yep, it's that thread- amd back on form?

[adolf hamster]

well, this has turned into the graphics card forum back when i last visited.

for reference i'm gaming at 1440p (the monitor will be staying for a good long time yet) on a 290x (that may well be getting upgraded in future but for now i can't afford to change it and the cpu setup at the same time and it's suffering from not being fed by the bulldozer chip rather than not being gutsy enough)

and yes i'll definately need ram, ram starting to die on me is what's started this whole thread

so am i right in thinking so far:

ryzen is good but i'll need to be spending more on the ram/mobo than i'd originally intended to get the best out of it?

skylake x isn't inspiring but in terms of competitiveness not that far off? or the 8700k has at least 1 backer?

 

[Evian]

Depends. If you have GTX1080Ti and gaming at 1080p yes, makes sense. But at 2560x1440 or with lesser GPU no, it doesn't makes sense.

https://imgur.com/a/kLmTk

 

[Journey]

ryzen is good but i'll need to be spending more on the ram/mobo than i'd originally intended to get the best out of it?

Ryzen is an excellent platform and performs really well, at a great price point.

I think a few things should be cleared up, all DDR4 RAM is currently expensive, even slow 2133/2400MHz kits, the sweet spot for getting the most of Ryzen is 2933MHz-3200MHz running low timings, so like any enthusiast RAM you'll pay more, to illustrate the actual price difference if you take 16GB (2x8GB) as an example £149.99 wil get you some 2133/2400MHz, £158.99 will get you 3000MHz, and £169.99 will get you 3200MHz, if you want to cover all your bases then the 8Pack kits are £199.99, but you get the added benefit of it probably being able to do much tighter timings, since it's rated at C14, and the cheaper kits are rated at C16 or above. So if you think £30 is worth 1-2% performance, then go for it.

Secondly, no you don't need an expensive motherboard at all, you can happily pick up a £100 B350 board, and get 95-97% of the performance of any CPU overclocked, that you'd get on a £230 board, just saving yourself £130. The best case scenario, unless you are mega lucky is 4.1GHz on a high end board, and probably 4.0GHz on the cheaper ones. It depends on what features you desire, and if having RGB, etc is important to you, personally I think the B350 boards offer staggering value for money, and due to the limited nature of overclocking with Ryzen, I don't think the boards matter nearly as much as they do on a highend platform like X299/X399.

The value cannot be ignored, and RAM will be required even if you chose an Intel platform, so that huge £30 extra people are banging on about isn't a deal breaker when you look at the total cost of the system, is it?

 

[Panos]

Nope at any resolution. It just won't be so noticeable at higher resolutions but trust me it will be red at the lower half of the benchmarks as it is now.

Yeah benching it with ROTR. A game were the developers took gameworks money and bolted it on top of the Xbox 360 codebase for PC.......Similarly to quite a few other ports.

God forbid if any console port comes straight away to PC from Xbone with GCN optimisations, like Forza 7, whole world breaks loose about conspiracy and AMD fanboyism.

 

[r22snapper]

If I was starting out the new 8700k would be a no brainer. Tops every gaming performance chart and even with 'only' six cores matches 8 core Ryzen in multicore benchmarks.

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/Core_i7_8700K/18.html

That 0.7% AMD lose at 4K must really be a killer to live with

 

[Doobedoo]

That 0.7% AMD lose at 4K must really be a killer to live with

The op is gaming at 1440p so that’s a massive 3.2% difference. Shameful .

 

[adolf hamster]

Ryzen is an excellent platform and performs really well, at a great price point.

I think a few things should be cleared up, all DDR4 RAM is currently expensive, even slow 2133/2400MHz kits, the sweet spot for getting the most of Ryzen is 2933MHz-3200MHz running low timings, so like any enthusiast RAM you'll pay more, to illustrate the actual price difference if you take 16GB (2x8GB) as an example £149.99 wil get you some 2133/2400MHz, £158.99 will get you 3000MHz, and £169.99 will get you 3200MHz, if you want to cover all your bases then the 8Pack kits are £199.99, but you get the added benefit of it probably being able to do much tighter timings, since it's rated at C14, and the cheaper kits are rated at C16 or above. So if you think £30 is worth 1-2% performance, then go for it.

Secondly, no you don't need an expensive motherboard at all, you can happily pick up a £100 B350 board, and get 95-97% of the performance of any CPU overclocked, that you'd get on a £230 board, just saving yourself £130. The best case scenario, unless you are mega lucky is 4.1GHz on a high end board, and probably 4.0GHz on the cheaper ones. It depends on what features you desire, and if having RGB, etc is important to you, personally I think the B350 boards offer staggering value for money, and due to the limited nature of overclocking with Ryzen, I don't think the boards matter nearly as much as they do on a highend platform like X299/X399.

