Is Ryzen 5950X Still the Preferred Option?

[Wynter]

Hey

Possible CES 2022 AMD announcements have me question my choice and wonder.
After many years I'm looking into building a new machine, replacing my 6700K. Yes, it's been this long.
Since I want to finance the build and have to wait for the money, it's given me enough time to question
my choice.

Board etc. remain, looking at

• GIGABYTE X570S AORUS Master

originally with

• Crucial Ballistix black DIMM kit 64GB, DDR4-3600, CL16-18-18-38 (BL2K32G36C16U4B)

but since those have basically vanished from the German market, the next option was

• G.Skill RipJaws V black DIMM kit 64GB, DDR4-3600, CL16-22-22-42 (F4-3600C16D-64GVK)

Already snatched a Samsung 980 Pro 2TB during BF since 70 EUR off was just too good to pass.

Here's the thing though. I'm expecting XT CPUs to at least be announced next month.
What would availability look like then though? I haven't paid attention to previous AMD launches, but
Omicron's likely having a big laugh at that anyway, so I can't even remotely estimate a month.

That aside, how likely is it that there even will be a Ryzen 5950XT?

For Ryzen 3000, they've only had a 3600XT, 3800XT and a 3900XT.
https://www.amd.com/en/partner/elite-performance-ryzen-3000xt-processors
Would it be any different for the 5000 series?

Assuming the budget was accessible this month, wait and risk the old 5950X going out of stock or get it?
Looking at old MSRPs for the 3900X and 3900XT, those at least seem to have been the same at 499 USD.

Am I overthinking things? Yes. I'm suffering from a GPU trauma, have been waiting for my EVGA 3080 for
more than 13 months now in their StepUp program.

Thanks for your input

 

[Wynter]

If you're building for gaming then Alder Lake is a clear winner over Zen 3 (too many results like the one below & increasing...). How Zen 3 + v-cache turns out is a different matter. Don't be afraid of missing out, the stock situation for CPUs has been very good all throughout '20-'21, so waiting (for Zen 3 VC results) is a good course of action.

Hehe those images are always hilarious to me, have never been the competitive gamer that played Quake in 720p in EGA settings without textures to get more FPS.
Yeah I want it for gaming as well as VMs, moar browser windows and what not else. Normally the GPU is my bottleneck but in games like CP2077 and New World sadly now everything is.
After an upgrade it should go back to depending on the GPU again.

 

[Wynter]

It’s less than a month until CES 2022 so if you are not in a hurry to upgrade, you might as well wait and see what AMD has to offer.
I expect Ryzen 3D reveal (big CPU cache increase) with hopefully a bunch of benchmarks since they are expected to launch in Q1 2022.

If it were up to me I would have ordered two weeks ago already. CES starts January 6th IIRC. That's not too long a wait, but if the actual release will be in March.
And then who knows when there'll be actual stock. Almost everything during the pandemic appears to have been a ridiculous paper launch, scalper scum worsening the situation even more.

Yeah same for me with the 3D reveal. Those otherwise 100MHz or what it was clock increase shouldn't make that much of a difference.

 

[Wynter]

my way of looking at it was simple who made the cpu that gave you 6 years hassle free use and for me that was my old intel i5-6600 and before that the i5-750 was rock solid

cheaper alder lake motherboards are out soon as well so could be worth waiting a month just to see how the land lies

I get brand loyalty, have been the same for decades, but at some point it's all meh to me.
Generally people should buy whatever they want and be happy with it. Every individual experience can be different.
Mainly things have usually been relatively stable for me, whether I've used Intel or AMD. Then again I don't OC, rather tend to UV or limit things.
I can't really remember my last AMD ones. 3700+, 4300+? No idea how long after that I jumped back on the Intel side again, running on an E8400,
then Q9650, later on 2600K and finally my 6700K.
Back then I was really hyped about it and it's been running great, but shown me its limits more and more often lately, pegging those 100%.

