Which AMD Cpu - 7950x vs 9900x vs 9950x vs ???

[andy85wsm]

I'm getting a new PC built soon, main thread - https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/new-pc-video-editing-some-gaming-2000.18995043/ but wanted to get some more opinions on specific CPU.

Main use - Photoshop and video rendering, fairly simple stuff (my current PC is Ryzen 9 3900x and AMD RX 5700xt) and in Sony Vegas a 30 minute video will render within 20 minutes.

I'm looking to get those times down, possibly move to Adobe Premiere/Da vinci in the future, and am looking at a 4080 super graphics card to make use of nvidia tech to help with renders and I also stream too through OBS.

I do like to play games on my PC at times but it's very much a secondary thing.

I was watching reviews this morning and the 9900x and 9950x seem to come out slightly better than the 7950x on testing but not by a huge amount, and the nice thing about the 7950x is it's actually in stock.

I know with PCs you can go up in price slightly over and over and over to get more performance and ultimately the decision is on me for how much I want to spend, and that the 9900x and 9950x are better, but the 7950x seems decent enough, so my question is more - is there anything coming in the future where the 7950x might fall behind in terms of tech to the point where I should wait for the 9900x or 9950x instead to ensure better future proofing.

Or is there even another CPU that I should be considering?

From other reseach (and help in other thread), i don't think I need a 3D CPU if gaming isn't my priority.

Budget is anywhere from £350 - £600, I'd love for it to last me a while, current PC is 5 years old and going well, but it's time for an upgrade.

Last thing - I'm getting it built by OCUK, I am not a confident PC builder and it's being shipped outside of the UK so water cooling scares me, I'd rather keep to air cooling.

 

[Tetras]

is there anything coming in the future where the 7950x might fall behind in terms of tech to the point where I should wait for the 9900x or 9950x instead to ensure better future proofing.

From what I'm aware of the major tweak between the two was AVX512 support is significantly better on Zen 5. There are other changes, though they seem to only show in certain workloads (the early Linux results were generally better than early Windows).

The memory controller could also have improved just due to the manufacturing/silicon improvements over time, though I think they're technically the same so there's nothing special about it. This could make a difference if you plan to expand the memory a lot later, though BIOS updates that help with memory stability and compatibility will apply to Zen 4 CPUs too.

You'll also get consistently higher performance with the 9950X/9900X across all workloads, because of their higher single/lightly threaded performance, whereas the 7950X shows the power of those 16 cores in fully multithreaded apps.

I wouldn't expect any of those things to be enough that the 7950X ends up a purchase you will regret.

 

[Nelly]

"All of a sudden in the middle of the night, an infiltrator sneaked into the house, and changed the 9950x for a 7600 CPU. Several months later after checking CPU-Z, only then did the owner even realise the CPU had been swapped, making him realise that the artificial demand months ago was a total waste of time and money . . . . "

Like my fantasy story?

Edit: What I'm getting at, would anyone really notice the difference, all this demand for cores and threads . . .

 

[Gray2233]

"All of a sudden in the middle of the night, an infiltrator sneaked into the house, and changed the 9950x for a 7600 CPU. Several months later after checking CPU-Z, only then did the owner even realise the CPU had been swapped, making him realise that the artificial demand months ago was a total waste of time and money . . . . "

Like my fantasy story?

Edit: What I'm getting at, would anyone really notice the difference, all this demand for cores and threads . . .

Depending on the workload? Yes, they'd notice within half a minute.

 

[Tetras]

"All of a sudden in the middle of the night, an infiltrator sneaked into the house, and changed the 9950x for a 7600 CPU. Several months later after checking CPU-Z, only then did the owner even realise the CPU had been swapped, making him realise that the artificial demand months ago was a total waste of time and money . . . . "

Like my fantasy story?

Edit: What I'm getting at, would anyone really notice the difference, all this demand for cores and threads . . .

For the average gamer they probably wouldn't notice the difference between the two CPUs you mentioned, that's true, but as Gray2233 said, if you're doing something heavily multithreaded it is night and day.

The OP could potentially shave off hours, or even days of wait time between those two over 30 days. It is part of why the decision is tough, because you really need fully multithreaded workloads to get the best out of 16 core CPUs and the core-to-core scaling isn't 100% guaranteed. That's why I'd lean towards the 9000 series CPUs, because they're a bit higher performing across the board when the CPU is not being hammered @ 100%, but the 7950X is still a great CPU.

