potential upgrade options whereas LGA1700 is unlikely to see any significant new CPUs after the 14th gen, reasonable for power use and heat, however at resolutions and quality settings where you'd be putting a top end GPU to use the performance leans more towards the GPU than CPU so often it is only 2-4% faster than 14700K, the flip side if you do anything other than gaming it can be 30, even 40% slower than other CPUs it is competitive against or even beats in gaming - 14700K has much better balance of performance at a similar(ish) price range.

4090 is a beast - if you can at all afford it much better use of your money IMO than anything else out right now.

 

[Craig_d1]

if your not going to do anything else than gaming and not bothered about raytracing and just raw performance, I'd go 7800x3d and 7900xtx A few months ago the 4090 was down at £1500, now it's £2000. that's not productions cost, that's nvidia deliberately limiting supply to drive the price back up and it's working...but 100% extra profit, as their last quarter earning just showed, their gaming devision sales just jumped $1B for the quarter. Doing this so when they launch their Super series of cards in Jan they can then drop the price down again as they were talking super series being same price as current series. in rasta is a 4090 worth double a 7900xtx...not convinced (and only ever had nvidia cards myself, but this is getting silly..back to prices at height of the crypto boom...and one wonders why inflation is rampant)
If you're set on nvidia , I'd be tempted to wait till jan when they annouce the refesh of the super cards and see what they do. Might also drive down prices of amd as a response too.
Also what games do you play? if it's something like COD, then AMD a no brainer, but others favour nvidia, such as cyberpunk

More on cpu, at 4k you'll get gpu bottleneck even with a 4090, so fps will be similar..if you drop to 1080p, from hardware unboxed the av had the 7800x3d returning 170fps with 4090, 158fps with 14900k, 155fps with 14700k and 142fps with 14600k....so if you ever keep pc and upgrade to something faster than a 4090 in the future, the 7800x3d should in theory outpace the others at 4k as it'll be able to stretch gpu further before the cpu bottleneck, as it had more legs so to speak...the other thing then to look at is power useage...looking at hitman 3, the 7800x3d/4090 combo drew total power use of 436W, the 14900k/4090 643w, and 14700k /4090 588W( close to 200w more power)...just using there game average the 7800x3d was 425w, 14900k 533w and 14700k 527w. And that's for the same performance....if you say you do lots of gaming, whats that 30-40hrs a week? 40hrs a week is 208kw a year extra or £60 a year extra electricity cost for 0 performance gain. couple that you can get a asus tuf gaming b650 wifi board on offer for £150, or if you want a pcie gen5 gpu slot then something like the asus strix b650-f for £230 odd...that and the x3d chips arent so fussy on ram so you can go cheaper...your hardware costs s/b cheaper down the 7800x3d route also....and the 8000 series cpu's(or 9000 as they might name them) will be am5 so upgrade path their too

 

[Quartz]

Budget is up to about £4k, so a fair amount to work with

GPU: Nvidia RTX 4090 or Radeon RX 7900XTX
CPU: Ryzen 7800X3D.

Work everything else around that.

 

[Keeca]

Awesome, thanks guys!

It's looking pretty stand out that the AMD CPU is winning the poll thus far (especially with the point about upgrade options for AM5), so will do some more diving in to what to pair that with mobo/ram wise.

If you're set on nvidia , I'd be tempted to wait till jan when they annouce the refesh of the super cards and see what they do. Might also drive down prices of amd as a response too.

That's a good shout, thanks. The upgrade isn't super urgent so that works fine tbh. Fingers crossed it pushes prices down in our favour. I guess going the cheaper AMD option, it's easier to go bigger and better with an upgrade sooner if need be?

Also what games do you play? if it's something like COD, then AMD a no brainer, but others favour nvidia, such as cyberpunk

I probably spend more time than I like to admit gaming (40+ hours easily a week) and tend to play a lot of RPG and FPS, so both of those mentioned are amongst my played (more playthroughs of BG3 and Jedi - Survivor on the current backlog).

RAM wise I'm guessing 32gb will easily suffice also (don't see that I have a need to push past that)?

 

[Craig_d1]

Awesome, thanks guys!

It's looking pretty stand out that the AMD CPU is winning the poll thus far (especially with the point about upgrade options for AM5), so will do some more diving in to what to pair that with mobo/ram wise.

That's a good shout, thanks. The upgrade isn't super urgent so that works fine tbh. Fingers crossed it pushes prices down in our favour. I guess going the cheaper AMD option, it's easier to go bigger and better with an upgrade sooner if need be?


I probably spend more time than I like to admit gaming (40+ hours easily a week) and tend to play a lot of RPG and FPS, so both of those mentioned are amongst my played (more playthroughs of BG3 and Jedi - Survivor on the current backlog).

RAM wise I'm guessing 32gb will easily suffice also (don't see that I have a need to push past that)?

running 7800x3d with 32gb corsair vengeance rgb 6000c30...think ocuk has it down to £133 at mo for it...6000c30 meant to be sweet spot for amd, though x3d meant to be much more forgiving on timings so can go slightly slower if you want..32gb s/b more than enough...think someone mentioned one combat game with heavy mods that could use more, but pretty specific...not having any issues myself with 32gb...think got up to 12gb use with micrsoft flight sim, but that's about it..haven't checked recently...if you're doing 40hrs plus, you'll make big saving on your electricity bills when gaming then...justifies upgrading gpu...
running 3070ti atm through4k tv, so been lookig at gpu for upgrade myself...i'm still struggling to justify 4090 cost when it was £1500.. my son nicked my 3080 which he says isn't bad on the 4k tv at home(work abroad), so was looking at a7900xt(which i think is about a 30% uplift on that) to tide me over to 5000 series launch, unless prices are silly...wanted it down around the £650 mark though...same price as the 3080 to justify new gen giving a performance boost to price....4090 is performance boost, but not when you consider price is 3x the 3080

 

[Tetras]

Here's an AMD build which is somewhat price conscious.

