Zen2. Is Intel now the gamers choice & price/perf king?

[StriderX]

I see the Op's point somewhat.

Zen 2 doesnt look like the absolute game changer that some rumours made it out to be. I think we were all quietly hoping the top end $499 part was going to be a 5ghz 16 core chip (come on, you know you were keeping fingers crossed for that ).

Unfortunately AMD have taken things a bit more conservatively and have no doubt "sandbagged" things a bit. I cant see any reason why they couldn't have made the 16 core chip an opening release at the top price point, other than the fact that it would have taken them too far ahead of Intel in price per core/performance.

The 3000 series undoubtedly looks good and the 3900x especially looks like a better buy than anything Intel have at around that price range.

You cant help but think about what could have been though . A ~£500 16 core/32 thread on release would have been quite something. We would then have been talking about 12 core 3700's and 8 core 3500's. That would have really walloped Intel and made anything they have on sale defunct.

Well no... it wouldn't, because the same argument comes around that it's all about SCP and the fact that it's level with Intel more-or-less is irrelevant to them, which to be fair is entirely fine, but if you want extra cores without selling a liver for a 9980 or whatever it's called, then suddenly AMD is massively ahead.

Regardless no amount of discussion will push me back to intel, unless the chips literally exploded anthrax or something.

 

[4K8KW10]

Well independent testing shows no improvements. Must be the placebo effect. Not sure your feeling is evidence for all Ryzen CPUs and APUs.

A couple of months ago I changed from single-channel 8GB to dual-channel 16GB and this might be striking, too.
But is dual-channel memory improving the discrete RX 560X performance? It is so much smoother now, and screen tearing appeared.

 

[Deleted member 209350]

I see the Op's point somewhat.

Zen 2 doesnt look like the absolute game changer that some rumours made it out to be. I think we were all quietly hoping the top end $499 part was going to be a 5ghz 16 core chip (come on, you know you were keeping fingers crossed for that ).

Unfortunately AMD have taken things a bit more conservatively and have no doubt "sandbagged" things a bit. I cant see any reason why they couldn't have made the 16 core chip an opening release at the top price point, other than the fact that it would have taken them too far ahead of Intel in price per core/performance.

The 3000 series undoubtedly looks good and the 3900x especially looks like a better buy than anything Intel have at around that price range.

You cant help but think about what could have been though . A ~£500 16 core/32 thread on release would have been quite something. We would then have been talking about 12 core 3700's and 8 core 3500's. That would have really walloped Intel and made anything they have on sale defunct.

Tbf, this is a good way to build hype and get more people talking. And once more and more people find out about AMD (lets be honest, they're still nowhere near as well known as Intel) then they will come out and break the internet with their far superior chips to intel.

 

[DarrenM343]

I see the Op's point somewhat.

Zen 2 doesnt look like the absolute game changer that some rumours made it out to be. I think we were all quietly hoping the top end $499 part was going to be a 5ghz 16 core chip (come on, you know you were keeping fingers crossed for that ).

Unfortunately AMD have taken things a bit more conservatively and have no doubt "sandbagged" things a bit. I cant see any reason why they couldn't have made the 16 core chip an opening release at the top price point, other than the fact that it would have taken them too far ahead of Intel in price per core/performance.

The 3000 series undoubtedly looks good and the 3900x especially looks like a better buy than anything Intel have at around that price range.

You cant help but think about what could have been though . A ~£500 16 core/32 thread on release would have been quite something. We would then have been talking about 12 core 3700's and 8 core 3500's. That would have really walloped Intel and made anything they have on sale defunct.

I'm not completely clued up on pricing but there's probably more profit in selling two 8 core CPU's than one 16 core using the same chiplet spec so the demand on those would naturally be serviced first? And higher demand too. Also, the best chiplets will likely make it into the top 8 core and forthcoming 16 core CPU at least. They probably don't have the capacity initially to do both. So for those reasons I don't think delaying the 16 core release has anything to do with stepping too far ahead of intel, it's more likely about servicing demand vs manufacturing capacity. But I could be wrong .
You have to ask yourself, as the CEO of AMD, would you want to sell the 16 core that smashes the intel part for less than the cost of a retail 9900K? Double cores, similar IPC for same price? Not a chance .
I think AMD are going to whallop Intel anyway regardless of the higher price point the new CPU's will be sold at (vs what people expected/wanted). A large portion of extra profit goes into future R&D.

