What CPU would you use for a high end and a med end PC?

[G J]

£500 is not mid range CPU money

If the 13/14 gen Intel should be avoided due to its issues then AsRock AM5 motherboards should also as they suffer pretty much from all the issues Intel CPU's have been and it still continues to this day.

 

[Rroff]

£500 is not mid range CPU money

What even is a mid range CPU these days :s you've got mid range performing parts priced like high end, mid range priced parts that have either less or more performance than you'd expect at mid range, parts that overlap with mid range which have all kinds of caveats like being strong in one area but weak in another, etc. etc. unfortunately you have to do your research really these days and buy the CPU which fits your specific needs and budget most closely.

 

[jigger]

What even is a mid range CPU these days :s you've got mid range performing parts priced like high end, mid range priced parts that have either less or more performance than you'd expect at mid range, parts that overlap with mid range which have all kinds of caveats like being strong in one area but weak in another, etc. etc. unfortunately you have to do your research really these days and buy the CPU which fits your specific needs and budget most closely.

7000, 9000 and even 5000 Zen parts offer very strong performance across the board. Every time I’ve looked to upgrade there has been some offering a significant improvement for less power at sensible price and usually as drop in upgrade into an existing system. You really are out of touch, the CPU market has never been healthier.

 

[Rroff]

7000, 9000 and even 5000 Zen parts offer very strong performance across the board. Every time I’ve looked to upgrade there has been some offering a significant improvement for less power at sensible price and usually as drop in upgrade into an existing system. You really are out of touch, the CPU market has never been healthier.

Fascinating, but I was talking about mid range.

 

[Gray2233]

What even is a mid range CPU these days :s you've got mid range performing parts priced like high end, mid range priced parts that have either less or more performance than you'd expect at mid range, parts that overlap with mid range which have all kinds of caveats like being strong in one area but weak in another, etc. etc. unfortunately you have to do your research really these days and buy the CPU which fits your specific needs and budget most closely.

It's so difficult because there's such a range of performance depending on usage, but I do think there are a couple of options I'd say sort of fit the bill for around the same price.

For gaming: AMD 7600X3D for £270 give or take.
For productivity: Intel 265 variants for £270-290.

Opt for whichever depending on your lean.

It's still messy though, if you primarily program and game Intel and AMD are quite competitive depending on the language and even then there's not usually much between them. For certain media creation software the 9700 (which costs roughly the same as the 7600X3D) of all things tops the charts even ahead of top end CPU's like the 9950 or 285, but should still be a notably better gaming CPU than the 265.

Raptor Lake is still arguably the best "middle ground" with its i5's but it's difficult to recommend because like it or not, there are known degradation issues and I'd not blame anyone for wanting to avoid those.

I don't even remember the last time that CPU choice felt like a lesson in specialisation rather than a quick web search for your budget prior to this.

 

[Rroff]

I don't even remember the last time that CPU choice felt like a lesson in specialisation rather than a quick web search for your budget prior to this.

Yeah it is the crux of the point I'm making.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

7000, 9000 and even 5000 Zen parts offer very strong performance across the board. Every time I’ve looked to upgrade there has been some offering a significant improvement for less power at sensible price and usually as drop in upgrade into an existing system. You really are out of touch, the CPU market has never been healthier.

AMD also is competing with itself:
1.)Ryzen 5 7600/7600X for around £125 to £135
2.)Ryzen 5 9600X has dipped below £170
3.)Ryzen 7 7700/7700X from £200 to £245
4.)Ryzen 7 9700X for around £260 to £270
5.)Ryzen 9 7900/7900X for around £265 to £275
6.)Ryzen 5 7600X3D for around £270 and is getting a general release so prices might drop
7.)Ryzen 7 7800X3D for around £330
8.)Ryzen 7 5700X3D is around £200 as a drop-in upgrade for AM4
9.)Ryzen 9 5950X for under £230 as a drop-in upgrade for AM4

Then you have all the Chinese special pricing if you want to go down that path.

With LGA1851,Intel basically made it a one generation socket - Nova Lake will need a new socket. There is a high likelihood of Zen6 being on AM5. So you could start on a Ryzen 5 7600/7600X on a B850 board and have potential to upgrade down the line to a 9800X3D or maybe a 10800X3D.

 

[Vimes]

I did choose the 265K, it has been fine so far. A little hotter than I expected given all the chatter about efficiency improvements. The boost voltage is 250/250W not 125/250W which the Intel website claims.

I did find that my 265k runs overall cooler than either the 14700k or 12700k system I previously ran.
The "offset" P and E cores seem to favour a cooler temp.

 

[KompuKare]

Edit: the post which wasn't then was... Ignore

 

[KompuKare]

While Intel's E cores can be okay for things like video encoding, when my work laptop was "upgraded" to Alder Lake i5-1235U (2P/8E/12T), 15W according to Intel. Previously I was on Haswell i5-4330M (2C/4T) wth 37W TDP.
There were SQL queries which were crazily slower on the "upgrade". And turning off the E cores improved things - but still slower than the Haswell!

Anyway every success I've been really put off the E cores, and general benchmarking.

Then ask the Raptor Lake degradation issues, Intel releasing clocked to hilt, and consuming power like crazy, platforms which last 1 or 2 gens...

I would totally avoid Intel for the now expect for very specific workloads. And then only if you trust them (degradation etc.) and can cool them.

I also don't see the budget appeal - so least for anything which requires good VRMs and expensive cooling.