The value cannot be ignored, and RAM will be required even if you chose an Intel platform, so that huge £30 extra people are banging on about isn't a deal breaker when you look at the total cost of the system, is it?

it is a good point, realistically i'd be wanting 32gb of ram, and if it's only going to be 1-2% boost for ~£60 (guessing it's basically double price for double ram from what you're saying) then i'd probably opt for going cheaper, remember this is going from 16gb of 1600mhz ddr3 (well, 8gb half of the time these days, one of the sticks is starting to randomly disconnect)

whilst i agree i don't need an expensive mobo, i will be sticking to the asus upper mid range boards, something like sabertooth/maximus hero level, i just feel it's hedging my bets against issues and i'm prepared that it'll have it's premium attatched.

my biggest issue with ryzen is bulldozer, i'm sure nobody can blame me having lived with that for 6 years when i'm wary of going back to another amd 8 core, and tbh unless ryzen really had a massive price/performance boost over the equivalent intel platform i'd still be inclined to go intel just on that alone.

 

[Doobedoo]

The other plus is when their 7nm zen2 chips come out in late 2018-2019, you’ll be able to drop on in if you fancy an upgrade rather than having to buy a new motherboard as well.

 

[adolf hamster]

The other plus is when their 7nm zen2 chips come out in late 2018-2019, you’ll be able to drop on in if you fancy an upgrade rather than having to buy a new motherboard as well.

i can't see myself having the money to do that, or at least the next big purchase is almost certainly going to be graphics rather than cpu

 

[Doobedoo]

i can't see myself having the money to do that, or at least the next big purchase is almost certainly going to be graphics rather than cpu

You have the option if you choose too. Depending on the increase in performance it may be worth doing.

 

[adolf hamster]

You have the option if you choose too. Depending on the increase in performance it may be worth doing.

true, i'm just looking forward and money's not going to be all that free for the next few years so i'm not holding much hope of being able to spend more on the pc for a good long while.

only reason i'm prepared to now is a combo of it having put in such long service and the fact i need it to be functioning, performance aside up until recently it has at least been very reliable and stable.

 

[Journey]

it is a good point, realistically i'd be wanting 32gb of ram, and if it's only going to be 1-2% boost for ~£60 (guessing it's basically double price for double ram from what you're saying) then i'd probably opt for going cheaper, remember this is going from 16gb of 1600mhz ddr3 (well, 8gb half of the time these days, one of the sticks is starting to randomly disconnect)

Can I ask why you'd be going to 32GB, if you have 16GB now (or 8GB as you say) is there some applications you run that require more than 16GB. I ask since RAM is obviously very expensive presently, and you may find that waiting if you don't 'have to have' 32GB may save you a good amount of cash. With regards to the question about cost, then the sensible option is to grab something that offers be performance to £ spent, so IMO that is going to be anything that does 2933-3200MHz with decent timings. I should try running my test rig at 2933 C12/C14, and 3200 C14 to see what the difference is in real terms, but as long as you are hitting 2933MHZ you'll be getting a good balance of performance to effort required and the cost.

my biggest issue with ryzen is bulldozer, i'm sure nobody can blame me having lived with that for 6 years when i'm wary of going back to another amd 8 core, and tbh unless ryzen really had a massive price/performance boost over the equivalent intel platform i'd still be inclined to go intel just on that alone.

I am sorry but I don't see that as a valid argument at all, it's like saying "Gee, no way am I getting a Core2 Duo after living with a Pentium D" it's just ignoring a great option due to choosing poorly in the past. Performance per £ spent, ultimately puts Ryzen ahead when an over all workload comes in to it, especially if you are looking at the R7 1700, and a reasonably priced motherboard.

whilst i agree i don't need an expensive mobo, i will be sticking to the asus upper mid range boards, something like sabertooth/maximus hero level, i just feel it's hedging my bets against issues and i'm prepared that it'll have it's premium attatched.

Hedging your bets against what exactly? I've used the ASRock Taichi X370 board, which is on par, if not better than the top of the range Asus CH6, and it offers little more than the low end B350 boards did, except like I already said, better tweaking otpions to get the last 5% performance from the platform as a whole. Don't forget the actual chipset does very little with the AM4 platform, so unless you plan on going SLI then when you buy a high end board you are paying for better power phases, for more stability with overclocking, sadly the Ryzen CPU's are limited by the silicone, not the motherboards stability in the majority of cases.

