Next gen upgrade: Intel or AMD, or just upgrade cpu on current platform?

[snowdog]

I use my current pc for Gaming, working, multimedia (24/7 plex media server), video editing, pretty much everything.

My current setup does all fine, except it's starting to show CPU lag, especially in games like Cities Skylines 2 or when transcoding video.
I am looking into benchmarks, and Intel appears to be ahead of AMD, is this correct? I wish to buy something that will last me another 5-10 years at least or extend my current setup 3-4 years


My main problem is Cities Skylines 2, I can upgrade from a Hexa to Octa core cpu on my current platform. I know Cpu is the limiting factor as running the game at 2x or 3x speed runs the same as 1x speed and the cpu use is a constant 95-100%.

I currently have:
An Asus Z370-Prime A,
8700K @5.2 GHZ (standard intel goop replaced w. liquid metal under the IHS),
cooled by a 240m AIO watercooler
RTX4080 Super OC
64GB Ram
Assorted M2 and sata SSd's and HDD, I have 5 TB of SSD's and ~25 TB of HDD's.
850w Corsair psu

I play at 4K and 60 hz or stream to TV's in other rooms at this resolution (NV Shield Pro), so cpu lag is non existent in any other games but Simulation games.

The 3 options I'm looking into:

2nd hand a 14700k + mobo + ram set sometimes go for 500 euros.
Something like an 5900x + mobo+ram usually go for 350 ish euros.
i9 9900K would usually go for 200-250 euros

Or should I look into the 7800X3D?. I am a bit hesitant because it appears to not be very great in stuff like transcoding, compiling code, etc... But carries a higher price here than intel.

I've played around with 14700k at my dad's and they do appear to throttle under full load quickly, so I guess no OC room. Say I grab a 360mm AIO (I have a good Fractal case), would I be able to use it fully?
Do the AMD series have headroom for OC-ing?

Would a 9900K boost my Cities Skylines 2 performance on large cities ( 200k+ people) over an 8700K ?
Mind that I already disabled anything that costs CPU performance ( e.g. spectre and meltdown mitigations, I disable realtime antivirus when gaming, etc), all I care about is max performance.

I'm also hesitant to go delidding again if I buy a 9900k, or any other newer cpu for that matter...

 

[Tetras]

I am looking into benchmarks, and Intel appears to be ahead of AMD, is this correct?

Can you be more specific? We'd need to know what kind of benchmarks.

Generally, for gaming the 9800X3D is the king and nothing can touch it. For productivity, the 14700K can be a good choice (if you don't mind the potential for issues and are content to rely on the extended warranty).

The new Intel CPUs (Core Ultra) are hard to say at the moment because I think a lot of BIOS/software updates are coming to try and address their inconsistent performance, especially with games.

Do the AMD series have headroom for OC-ing?

Not really, overclocking modern CPUs is pretty difficult because their turbo pushes them to the max already. Undervolting/power limiting is much more popular.

I've played around with 14700k at my dad's and they do appear to throttle under full load quickly, so I guess no OC room. Say I grab a 360mm AIO (I have a good Fractal case), would I be able to use it fully?

The Intel microcode patches limit these CPUs anyway, so you'll probably be fine with a 360mm AIO, though some degree of power limiting and/or undervolting would be wise if you're doing long run (e.g. multiple hour) CPU-intensive workloads.

My main problem is Cities Skylines 2, I can upgrade from a Hexa to Octa core cpu on my current platform. I know Cpu is the limiting factor as running the game at 2x or 3x speed runs the same as 1x speed and the cpu use is a constant 95-100%.

Would a 9900K boost my Cities Skylines 2 performance on large cities ( 200k+ people) over an 8700K ?

Based on this (admittedly old) video I'm reluctant to recommend anything for that game.

 

[snowdog]

Generally, for gaming the 9800X3D is the king and nothing can touch it. For productivity, the 14700K can be a good choice (if you don't mind the potential for issues and are content to rely on the extended warranty).

A full 9800X3D setup is 300 euro's more than a 14700k setup though, and you only get 8 cores. I see all 12 threads of mine being used when video transcoding.

It's 30-40% slower at h265 and x264 transcoding than the 14700k, which is actually one of the primary reasons I experience cpu lag with current setup:

Based on this (admittedly old) video I'm reluctant to recommend anything for that game.

Cities skylines 2 ran fine on launch if you disabled the light tracing steps on launch and disabled a few broken gfx settings.

The game is not gpu bound for me, in late game pausing the game and resuming it causes the simulation to run at a normal speed for a short while, and then being simulation bound again.

The framerate is/was never the problem for me ( I consider anything over 30 as playable for sim games) , the 4080 runs it fine, the simulation speed is (a problem that cities skylines 1 also had with big cities over 300k inhabitants, or less if you used traffic mods). And before upgrading to 4080 with both a 2080 ti and 1080Ti with some gfx settings tweaks it (CS2) ran fine as well, people who complain about the gpu optimization do not know what they are talking about/have done nothing to play around with the settings imo, even at launch. Or have had a ****** gpu.

