Time to beef up the CPU, Intel or AMD?

Randall8686 · 24 Sep 2023 at 21:33

Hi all

Not upgraded in ages, on a 3900x cpu and on a 1st gen ryzen mobo so upgrading with AMD on my board is out the question.

My use case is a bit of video editing and some gaming (flight sim, warzone, strategy stuff)

My GPU is 3080 and wont be upgrading that at the moment. Where is the bang for buck with CPU performance (taking into consideration i need mobo and ram)

Ideally around £800 for the upgrade but not fixed so if another 100/200 gets me a worth while boost i would.

Totally out of touch with hardware so welcome any advice.

Tetras · 24 Sep 2023 at 21:42

Randall8686 said:
Not upgraded in ages, on a 3900x cpu and on a 1st gen ryzen mobo so upgrading with AMD on my board is out the question.

Which board? A lot of them (most of them) have Zen 3 support now.

Randall8686 said:
Ideally around £800 for the upgrade but not fixed so if another 100/200 gets me a worth while boost i would.

For AMD, if you want some decent CPU power for video stuff, I'd get the 7900, but otherwise the 7800X3D:

My basket at OcUK:

1 x AMD Ryzen 9 7900 Twelve Core 5.40GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3DU-AM) = £399.95
1 x AMD - Starfield Ryzen Game Bundle (SKU: DIG-AMD-00523) = £0.00
1 x Asus ROG Strix B650E-F Gaming WIFI (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-6JX-AS) = £255.54
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan EXPO 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C38 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (FLABD532G6000HC38ADC01) (SKU: MY-0B2-TG) = £119.99

Total: £783.47 (includes delivery: £7.99)

B650E-F is one of the cheaper boards with PCI-E 5.0 graphics, but I don't know if you want to pay for it.

Quartz · 24 Sep 2023 at 23:17

Randall8686 said:
Not upgraded in ages, on a 3900x cpu and on a 1st gen ryzen mobo so upgrading with AMD on my board is out the question.

Which board? You should be able to drop in a 5800X3D or 5950 (depending upon your usage balance) after a BIOS update.

Randall8686 · 25 Sep 2023 at 00:30

Tetras said:
Which board? A lot of them (most of them) have Zen 3 support now.

For AMD, if you want some decent CPU power for video stuff, I'd get the 7900, but otherwise the 7800X3D:

My basket at OcUK:

1 x AMD Ryzen 9 7900 Twelve Core 5.40GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3DU-AM) = £399.95

1 x AMD - Starfield Ryzen Game Bundle (SKU: DIG-AMD-00523) = £0.00

1 x Asus ROG Strix B650E-F Gaming WIFI (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-6JX-AS) = £255.54

1 x TeamGroup Vulcan EXPO 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C38 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (FLABD532G6000HC38ADC01) (SKU: MY-0B2-TG) = £119.99

Total: £783.47 (includes delivery: £7.99)

B650E-F is one of the cheaper boards with PCI-E 5.0 graphics, but I don't know if you want to pay for it.

The old board is ASROCK Fatal1ty X370 GAMING ITX/AC tbh i would prefer a normal size mobo now anyway as it was originally for a micro build thats now in a normal sized case.

Its pretty old was from first gen Ryzen chips tbh.

uscool · 25 Sep 2023 at 00:38

Randall8686 said:
The old board is ASROCK Fatal1ty X370 GAMING ITX/AC tbh i would prefer a normal size mobo now anyway as it was originally for a micro build thats now in a normal sized case.

Its pretty old was from first gen Ryzen chips tbh.

It does support zen3 with bios update if wanted to go that route

ASRock > Fatal1ty X370 Gaming-ITX/ac

ASRock Super Alloy; Supports AMD Socket AM4 A-Series APUs (Bristol Ridge) and Ryzen Series CPUs (Summit Ridge & Raven Ridge); Supports DDR4 3466+ (OC) (Ryzen CPU) / 2400 (A-series APU); 1 PCIe 3.0 x16; Graphics Output: 2 HDMI; 7.1 CH HD Audio (Realtek ALC1220 Audio Codec), Supports Creative...

www.asrock.com

tamzzy · 25 Sep 2023 at 00:41

just upgrade the bios and drop a 5800x3d in.
the 5800x3d is the end-game for the AM4 platform as far as gaming is concerned...no need to waste money on upgrading the whole platform

how do i know? i've ran a 3080 with a 5800x3d too

tamzzy · 25 Sep 2023 at 00:48

Randall8686 said:
and some gaming (flight sim

you will also find that for MSFS, the 5800x3d absolutely canes any other chip except the ryzen 7000x3d chips

see: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-7-7800x3d-cpu-review/4

g67575 · 25 Sep 2023 at 09:31

I would go with a socket AM5 motherboard if your budget is £800. I recommend a 7700X CPU, then maybe upgrade again at the end of 2024 (Ryzen 8000 series is due then, which will use the AM5 socket), if needed.

Most Gigabyte motherboards seem good, decent DDR5 support at higher frequencies.

One thing to bear in mind with Ryzen 7000 series CPUs, is that they only support running RAM at 6000 MT/s, at least without having to run the memory controller at a reduced speed. So, AMD has only officially recommended DDR5 6000 RAM, thus far. The good news is that DDR5 modules have generally come down a lot in price.

But 8000 MT/s DDR5 modules are still comparatively very expensive, relative to 6000 MT/s modules.

