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.

 

[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.

 

[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

 

[andy85wsm]

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.

What kind of date do you think they'll be buyable and regularly available?

Is there likely to be a shortage at launch?

 

[andy85wsm]

No clue, you'd have to ask Gibbo that sort of question. Would suspect they'll launch from top to bottom and the Nvidia cards; *especially* the 90 will be in high demand and expensive. For AMD it's more of a question of how much RDNA3 is left in the channel and how much they want to discount it to sell. I heard the retailers are being briefed that the 80 and 90 cards are for "professionals"

Maybe I just go the impatient route and just get a 4080.

7950 and 4080 is a huge upgrade on what I have anyway.

 

[andy85wsm]

going up from 7950 is a pretty much sideways move to anything

was looking at them myself they dipping towards £400 now wonder if they will go lower when the 8950 turns up

I’m going up from a R9 3900x

7950 is one of the options, or wait for 9950 and 5070 / 5080

 

[andy85wsm]

The 9950x is now showing in stock rather than pre-order - it's pretty tempting to just go for it and couple it with a 4080s rather than wait for the 50 series...

 

[andy85wsm]

At current pricing if you're in any way price sensitive (and assuming you're not dependant on export speed for revenue), then I'd probably go for the 7950 at £450 rather than the 9950 at £650

I am somewhat dependant on export speed, the quicker the better to be honest! It's not a huge issue every day, but there are some times (like today) where faster would be nice.

I feel like I should just get the better CPU.

I appreciate that I could say this about every part in the PC, like why stop at 4080 when I can get 4090 etc, but the extra for the 9950 probably worth it for me I think.

I know it's not a huge % increase in performance, think Gamer Nexus said about 12% but might as well just get it for the sake of £200 I think.

Just need to decide whether to wait for new GPUs or just pick up a 4080 super which would be a massive upgrade on my 5700xt anyway.

 

[andy85wsm]

Yeah sounds like for your use it'd be worth the extra... plus you don't have to worry about tihnking "I should have spent the extra" a few months down the line!

Btw, reading the rest of your thread, I'd be more concerned about shipping internationally with an air cooler attached. If you absolutely have to then I'd advise to make sure you can get some of those expanding/setting packing bag things (not sure if ocuk use them as I've never bought a full system!)

I got one from them before and it's been going for 5 years so hopefully it would be okay.

I'm just a little worried about water cooling if it goes wrong - wouldn't know where to start with fixing it, and because it's international it's not so easy to send it back to OCUK.

 

[andy85wsm]

Modern AIOs don't get fixed as such, 'cos they're a self contained unit.

So if they break you just order another and is it a simple enough fix to replace?

To be honest, if my air cooler broke I wouldn't want to mess with it..

 

[andy85wsm]

I wouldn't overspend on a CPU, get a more affordable one use that for 3 years then get a newer gen model that'll fit into your motherboard. So rather than spend £300 x once go £150 x twice

You'll be paying a lot more higher tier CPU's.

I want to limit the number of upgrades I need to make later to be honest, I'm rubbish with computers and it's stressful when you change something and it doesn't work!