 

[jigger]

AMD also is competing with itself:
1.)Ryzen 5 7600/7600X for around £125 to £135
2.)Ryzen 5 9600X has dipped below £170
3.)Ryzen 7 7700/7700X from £200 to £245
4.)Ryzen 7 9700X for around £260 to £270
5.)Ryzen 9 7900/7900X for around £265 to £275
6.)Ryzen 5 7600X3D for around £270 and is getting a general release so prices might drop
7.)Ryzen 7 7800X3D for around £330
8.)Ryzen 7 5700X3D is around £200 as a drop-in upgrade for AM4
9.)Ryzen 9 5950X for under £230 as a drop-in upgrade for AM4

Then you have all the Chinese special pricing if you want to go down that path.

With LGA1851,Intel basically made it a one generation socket - Nova Lake will need a new socket. There is a high likelihood of Zen6 being on AM5. So you could start on a Ryzen 5 7600/7600X on a B850 board and have potential to upgrade down the line to a 9800X3D or maybe a 10800X3D.

Then the fact,that the AM5 AMD CPUs generally keep more of their performance on lower end boards and B850 boards with PCI-E 5.0 start from under £120.

You can get a 5950X for a little over £200 and happily run it on a £40 motherboard. The performance per watt-£££ ratio of DDR4 AM4 builds are pretty silly just now. I can’t remember a better time to buy CPUs. As you point out you also have chips like 7900 non X for not a lot more money and those offer stupid levels of performance for 60 watts.

I think a large part of the reason for well priced AMD desktop parts is down to the introduction of the AM5 based EPYC parts for professional use. Unit prices is less of a concern to this market.

For £600 I’d be looking at a 9950X3D. For £500 a 9950X.

 

[Rroff]

While Intel's E cores can be okay for things like video encoding, when my work laptop was "upgraded" to Alder Lake i5-1235U (2P/8E/12T), 15W according to Intel. Previously I was on Haswell i5-4330M (2C/4T) wth 37W TDP.
There were SQL queries which were crazily slower on the "upgrade". And turning off the E cores improved things - but still slower than the Haswell!

Anyway every success I've been really put off the E cores, and general benchmarking.

Then ask the Raptor Lake degradation issues, Intel releasing clocked to hilt, and consuming power like crazy, platforms which last 1 or 2 gens...

I would totally avoid Intel for the now expect for very specific workloads. And then only if you trust them (degradation etc.) and can cool them.

I also don't see the budget appeal - so least for anything which requires good VRMs and expensive cooling.

There were some issues with E cores on earlier 12th gen parts and Windows 10 and for maximum application performance it can sometimes require an APO profile which Intel doesn't seem very proactive about supporting or updating, but I've not seen any issues with 14th gen desktop parts and Windows 11. Unfortunately I don't have any mobile parts to test there, 2 performance cores is not really a great place to start though for things like SQL queries.

It was one thing which concerned me a bit when I started modernising my setup from a mixture of 2011-V2 and Intel 10th gen setups due to having seen issues with system latency and also E cores with newer Intel platforms but so far my 14th gen based setups have been absolutely fine (for the record I also have a number of AMD 7000 series based setups).

The degradation issues seem to be massively blown out of proportion so far, whenever I've looked into the claims of mass failures or mass errors it hasn't stood up to scrutiny, one of the first places to start flagging the issue RAD Game Tools due to the nature of their software being very exposed to it are still only seeing small amounts of failures, mostly 14900s, any shop which publishes data or I have access to returns data shows very low failure rates albeit slightly elevated compared to normal for Intel but still very low. A Mozilla dev recently made a big thing about it but seem to have significantly exaggerated the problem compared to what is filed on their bug tracker - additionally something they didn't mention is that over 80% of those reports come from the same very small number of users and less than 15 reports a week are indicative of a degraded CPU - bare in mind that is out of millions of weekly users. Unless/until more information comes to light in my opinion disgruntled Intel employee(s) after layoffs around the time the issue started to come to light have hijacked a real issue and blown it up into a much more massive issue than it is in reality. It is telling in my opinion that tech channels like Gamers Nexus went very quiet on the issue after initially covering it and starting investigations - if there was evidence of substantial failures as some make out, which stood up to investigation, they'd be all over it and milking it for everything they could.

 

[humbug]

Mid range.

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High end.

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Eight Core 5.20GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail

Order AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Eight Core 5.20GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail now online and benefit from fast delivery.

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Honestly unless you're gaming with a 5090 i wouldn't look beyond the Ryzen 9700.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

You can get a 5950X for a little over £200 and happily run it on a £40 motherboard. The performance per watt-£££ ratio of DDR4 AM4 builds are pretty silly just now. I can’t remember a better time to buy CPUs. As you point out you also have chips like 7900 non X for not a lot more money and those offer stupid levels of performance for 60 watts.

I think a large part of the reason for well priced AMD desktop parts is down to the introduction of the AM5 based EPYC parts for professional use. Unit prices is less of a concern to this market.

For £600 I’d be looking at a 9950X3D. For £500 a 9950X.

£40 might be pushing it with a 5950X unless it is TDP capped,but there are plenty of solid £70 to £90 boards which will be fine.

 

[jigger]

£40 might be pushing it with a 5950X unless it is TDP capped,but there are plenty of solid £70 to £90 boards which will be fine.

Honestly even the most modest spec A520 board and case will deal with a 5950X no problem. Especially if used with a cooler that blows over the VRM area like the wraith. I’d probably go for a higher end board if I planned to use 250watt+ GPU that dumps its heat into the case.