If you want to convince yourself that spending £100+ more is going to buy you a huge leap then that's fine, but then I'd ask the question why not get the more expensive RAM since you'll probably see a better performance increase per £ spent than you will with the expensive board.

Please understand I am only looking at this from the value standpoint, and at least with this options some of the money saved could be put towards a drop in AM4 CPU upgrade in around two years for a whole new system in performance terms, not a chance of doing that on any other platform presently.

 

[Deleted member 66701]

AMD is certainly back in the game, but Ryzen has teething problems. If you're prepared to immediately update your BIOS as soon as you get the motherboard and keep watching threads on various forums of the board you've got to keep up with information on what overclock settings work well with which BIOS, how to get your RAM to work with anything greater than 2100 MHz or how to avoid a cold-boot bug where all the overclock settings get reset to default, then it's a great processor. In short, you have to buy expensive RAM in order to be guaranteed to reach a decent clock, i.e. Samsung B-die RAM. Retailers know this, hence the silly prices.

This is just my opinion, but you may as well just stick with the 1700 rather than the 1700x.

My Ryzen system has none of those issues - worked perfectly from the get go and has been rock solid ever since. Ram ran at XMP straight off as well and will OC to 3466C16.

 

[Undesirable]

Or get one of the many boards that are in good shape, update bios once, set your speed & timings and leave it at that. Yes, it gains from Samsung b-die but other RAM works well and the platform as a whole is plenty cheap to allow the RAM expense and still be the value option.

Not saying there have been no issues but reading your post it sounds like it's way worse than it really is - used to read similar statements about AMD graphics drivers back in the PR war days that were just as misleading.

Or get one of the many boards that are in good shape, update bios once, set your speed & timings and leave it at that. Yes, it gains from Samsung b-die but other RAM works well and the platform as a whole is plenty cheap to allow the RAM expense and still be the value option.

Not saying there have been no issues but reading your post it sounds like it's way worse than it really is - used to read similar statements about AMD graphics drivers back in the PR war days that were just as misleading.

My Crosshair 6 Hero + Ryzen 1700 + TeamGroup T-Force Xtreem TXD416G3600HC18ADC01 hasn't given me any issues either. Numerous others like the people in the following thread did have issues, though: https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?96577-Asus-disappointed-us

 

[adolf hamster]

Can I ask why you'd be going to 32GB, if you have 16GB now (or 8GB as you say) is there some applications you run that require more than 16GB. I ask since RAM is obviously very expensive presently, and you may find that waiting if you don't 'have to have' 32GB may save you a good amount of cash. With regards to the question about cost, then the sensible option is to grab something that offers be performance to £ spent, so IMO that is going to be anything that does 2933-3200MHz with decent timings. I should try running my test rig at 2933 C12/C14, and 3200 C14 to see what the difference is in real terms, but as long as you are hitting 2933MHZ you'll be getting a good balance of performance to effort required and the cost.

wanting to go to 32gb because i have been hitting the 16gb ceiling recently (well, when there's a 16gb cieling to hit), for pretty much the same reason i went with 16gb last time when 8gb was the standard. i do get your point about the cost of ram atm it is quite pricey.

I am sorry but I don't see that as a valid argument at all, it's like saying "Gee, no way am I getting a Core2 Duo after living with a Pentium D" it's just ignoring a great option due to choosing poorly in the past. Performance per £ spent, ultimately puts Ryzen ahead when an over all workload comes in to it, especially if you are looking at the R7 1700, and a reasonably priced motherboard.

it's just the nature of consumerism, hence the point of this thread being to try and convince me otherwise, thing is, i've not yet seen the intel crowd pitching in with "you need to check the bios when you get it", which is kind of putting me off (never like flashing stuff)

Hedging your bets against what exactly? I've used the ASRock Taichi X370 board, which is on par, if not better than the top of the range Asus CH6, and it offers little more than the low end B350 boards did, except like I already said, better tweaking otpions to get the last 5% performance from the platform as a whole. Don't forget the actual chipset does very little with the AM4 platform, so unless you plan on going SLI then when you buy a high end board you are paying for better power phases, for more stability with overclocking, sadly the Ryzen CPU's are limited by the silicone, not the motherboards stability in the majority of cases.

the second bold answers the first, like i say it might not be the most sound economics but it's the option i'm comfortable with and i'm prepared to accept that it'll cost a tad more.

 

[Journey]

wanting to go to 32gb because i have been hitting the 16gb ceiling recently (well, when there's a 16gb cieling to hit), for pretty much the same reason i went with 16gb last time when 8gb was the standard. i do get your point about the cost of ram atm it is quite pricey.