 

[Nelly]

I remember back in 2010ish using an Intel E5200 2 core in the office, updating huge accounts spreadsheet on Excel 2003 used to take like 5+ minutes! Just read it only handled 1 core anyway, the machine only had 2GB ram though, that probally had a lot to do with it.

I just read even later versions of Excel can use upto 64 cores. I'm just in the middle of learning it all over again, previously used 2003 and 2007. Will be interesting to see if my 7600 can handle updating huge purchase ledger accounts spreadsheets.

 

[jigger]

"All of a sudden in the middle of the night, an infiltrator sneaked into the house, and changed the 9950x for a 7600 CPU. Several months later after checking CPU-Z, only then did the owner even realise the CPU had been swapped, making him realise that the artificial demand months ago was a total waste of time and money . . . . "

Like my fantasy story?

Edit: What I'm getting at, would anyone really notice the difference, all this demand for cores and threads . . .

Absolutely you’d notice, the question is how bothered are you about the time required. What would take my system 20 minutes to crunch would take a 7600 3-4 hours. Using virtual machines with hardware pass through to speed up workflow would pretty much out of the question, so hours long tasks then become days.

 

[Gray2233]

I remember back in 2010ish using an Intel E5200 2 core in the office, updating huge accounts spreadsheet on Excel 2003 used to take like 5+ minutes! Just read it only handled 1 core anyway, the machine only had 2GB ram though, that probally had a lot to do with it.

I just read even later versions of Excel can use upto 64 cores. I'm just in the middle of learning it all over again, previously used 2003 and 2007. Will be interesting to see if my 7600 can handle updating huge purchase ledger accounts spreadsheets.

Some programs are designed to use as many resources as are available, so cores/ram etc. It does depend on the use case and application, but it can make a big difference, especially so if you're doing it for work rather than hobbyist reasons. Time absolutely is money in those circumstances, you could potentially lose a few grand a week dropping to a six core vs 16 core as an example.

Tetras gave a good breakdown, I'm more showing the potential extremes.

 

[Nelly]

I just worked out, over a year updating a spreadsheet twice a day even taking 5 minutes instead of a few seconds, would equal a 40 hour week roughly of wages.

 

[Gray2233]

I just worked out, over a year updating a spreadsheet twice a day even taking 5 minutes instead of a few seconds, would equal a 40 hour week roughly of wages.

It's pretty shocking when you consider the potential numbers tbh.

 

[jigger]

The question for me would be more about buying 4080 it’s about to be replaced with something much faster and less power hungry.

 

[Meddling-Monk]

The question for me would be more about buying 4080 it’s about to be replaced with something much faster and less power hungry.

I've personally avoided the 4000 series hard, as I didn't feel it was a big enough jump from the 3000 series for gaming or pushing the absolute best, or doing AI stuff. The difference between 2000 going to 3000 was amazing. 3000 to 4000? Not so much. But what's been suggested about the 5000 ahead, makes it tick many boxes as desireable in some fashion or other to jump to; VRAM (32GB?), less power hungry (as you mentioned), more perfomance where you'd want it (4K+, frames, Path/Ray tracing, AI, etc). Even if it doesn't go up in all those aspects, the differences should be enough for it to be fairly noticeable. Again, unlike 3000 to 4000.

 

[andy85wsm]

The question for me would be more about buying 4080 it’s about to be replaced with something much faster and less power hungry.

When are the new cards out though?

I feel like any time I'm looking at a new computer there's always a "just wait for this to come out" - won't there always be new stuff coming?

Maybe I shouldn't be rushing pre-Christmas for my new build, but I don't want to wait much into next year ideally.

 

[andy85wsm]

"All of a sudden in the middle of the night, an infiltrator sneaked into the house, and changed the 9950x for a 7600 CPU. Several months later after checking CPU-Z, only then did the owner even realise the CPU had been swapped, making him realise that the artificial demand months ago was a total waste of time and money . . . . "

Like my fantasy story?

Edit: What I'm getting at, would anyone really notice the difference, all this demand for cores and threads . . .

Possibly not, and I'm not super technical so I don't know in reality how much quicker things get.