Have assumed you re-use cooler and case.

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D Eight Core 5.00GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3DT-AM) = £347.99
• 1 x AMD - Avatar Ryzen Bundle (SKU: DIG-AMD-01185) = £0.00
• 1 x Asus TUF Gaming B650-Plus WIFI (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-6K0-AS) = £149.99
• 1 x Corsair Vengeance EXPO 64GB (2X32GB) DDR5 PC5-44800C40 5600MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (CMK64GX5M2B5600Z40) (SKU: MY-4DL-CS) = £179.98
• 1 x Asrock Radeon RX 7900 XTX Phantom Gaming OC 24GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card (SKU: GX-013-AK) = £899.99
• 1 x AMD - Avatar Radeon Bundle (SKU: DIG-AMD-01186) = £0.00
• 1 x WD Black SN850X 2TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (WDS200T2X0E) (SKU: HD-591-WD) = £109.99
• 1 x WD Blue SN580 2TB SSD NVME M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-WDC-00541) = £80.00
• 1 x Corsair RMx Series RM1000x 80 PLUS Gold Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (CP-9020201-UK) (SKU: CA-268-CS) = £134.98

Total: £1,902.92 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

Here's an Intel build which is near max budget and only re-uses case.

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core i9-14900K (Raptor Lake-S) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-INT-00798) = £559.99
• 1 x MSI MAG Z790 TOMAHAWK WIFI (LGA 1700) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-379-MS) = £269.99
• 1 x Corsair Vengeance LPX 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5 PC5-52800C32 6600MHz Dual Channel Kit (SKU: MEM-CRS-01224) = £244.99
• 1 x Zotac GeForce RTX 4090 Trinity 24GB GDDR6X PCI-Express Graphics Card (SKU: GX-13E-ZT) = £1,799.99
• 1 x NVIDIA - Alan Wake 2 Game Bundle (SKU: DIG-NVI-01056) = £0.00
• 2 x WD Black SN850X 4TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (WDS400T2X0E) (SKU: HD-592-WD) = £219.95
• 1 x Seasonic VERTEX PX-1200 ATX3.0 1200W 80 Plus Platinum Modular Power Supply (SKU: CA-08P-SS) = £269.99

• 1 x Arctic Liquid Freezer II High Performance CPU Water Cooler - 420mm (SKU: HS-07M-AR) = £129.94

Total: £3,714.79 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

 

[Keeca]

Thanks again guys! Some good food for thought here.

i'm still struggling to justify 4090 cost when it was £1500

Ye this is kind of my reason for asking for advice really. Though I have some pennies to spend, it's just whether its worth paying a vast amount of cash for it or not - especially if the AMD 'equivalent' is not massively far behind for half the price.

^^ AMD build and Intel build

Thanks for popping these together Tetras, appreciate it. Definitely gives me something to start looking at.

Another question or two (sorry) - how are the temps on both cards? I'm guessing they run hot but does anyone have any experience how hot? And what are noise levels like?

 

[Tetras]

Ye this is kind of my reason for asking for advice really. Though I have some pennies to spend, it's just whether its worth paying a vast amount of cash for it or not - especially if the AMD 'equivalent' is not massively far behind for half the price.

In raster they're really not that far apart and since some games favour one or the other, they can be very close, but with ultra settings / ray tracing enabled, the 4090 does have the ability to pull way ahead. If all you're after is playable 4K gaming then the 7900 XTX is a decent card.

 

[Mesai]

In raster they're really not that far apart and since some games favour one or the other, they can be very close, but with ultra settings / ray tracing enabled, the 4090 does have the ability to pull way ahead. If all you're after is playable 4K gaming then the 7900 XTX is a decent card.

Longevity will have to go to the 4090 though. RT will be added in a variety of flavours and you won’t have to worry about it with Nvidia. You also have the benefit of DLSS and Ray Reconstruction, plus the potential for future feature updates.

 

[Craig_d1]

Longevity will have to go to the 4090 though. RT will be added in a variety of flavours and you won’t have to worry about it with Nvidia. You also have the benefit of DLSS and Ray Reconstruction, plus the potential for future feature updates.

or buy the 7900xtx for £900, wait for the 5090 to come out and then buy the 4090 for £900 from someone whose selling there's to get the new 'latest and greatest', just as they did when they started selling their 3090/3090ti for £650/£750 to get the 4090 on release...
that way you get your longevity, and have a free 7900xtx

 

[Keeca]

Thanks again for this guys!

7900xtx is seeming like a good shout currently, even if just semi-temporary until next gen RTX arrives - though my indecisive mind will not let me finalise the purchase just yet.
As for the rest of the build, I'm putting a basket together based on Tetras' AMD build, with a few adjustments.

or buy the 7900xtx for £900, wait for the 5090 to come out and then buy the 4090 for £900 from someone whose selling there's to get the new 'latest and greatest', just as they did when they started selling their 3090/3090ti for £650/£750 to get the 4090 on release...
that way you get your longevity, and have a free 7900xtx

^^ this would make the recipient of my current 2080ti very happy I'm sure!