Fair enough, I use 32GB on my day-to-day system. Is your main target games, or do you do other things too?

it's just the nature of consumerism, hence the point of this thread being to try and convince me otherwise, thing is, i've not yet seen the intel crowd pitching in with "you need to check the bios when you get it", which is kind of putting me off (never like flashing stuff)

Well if you go Z370, which is the new Intel platform then I'd find it weird if there were no BIOS updates that while not required, certainly help for stability purposes a lot of the time, adding updated CPU microcode, and better RAM and peripheral compatibility. Flashing anything these days is pretty trivial what with dual BIOS, and flash back recovery etc. the risk is almost zero compared to the good old days. Lucky for me I have an SPI programmer so even if it does go wrong I can still flash the chips.

Oh and that's another thing, I don't subscribe to a crowd, hence why I don't get hung up on choosing something due to a brand, I will buy what offers the best performance for the job required, at the most sensible price point, especially when it comes to tools, which is how I see computers, even if I enjoy the hardware, it's still a tool.

the second bold answers the first, like i say it might not be the most sound economics but it's the option i'm comfortable with and i'm prepared to accept that it'll cost a tad more.

If you are happy that is what counts, and over six years you'll certainly get your monies worth. Your best choices at the high end are those I've mentioned, check the prices though since the Asus boards seem to have some sort massive price discrepancies in certainly places.

 

[adolf hamster]

Fair enough, I use 32GB on my day-to-day system. Is your main target games, or do you do other things too?

games, cad, fea, rendering and general wanton multitasking on occasion

Well if you go Z370, which is the new Intel platform then I'd find it weird if there were no BIOS updates that while not required, certainly help for stability purposes a lot of the time, adding updated CPU microcode, and better RAM and peripheral compatibility. Flashing anything these days is pretty trivial what with dual BIOS, and flash back recovery etc. the risk is almost zero compared to the good old days. Lucky for me I have an SPI programmer so even if it does go wrong I can still flash the chips.

Oh and that's another thing, I don't subscribe to a crowd, hence why I don't get hung up on choosing something due to a brand, I will buy what offers the best performance for the job required, at the most sensible price point, especially when it comes to tools, which is how I see computers, even if I enjoy the hardware, it's still a tool.

true, tis a lot safer, but still scary

If you are happy that is what counts, and over six years you'll certainly get your monies worth. Your best choices at the high end are those I've mentioned, check the prices though since the Asus boards seem to have some sort massive price discrepancies in certainly places.

indeed, it might seem weird dropping ~1k whilst saying i can't afford to change the cpu next year but it's a combo of personal circumstance changes in the near future and of course knowing the gpu is the next on the list to do.

 

[Doobedoo]

true, tis a lot safer, but still scary

Could always opt for a ocuk bundle and let them take care of the fiddly biosy stuff

Something like this? https://www.overclockers.co.uk/8pac...90ghz-overclocked-ryzen-bundle-bu-00g-8p.html

Or this https://www.overclockers.co.uk/gren...overclocked-gaming-bundle-bu-08x-og.html#t=b2

 

[Journey]

indeed, it might seem weird dropping ~1k whilst saying i can't afford to change the cpu next year but it's a combo of personal circumstance changes in the near future and of course knowing the gpu is the next on the list to do.

Nothing weird about it at all, circumstances change and you need to cease the opportunity while you have it, I'd be tempted to save some of the 1K though, if you ended up with a Ryzen system then get a nice R5 1600, overclock it on your quality board, and with the money saved (and put to one side ofc) grab a much newer faster, higher core count CPU, in 12-18 months, and have spent the same, but you might then end up with a 12c/24t CPU (wishful thinking) or a nice 8c/16t that does 4.6+ GHz, but not really missing anything before then since the upgrade you are getting will be huge still, whole system will last a bit longer, and you'll get more performance for the majority of it's life span.

 

[Doobedoo]

Nothing weird about it at all, circumstances change and you need to cease the opportunity while you have it, I'd be tempted to save some of the 1K though, if you ended up with a Ryzen system then get a nice R5 1600, overclock it on your quality board, and with the money saved (and put to one side ofc) grab a much newer faster, higher core count CPU, in 12-18 months, and have spent the same, but you might then end up with a 12c/24t CPU (wishful thinking) or a nice 8c/16t that does 4.6+ GHz, but not really missing anything before then since the upgrade you are getting will be huge still, whole system will last a bit longer, and you'll get more performance for the majority of it's life span.

+1 that would be the better choice unless you need the extra 2 cores now. In that case you'll probably be better off going for a better quality motherboard just to make sure it an handle the extra power down the line.