FredFlint · 25 Sep 2023 at 10:37

I went from a 3900X+X370+64GB DDR4(3000)+512GB Gen3 NVMe to a 7950X+B650E-E+32GB DDR5(5600)+1TB gen 4 NVMe. Overall, it’s been a good upgrade, but the ASUS boards have a problem with the Intel NIC, sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. I ended up getting a USB NIC. The ASUS B650E-E still seems like one of the best boards for the money, more so now it dropped in price from £360 to (£260-280).

uscool · 25 Sep 2023 at 10:46

MSI MAG X670E TOMAHAWK WIFI is like £250 after £30 cashback from MSI
looking around prices now seem better for ddr5, boards and CPU, have the itch but doesnt make sense to change from my current setup 5800x3d+3080 the 3080 would hold it back anyway

faceman123 · 25 Sep 2023 at 11:03

TLDR makes ure you go AMD either 5800x3d or 7000 - you can always slot in a nice cpu down the line ! plus they use half the power of intel and don't require Niagara falls to cool

Jamin280672 · 25 Sep 2023 at 16:41

g67575 said:
One thing to bear in mind with Ryzen 7000 series CPUs, is that they only support running RAM at 6000 MT/s, at least without having to run the memory controller at a reduced speed. So, AMD has only officially recommended DDR5 6000 RAM, thus far. The good news is that DDR5 modules have generally come down a lot in price.

Nope.......The newer bioses changed all of that.

You can get a G.skill 6000mhz CL30 kit that will do these speeds for £120, uses the same Micron A Die IC's, its counter acted by the memory timings, mine does do CL30 but the performance is worse, it will also do 6600mhz, but my chip wont do 2200 FCLK.

Id definitely go with AM5...especially as AMD generally support sockets for 4 to 5 years, so the upgrade path is good, make sure you shop around for ram though, as above you can buy a decent kit for £120, the ones to look out for is the 6000mhz CL30 / 6400mhz CL32 kits, these will be the Hynix A die DDR5 kits which is basically the new Samsung B die of DDR4.

g67575 · 25 Sep 2023 at 20:39

That's true, you can go a bit higher with the latest BIOS versions (As you can see, his memory controller, e.g. 'UCLK' is running at the same speed as the RAM. e.g. 'MCLK').

My RAM (Kingston FURY Renegade) is specced for 6000 MT/s with XMP enabled, but can in theory go higher, particularly if the DRAM voltages are increased.

I personally am going to wait until the BIOS for my ASRock B650 motherboard is out of Beta, or until AMD upgrade the AGESA version to 1.0.0.9 (hopefully this year?)as I think this is likely to be more stable than 1.0.0.7b /1.0.0.7c)

My BIOS version is still 1.14.AS06, which came out in December last year, as some of the later BIOS versions had stability issues when running the RAM at the XMP rated speed.

I assume that if you buy a new motherboard now, it should come with a BIOS that includes AGESA version 1.0.0.7, is that correct?

g67575 · 25 Sep 2023 at 21:15

Buying RAM can be tricky...

Generally something to look out for is a low voltage, especially on the lower spec RAM kits.

6400 MT/s kits are very affordable now.

But you can get 7600 MT/s rated RAM (2x16GB modules) now for ~£170/£180.

Like this:
FF4D532G7600HC36DDC01

You can get a 7800 MT/s kit for ~£200, so maybe that's the sweet spot.

Joxeon · 6 Oct 2023 at 18:45

I’d go for a 5800X3D, there will be zero fps difference with that and a 3080 over any of the newer stuff at 4K

Cyber-Mav · 8 Oct 2023 at 21:52

Joxeon said:
I’d go for a 5800X3D, there will be zero fps difference with that and a 3080 over any of the newer stuff at 4K

But am4 is dead end now. 5800x3d is for those already on am4, not worth it for new entries

Joxeon · 8 Oct 2023 at 23:28

Cyber-Mav said:
But am4 is dead end now. 5800x3d is for those already on am4, not worth it for new entries

OP is already on AM4 though.

Cyber-Mav · 9 Oct 2023 at 06:19

Joxeon said:
OP is already on AM4 though.

Makes sense then

JollyJamma · 10 Oct 2023 at 09:57

Joxeon said:
OP is already on AM4 though.

Yeah, I agree. A 5800X3D would be a fantastic drop in upgrade and OP already has a good enough motherboard and GPU.

CPUs aren’t as important to gaming as GPUs (obviously don’t go dual core but as long as OP had a strong enough CPU like the 5800X3D, I can’t see them needing to upgrade anytime soon)

Buying a whole new setup to outpace the 5800X3D by not a lot seems excessive.

Zefan · 10 Oct 2023 at 10:17

JollyJamma said:
Yeah, I agree. A 5800X3D would be a fantastic drop in upgrade and OP already has a good enough motherboard and GPU.

CPUs aren’t as important to gaming as GPUs (obviously don’t go dual core but as long as OP had a strong enough CPU like the 5800X3D, I can’t see them needing to upgrade anytime soon)

Buying a whole new setup to outpace the 5800X3D by not a lot seems excessive.

While I agree that the 5800x3d is 100% the optimal play here, I'm it's worth noting that the CPU doesn't matter so much paradigm is being challenged (especially when it comes to minimums/frametime issues) by newer games, especially those now on/coming on UE5.