 

[Tetras]

A full 9800X3D setup is 300 euro's more than a 14700k setup though, and you only get 8 cores. I see all 12 threads of mine being used when video transcoding.

The X3Ds have always had a weakness in productivity compared to the high-end Intel CPUs, but you didn't mention which benchmarks you were looking at specifically. I would be aware that the 9000 series CPUs have better AVX512 performance which can make them faster in AV1 (don't know what other codecs use AVX512). I haven't looked at the Core Ultra CPUs for this usage.

In regards to the price, that seems larger than I'd expect. In the UK, I'm pretty sure the delta wouldn't be that big, but in any case, it sounds like you're not that bothered about getting top gaming fps here, your focus is elsewhere.

 

[GR63]

I think the 9950X3D is gonna be hard to pass on.... It looks like a substantial uplift from 5950x in gaming and general use... and maybe given stock issues on 9800X3D worth a short wait?

 

[snowdog]

People are fear selling them, my dad bought a 14900KF for 350 euros 2nd hand, an RMA return after repair from Intel.

Which makes them attractive for the price, tbh at that price I would grab one immediately myself, 9950X3D is more than double the price.

but you didn't mention which benchmarks you were looking at specifically.

Not really looking for specific this or that, just best performance for buck over the whole spectrum. But I am willing to pay a bit of premium for longevity.

In the old days I would upgrade mb and cpu every 1-2 years, with Coffee lake I bought new on release pretty much, but now it's 6 years on and it's still getting along.
These days I'm often in ''don't fix what isn't broken'' mood and I tend to overcompensate, not buy 1-2 gens old but buy high end new stuff to save time on faffing about. I used to OC the hell out of everything (the current CPU I've delidded myself to replace the thermal goo under the IHS, but tbh I cba now with such tweaks)

But fact is:

I work in IT so work with IDE's, code, databases, etc... I often built/compile, compress/decompress, etc... I faff about in 3D sometimes. I want to try faffing about with audio editing. I occasionally fire of a few VM's on my machine to test stuff. I have tens of programs open at all times and even in every browser 20+ tabs). I use WSL often for stuff like Ansible. What I mean by this is my current CPU sits at 20% ish often without even doing too much, semi idling...I use 25 ish GB's of ram when my pc is ''idle'' simply because I don't like closing stuff just to reopen them again in a week. My pc reboots only once very few months...
I use a video downloader plugin which transcodes video's and it takes to long for my liking.
Sometimes I stream to poor devices that need transcoding of 4k HDR media (not often since I bought better players, but sometimes when at parents or on a holiday) and sometimes the CPU can't cope (especially 4k Dolby vision + DTS-HD content to stuff like Tizen Samsung TV's which only handle Dolby Digital audio and HDR10).
I still game 10 hrs per week or so (mostly older games luckily, but the occasional new AAA game).
I am impatient, so any bottleneck (now the cpu, a few months ago it was the gpu, before that a year ago orso I got one the fastest M2 SSD I could buy, I upgraded to gigabit internet (up&down) recently, contemplating upgrading to 2.5gbps on LAN, etc...) needs to be fixed every once in a while.



I see the AMD's are vastly superior for gaming. I also see they are a bit lacking in raw processing power and have fewer cores... I am sure even a 7800 X3D is fine for now, but will it in a few years. I see stuff being much more cpu heavy the recent years...
8 core seems a bit of a risk to me in 2024, or am I wrong? Just like going for a single core cpu in 2006/2007 wasn't very future proof.

 

[Rroff]

I've got a 14700K for gaming and productivity and personally would buy it over anything else every time right now - for high res, high resolution gaming, at least with my 4080 Super and mostly the same for the 4090 it is within margin of error of the 7800X3D despite the AMD part being faster at 1080p. For productivity tasks it leaves the 7800X3D in the dust and generally a fair bit faster than the 9800X3D and is often right on the heels of the much more expensive CPUs.

Overclocking is a mixed bag and I've not really bothered too much - even on air I've managed to get 4 core 6GHz boost which helps a little in games but not much to be honest, I'm pretty happy with the out the box performance. (Some people with chips that undervolt well have managed to get like 17% extra performance with a lot of tuning and good RAM though using high end AIOs).

 

[snowdog]

Check, I will keep my eyes peeled for 2nd hand deals, if you say it like that, if I can grab a deal like a 14900KF for 350 ish that sounds like a great deal?

I have one advantage and that is I've never bought better than 60 hz screens. So high fps is worth bugger all for me, my dad faffs about with gaming hardware and has some 120 of 160 hz screens but I never bothered and thus haven't ruined myself with high fps requirements. My ''fastest'' screen is my steam Deck OLED at 90 hz (Which I often limit to 50hz for battery life).

Most of the time gaming I stream to my living room TV which is still 50hz so anything over 50 fps is wasted anyhow...

 

[Rroff]

Check, I will keep my eyes peeled for 2nd hand deals, if you say it like that, if I can grab a deal like a 14900KF for 350 ish that sounds like a great deal?