Now Intel feels like being in a long-term marriage to me. Honey, I love you, but you just don't excite me anymore, haven't for a while.

A few years ago I built a Ryzen 1600 system for my nephew and was pleasantly surprised. Things progressed and my AMD hype hasn't waned.
Who knows, it'll probably be different in a few years. I love the bigLITTLE approach but it's not there yet. We need moar cores.

 

[Wynter]

Looks like I made the right decision buying the 5950x just before Christmas.
I had a return window until the end of January, so figured IF AMD announced a 3D version of the CPU, as unlikely as it seemed,
there would be time to return it for a full refund, borrow a 3900 or something from a mate, then order the new one and wait it out.

Now I'm only waiting for the Crucial RAM (BL2K32G36C16U4B) to come back in stock, have it pre-ordered, Crucial assured me on
Twitter it will come back, just couldn't tell me when because there's a shortage and all. It'll very likely still be faster than EVGA
finally having a 3080 FTW for me. Right now it's running with 4x16GB Dominator 3000. I'm glad that worked out.
Trying to see if it posts and dry installing Win10 using 2x8GB Kingston something 2666, my X570S Aorus Master only saw a single
module. Turning them around kept showing the same module. Did one break while on a shelf? Nope, just Ryzen things apparently.
That was UEFI F2. Upgraded to F3C and it didn't even POST with both modules in. Took the "broken" one out, POST worked, but it
froze at the start of the 10 install, then ran into BSODs and all that before even picking the language or version. Dropping the RAM
to 2133 did the trick. Luckily the Dominators ran XMP at the 3000 setting just like that and haven't acted up once.

Boy oh boy was that a change. Coming from the 6700K, daily things like waking Win10 up from SSD turned into a wut?!
No loading screen. Putting in my PIN and the machine being instantly there, no pegged CPU for a minute or two. What kind
of sorcery is this?! Followed by lots of wut?! moments. I'm loving it

One thing took a moment of reading though. That CPU is one toasty MF! O.o Everthing is till on Auto, will look into PBO when the new
RAM is here, but seeing vCore around 1.4V and 50ish C idle temps spiking into the 70s this quickly is something I'm not used to.
The NH-12A does its job though and after the reading up bit it doesn't freak me out as much anymore.

 

[Wynter]

I would appriciate a report on your VM experience, as well as gaming when you've accidently left the VMs running... I'm running a 3600 purchased under duress, and I'm debating moving to 5900/5950 or waiting till AM5. Additional data would help.

I've not played while having a VM in the background yet but don't expect any impact there, except possibly on VRAM.
Forgotten VMs are a thing but weirdly I haven't noticed an impact with the old machine either. As long as you have enough RAM
and the machine(s) are not doing anything much you shouldn't even notice it. If the machine's already taxed by age and small things
like YT videos, browser windows or even Outlook going through accounts, a lost VM just becomes part of the noise.
Otherwise the performance increase just gets passed on. I'm not running benchmarks in there, it just feels a lot faster and that's
all what matters to me. Suspending a Win11 one still takes "ages" while Ubuntu made me wonder if something had just crashed instantly
and looked like it had saved the state. They're usually similarly set up with 8GB of RAM and a bunch of cores.

I've mostly played Forza 5 and that's not too wild on the system either way, except for VRAM warnings when ALT TABbing too much.
Tried New World once and only briefly. That 100% CPU load when starting the game, and minutes (5-10) after on the 6700K, that
happened on the 5950X as well, only with this one it only took a minute or so. Still makes me wonder what type of coin they're mining there.
2070S at 1836p still only gave me 45 FPS but it felt like a different game. I could have even sworn it looked better.

