Worst ask: Good gaming and good productivity

[Middenacht]

I'm gaming first productivity second - but I still do want to do productivity (Premiere, Photoshop, After Effects etc).

Im aware the Ryzen 7 7800X3D seems to be the current darling for gaming. Is it really a pile for productivity though?

Im coming from an Intel 4790K, so literally anything current will wipe the floor with it. And I would expect (hope) that a 7800 X3D would wildly outperform my 4790K in productivity.

But, Intel seems still to be winning in the stability war and the 13700K seems like its only a little behind the 7800 X3D in games but significantly better in productivity.

Can anyone guide me here as the processor is a pretty fundamental starting point for me. It will be paired with either an RTX 4080 or 4080 Super

Thanks
Matt

 

[Middenacht]

14700K would get my vote if your budget allows - the 14th gen has been a bit maligned but the 14700K holds up really well in productivity and gaming, very close behind the CPUs which are £100-300+ more expensive with a good balance of performance across all tasks, unlike a lot of the top CPUs at the moment which seem to be very strong in some areas but can fall down against even cheaper CPUs in others.

Personally I'm a bit sceptical of the 7800X3D despite it being a very strong gaming performer - when you get to the kind of resolutions and settings people are likely running with the kind of GPU they'd pair up with it the difference between it and something like the 14700K is single digit percentages (some exceptions aside) while in productivity tasks the 14700K can be as much as 40% faster. I've seen people mention going from 13th gen to the 7800X3D (or some of the other X3D CPUs) as well they notice a difference in things like how long software installs take, etc. where the 13th gen was noticeably quicker at completing tasks like that.

EDIT: If you are into dabbling, I got my 14700K, even on air cooling, to hold 6GHz clocks in many games - anything which only loads up 4 cores properly, which is a nice little boost.

Interesting. A few YTbers had managed to persuade me the 14th Gen is basically the 13th Gen with different packaging. Is there really much diff for the additional cost?

Every PC Ive built for the last 20 years has been Intel and Im so tempted to plug for Ryzen, but Jayz2c constantly tries Ryzen and 6 months later moans about fussiness and instability. Seen that loop a few times and I just dont want a Pc which is a hassle to live with (I keep hearing about long POST while the RAM timings are re-done on Ryzen machines?)

I used to dabble with OC, but honestly, Im too busy and a bit too 'I just want it to work please' to be bothered with anything but the simplest of performance boosts.

Would love to hear some others comments - Im loathed to go with Intel again (so hot, so inefficient) but if its a better all rounder without sacrificing much in games then there we are.

Worth stating that I wont be gaming at 4K. That will be 1440p and higher FPS. So I dont think I will be quite as GPU bound as a 4k gaming machine. Perhaps that changes your thoughts?

 

[Middenacht]

I upgraded from a 5900X to 7950X3D with similar requirement. Primary use is Visual Studio. Noticeable upgrade in both productivity and gaming. Energy efficiency is spot on. Couldn’t be happier.

Interested to hear your thoughts on this, but I was put off the 78950X3D (which seems the obvious choice for me and my requirements) by JayzTwoCents, Hardware Unboxed and Gamers Nexus all saying that in order to get good gaming perf our of this chip, the Microsoft scheduler needs to park the correct cores and it frequently does not do this, resulting in sub-par gaming performance compared to the 7800X3D.

Just fluf or have you experienced this?