Not saying don't get a 14900 - but I'm a little leery of the 14900 personally, failure rates aren't, so far, as terrible as some make out but they do have twice the failure rate at retail compared to previous Intel high end CPUs, while the 14700 so far is at normal failure rates for the CPU segment. Personally I wanted to stick with air cooling so went with the 14700K as it isn't that far behind, 14900 on air isn't a great idea.

 

[snowdog]

Check, I don't mind wc (actually prefer to have a radiator on top the case pushing air out and keeping mainboard/ram area clean), I didn't realize failure rates were so terrible, to be quite honest, I've been out of touch with cpu land since 2018. And before that I skipped everything after sandy and Ivy bridge on intel side.

Those years (2008 or 9 to 2018) were pretty uneventful in cpuland aswell...

Only reason I am semi up-to-date is my dad (68 now) spends all his free time faffing about with PC hardware. I just work the software side but lost my spark for hardware awhile ago...

 

[Rroff]

I didn't realize failure rates were so terrible

Not terrible, though there is still a bit of a cloud of uncertainty whether there are any longer term issues, but the 14900s are showing slightly elevated failure numbers compared to normal - but still single digit percentages not the 20, 50, 100% some are trying to make out.

 

[Tetras]

I see the AMD's are vastly superior for gaming. I also see they are a bit lacking in raw processing power and have fewer cores... I am sure even a 7800 X3D is fine for now, but will it in a few years. I see stuff being much more cpu heavy the recent years...
8 core seems a bit of a risk to me in 2024, or am I wrong? Just like going for a single core cpu in 2006/2007 wasn't very future proof.

I think a decent 8 core is more than fine for a gaming PC and I'd expect a 7800X3D/9800X3D to last for at least 5 years. The main reason I can see them being obsolete isn't the core count, but if GPU power increases a lot due to something like ray/path tracing and then the CPU lacking the grunt to keep up with it.

It sounds like you do a fair amount of tasks that are hammering the CPU, so because of that, perhaps at least a 12 core AMD or Intel with E-Cores (like the 14700K) is a better match for you. AMD's 12 cores are not entirely straight forward though, due to the split of 6 cores across 2 CCDs (the 12 core 7900X3D is actually slower in most games than the 8 core 7800X3D).

I looked up the Core Ultra CPUs while searching for another thread and in encoding they're competitive from what I can see, the 265K coming out just past AMD's 9900X and with much better power efficiency than 14th gen, but the gaming performance is rather underwhelming right now. You're unlikely to get a great deal on something that has just been released too, I guess and I wouldn't know for certain what memory to pair it with because there hasn't been enough testing yet and the platform is still very immature which is unusual for Intel.

 

[JollyJamma]

<~I see the AMD's are vastly superior for gaming. I also see they are a bit lacking in raw processing power and have fewer cores... I am sure even a 7800 X3D is fine for now, but will it in a few years. I see stuff being much more cpu heavy the recent years...
8 core seems a bit of a risk to me in 2024, or am I wrong?~>

Can’t seem to insert quotation markers so I’ll just use a tild and an arrow as above.

IMO - Intels issues with the 13th and 14th gen CPUs is significant enough for me to not to recommend them - Intels are facing a class action lawsuit for the issues with their CPUs.

Yes, AMD lags behind in production results but they are still not that bad and I reckon that a 7800X3D or 9700X are worth considering as they are great and I don’t think you’ll complain at all upgrading from an 8th gen system.

The 9700X is a very well balanced CPU for a platform that still has support for a couple more years (don’t recall until when but hey) and you could feasibly consider the 9950X3D in your use case down the road if you so wanted

AMD have reconfigured their 9000 series X3D processors to improve performance and cooling over the 7000 series.

Other pros for AMD: much easier to cool, the X3D models will hold their value better.

If you could find a used 14700F or K at a great price on the used market that still has a warranty and pair it with a motherboard and make sure that it is updated with the latest BIOS, that’s a great option but if that CPU dies out of warranty, say goodbye to your money.

Edit; got my numbers mixed up

 

[JollyJamma]

I work in IT so work with IDE's, code, databases, etc... I often built/compile, compress/decompress, etc... I faff about in 3D sometimes. I want to try faffing about with audio editing.

Go to Puget System website and look at reviews like this one where they compared different workloads for each CPU and then decide what works best for you.

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Content Creation Review

We examine the performance of AMD's new Ryzen 7 9800X3D in content creation applications.

www.pugetsystems.com

Here’s a review specifically looking at the 9700X and 9600X and comparing them to Intel

AMD Ryzen 9600X and 9700X Content Creation Review

AMD has released their new Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X. How do these compare to their last-gen counter parts and Intel's 14th Gen i5 and i7 parts?

www.pugetsystems.com

Here is their note on the issues with Intel processors

“We are confident in our workstation configurations, but we encourage caution when purchasing an Intel CPU right now until we see whether Intel’s promised microcode update addresses the issue.”

Edit: here is a review of the Intel micro code update and its impact to performance

Impact of Intel Microcode 0x12B on Content Creation Performance

We examine the performance penalty of the Vmin Shift Instability fix (microcode 0x12B) in Content Creation applications.

www.pugetsystems.com