But this morning for example I was recorded videos through OBS at the same time I was rendering, if I can get the render times down as well as being able to do more things across Photoshop/recording at the same time that's great, it's worth the money to me.

 

[Tetras]

Possibly not, and I'm not super technical so I don't know in reality how much quicker things get.

But this morning for example I was recorded videos through OBS at the same time I was rendering, if I can get the render times down

It is always difficult to do these kind of calculations, because software is different (even updates/patches can change things dramatically sometimes, like make the core scaling better, or worse!) and every workload is different, but if I try to give you an example from TPU's review:

I'll take the first result, AV1 encoding.

9950X completed their test in 52.7 seconds.
7950x completed their test in 57.2 seconds.

If we say that's around 8% shorter, then a 1 hour test for the 7950X would complete in 55 minutes on the 9950X.

To make the point of how this is not valid in all workloads, their H.264 results have the 9950X completing the test in just 2.5% shorter time than the 7950X.

as well as being able to do more things across Photoshop/recording at the same time that's great

I doubt you would find the 9950X significantly more responsive for multitasking than the 7950X, but I've never used both side-by-side.

 

[jigger]

When are the new cards out though?

I feel like any time I'm looking at a new computer there's always a "just wait for this to come out" - won't there always be new stuff coming?

Maybe I shouldn't be rushing pre-Christmas for my new build, but I don't want to wait much into next year ideally.

Nvidia are long overdue releasing new desktop parts, which in a way is good news as they line up really with the new TSMC node. I’d expect new cards to release at CES.

 

[Kirby Wurm]

For the average gamer they probably wouldn't notice the difference between the two CPUs you mentioned, that's true, but as Gray2233 said, if you're doing something heavily multithreaded it is night and day.

Shader compilation in some games will do it. I can't remember which game it was but I noticed the decrease when I moved from the 5900X to the 5800X3D.

 

[andy85wsm]

Nvidia are long overdue releasing new desktop parts, which in a way is good news as they line up really with the new TSMC node. I’d expect new cards to release at CES.

Okay so not that long then, how long after something like CES would they be readily available via OCUK do you think? I'd guess new cards are super popular and super expensive.

It is always difficult to do these kind of calculations, because software is different (even updates/patches can change things dramatically sometimes, like make the core scaling better, or worse!) and every workload is different, but if I try to give you an example from TPU's review:

I'll take the first result, AV1 encoding.

9950X completed their test in 52.7 seconds.
7950x completed their test in 57.2 seconds.

If we say that's around 8% shorter, then a 1 hour test for the 7950X would complete in 55 minutes on the 9950X.

To make the point of how this is not valid in all workloads, their H.264 results have the 9950X completing the test in just 2.5% shorter time than the 7950X.


I doubt you would find the 9950X significantly more responsive for multitasking than the 7950X, but I've never used both side-by-side.

Yeah fair enough, probably not a huge concern then.

I don't tend to render anything much longer than about 45 minutes generally.

Although if I'm waiting for a new GPU I might as well get the latest CPU I suppose

 

[Xelene]

Nvidia are long overdue releasing new desktop parts, which in a way is good news as they line up really with the new TSMC node. I’d expect new cards to release at CES.

The whisper is that the 5090 and 5080 will be announced at CES, with the 5070 following up fairly shortly to compete with the 8800XT which will alledgedly also be launched at the same time and expected to perform somewhere between 7900XT & XTX with substantially improved RT and a pricepoint around 500-600.

 

[Tetras]

Yeah fair enough, probably not a huge concern then.

I don't tend to render anything much longer than about 45 minutes generally.

Although if I'm waiting for a new GPU I might as well get the latest CPU I suppose

Yeah, if your longest time is less than 1 hour it isn't something I'd worry about, but the 9000 series CPUs can easily be up to 20% faster if the workload plays to their strengths (Phoronix's Linux results show some of that underlying power), so it is one of those "it depends".

If time is money and the extra cost isn't a big deal (from what you've said, that is the case), then the 9950X is what I'd consider insurance against those architectural tweaks playing a bigger role in the future. The potentially improved memory controller due to the manufacturing process/silicon improvements could be worth something later too.

If you get the upgrade itch sooner and don't want to wait anymore, so be it, you're not going to cry with a 7950X.