You're running into the usual upgrade cycle. If you can wait, wait. The next one's supposed to come in H2/2022? Is it the usual timeline?
Roughty 9 months, assuming it'll magically be available? I'm assuming you'd only need a CPU now? Then it's between hold, save up and
get the new one with DDR5 and new board, possibly new PSU and new m.2 drive, get a 5900/5950X now or get something in between,
like a 5800, then flip it later this year or repurpose the system and build a new one. I don't know your habits or budget.
If a complete upgrade is out of reach anyway, may as well look for bargains now. I was only able to do this because I was lucky enough
to borrow the money for the project and pay it back later without interest. My upgrade cycle's otherwise really slow.
Q9650 - 2500K - 6700K - 5950X. GPUs are the same. GTX280, 480, 680, 1080, waiting for 3080.

Where is your bottleneck now? 6 cores aren't amazing anymore but still better than my 4 previous ones. I kept seeing the CPU getting
pegged, with or without VMs. With an increase in RAM, from originally 32 to 48 and then 64GB, I kept having more windows open, more
background noise and eventually initially small things like Outlook or Steam suddenly had quite a high demand on CPU time. I'm not sure
how all those CPU mitigations (Spectre etc) on MS's side played into this but it surely didn't help the situation.

 

[Wynter]

Additional context - I was on a 6600K, similar to yourself, but was forced to upgrade because of a lightning strike during the component hell lockdown. Am only running a 3600/2060, both chosen as things I could actually buy and run 1080p on reasonabl. With VMs, I'm bottlenecked on both memory and cores. What I want to do with them, more than I am, is a server play environment, allowing me to test the things that (in the office) would be really risky in a live environment. But I currently have to shut everything down if I'm playing games. Even at 1 core per machine, once I'm running a few games just start to feel less snappy. Hard to put finger on though?

I am very torn on upgrade cycle. I'm naturally a bad spender. On the 6600K I was starting to think, maybe, of upgrading...when AM5 came out.... when the lightning ruined everything. So I now have the 3600 - and I'm back to wondering. Which was when I saw your post and thought I'd ask for a report



I love the theory, but I'm constrained by both space and children. If there was a second machine capable of running minecraft, I'd have to pry it off them with a crowbar. My suggestion that a pi and minecraft is good enough has been....unpopular. BUt you're right, a second headless device makes sense. I currently have a N36L, but that's.... a little long in the tooth. (Did I mention I'm very slow to spend money? )

Yeah you could throw a 5950X and more RAM at it, but depending on how big your scenarios become there's bound to be some give in the snappiness. Haha at some point that
sluggish molasses feeling becomes the norm. I started rebooting the machine every two weeks, then once a week and on patch days for that itsy bitsy tiny OMG new machine feeling for the day.
I have yet to keep this one "up" for a week or longer.

I agree though, running servers in VMs and especially if you want to see how things perform after a week or longer, you'd have to keep your machine up and optimally not risk any crashes
because of lazily stitched games. A second machine would be perfect for that. At some point I'll throw Proxmox or alike on the 6700K, otherwise had a J1900 for that, have a 9700T running as
my NAS and a PiHole in a VM on that, threw on the odd Ubuntu server here and there, pfSense when tinkering after an update to 2.5.2 caused an allergic reactions until I had that sorted
out for the config to back to metal and eventually caught a HP T630 thin client off of eBay for 59 EUR to run another piHole and other things for a different physical subnet. For that price I'm still amazed.
Screw those Pis!

What about upgrading when AM5 comes out, then hide your 3600 somewhere and use it as a VM platform? Can you wait that "long"? During that long March and the rollover to 2022 I'm still puzzled over
where 2021 had gone. Or you skip it entirely, get a new CPU and RAM now, throw in a cheap board, case, some cooling and SSD and have both, your headless VM platform and your gaming machine.
It can still run VMs but I wouldn't put any on it that are not supposed to just be shut down at the end of the day. Anything from the used market? STH or alike?

About the kids - if you can hide the box, you're good. If it doesn't have the GPU to run games, you've probably won that one Aren't they all playing Minecraft on phones or tablets? One of my nephews does.
Lighting strikes and losing all the hardware is one of my nightmares.

 

[Wynter]

Best choice for you currently is a 12900k. It's the fastest gaming CPU, has DDR5, PCIEv5 and also has an upgrade path to a new architecture, Raptor Lake.

AM4 is dead - all it's getting is a 5800X with more cache, which will release in Spring. I doubt it'll beat a 12900KS (or a 12900k with small overclock) in gaming performance. It lacks the cores to beat it in MT performance.

Either that or wait around a year for AM5 and Zen4, to see how it competes with Raptor Lake/Meteor Lake, though you'll spend a year suffering slow performance for this privilege.

Zen4 is also an unknown, performance wise. It could be another Bulldozer FX-9590 scenario, which only the most special AMD fan bought (it had terrible ST and MT performance, with huge power consumption), or it could be amazing and have 20% more IPC than Raptor Lake/Meteor Lake.

Zen 4 release date is also unknown. AMD said at CEX that it's "on track" for 2H 2022 - though this could easily be delayed to 1H 2023 or later. Also, they may not be able to get the wafers they need from TSMC, as they have to beg for these and compete with Apple for supply.

Thanks, but I think I'm good now. When I was about to pull the trigger on the 5950X I was afraid AMD may actually announce the XT (X3D) model at CES,
however unlikely it may be since the last X to XT upgrade skipped the 16 core CPUs for various reasons.

Pure FPS, sure I'm likely to lose that edge compared to Intel's single core lead, but frankly ... Murtaugh. I'm not a competitive gamer, have never been.

As far a dead sockets go, I've always been on team "but what if I want to upgrade later", and I've stuck with Intel for a very long time.
The last time I actually did that and upgraded my CPU without upgrading the whole machine and replacing pretty much everything?
That was when I went from an E8400 to a Q9650. If this one lasts as long as my previous has, it's quite likely AM5 may be on its last legs
and Intel is very likely to have gotten to 1703 or something. I'm more likely to upgrade an SSD or even GPU.

16 cores may actually be underutilized at this point but I'll grow into it. I used to think 4 cores are plenty. Ryzen came out, Intel had their enthusiast OMG
I need a new PSU because the old ones cannot keep up ones, and I thought I was good. It worked out for a while until it didn't anymore. Use cases develop.

DDR5 will be interesting but it's not there yet. A mate is testing stuff, found XMP settings in UEFI updates, clocked from 4800 to 5400 and the gain in games
was just plain meh. Apparently Anandtech had something similar about 4800 vs 6400 but I haven't even looked yet. Give it a year. It should become great.


And I think I caught another magic bean.
Gigabyte X570S Aorus Master
Noctua NH-12A with Noctua NF-A12x25 using the included Y-splitter, stock stuff.
Machine wakes up from S4, second fan spins while booting, then just dead stops after a moment in Windows.
A reboot doesn't change anything, only a power cycle does.

I only noticed it because AIDA showed 0RPM, but the other fan kept working normally.
After replacing the Y-splitter the behaviour remained.
I've not plugged the problematic fan into CPU OPT, had cloned the fan curve to all fan headers beforehand. Really neat feature.
Hopefully within the next two days I'll see if anything changes. If not, this may just be a UEFI thing.

All the other fans are connected to an Aquareo 6LT and behaving normally.

 

[Wynter]

Fastest cpu gaming is amd 5800x3D.
(soon zen4)
Your comment is riddled with guesswork and your intel bias is showing.
Intel is done.
welcome to AMDomination

Please don't turn this into a fundamental AMD vs Intel thing. Everybody's got their preference and that's good, otherwise things turned very boring very quickly.
It'll eventually turn into a back and forth again, clocking in the 5+GHz range, that'll run absolutely bananas paired with a 1650Ti.

Availability aside, the bestamest thing about hardware (and software) is we have options.