 

[aoaaron]

So buying a cpu now, where shall our money go to? 9700k or amd offerings? I was expecting them to blow intel out of the water.

 

[gavinh87]

So buying a cpu now, where shall our money go to? 9700k or amd offerings? I was expecting them to blow intel out of the water.

Wait for reviews

 

[4K8KW10]

So buying a cpu now, where shall our money go to? 9700k or amd offerings? I was expecting them to blow intel out of the water.

AMD offerings. How much money have you got for a CPU?
The rule of the thumb is always look for CPUs with more threads, this will give you much more freedom to do everything you want with your system and not worry that the CPU might happen to be a source for stuttering, etc.

9700K cannot enable HT, if it cannot, then it isn't your choice.

 

[aoaaron]

AMD offerings. How much money have you got for a CPU?
The rule of the thumb is always look for CPUs with more threads, this will give you much more freedom to do everything you want with your system and not worry that the CPU might happen to be a source for stuttering, etc.

9700K cannot enable HT, if it cannot, then it isn't your choice.

Great point on the 9700k. Intel's crippling of the 9700k is going to be telling now. If they'd just completely busted it, I wonder if the AMD offerings would be as attractive?

Say I have a price point of 500 or 700 for a CPU/Mobo/RAM, which AMD bundles would suffice?

 

[4K8KW10]

Great point on the 9700k. Intel's crippling of the 9700k is going to be telling now. If they'd just completely busted it, I wonder if the AMD offerings would be as attractive?

Say I have a price point of 500 or 700 for a CPU/Mobo/RAM, which AMD bundles would suffice?

Well, the lowest specifications that you can get:
Ryzen 7 3700X ($329) + Asus Prime X570-P ($159) + 16GB DDR4-3600 ($150)

 

[Kirby Wurm]

An X470 would be far cheaper and provide the same performance as X570 and feature parity with Intel who don't have PCIe 4. Even if you were to buy more expensive RAM to couple with Ryzen it would then still work out cheaper. You could factor in the cost of a CPU cooler too for an Intel system but then many buyers will already have a capable one to use.

I wouldn't say Intel are the clear cut gamers choice at all.

 

[DragonQ]

Well, the lowest specifications that you can get:
Ryzen 7 3700X ($329) + Asus Prime X570-P ($159) + 16GB DDR4-3600 ($150)

We don't know if it's worth getting cheaper DDR4-3600 yet. AMD reckon DDR4-3600 CL16 is the "sweet spot" but that is far more than $150 for 16 GiB.

 

[~>Dg<~]

seen some good stuff on offer yestersday for 110. so not really. plenty of deals about on ram just keep your eyes peeled.

 

[DragonQ]

seen some good stuff on offer yestersday for 110. so not really. plenty of deals about on ram just keep your eyes peeled.

DDR4-3600 CL16?

 

[Troezar]

Just ask the question "upgrade path?". Total cost of ownership.

 

[Scougar]

So hear me out. This might sound mad what with all the latest buzz and excitement around the Zen2 launch. But doing some fag packet maths.... Intel might actually be the go to system for gamers.

Lets break it down.

by AMD's own slides we saw parity with Intel in gaming. I think we can all agree on that. It's roughly the same. (And thats by AMD's own slides, showing best case for AMD).
so it is favourable to AMD to say that they perform the same in gaming.

Anyway. Lets focus on price then.

9900k can be had for £450.
3800X will likely be £400.

So at this point AMD wins to the tune of £50.

Alas....

AMD requires "premium" memory to hit its best performance (and likely what was shown by AMD in the keynotes, they aren't going to show gaming benchmarks vs 9900k on junk RAM now are they.

So add is decent RAM for Zen 2 for say £150.
Intel will get the same performance with half decent 3000Mhz RAM at £75.

So now we have AMD loosing to Intel to the tune of £25.

But it gets worse. Motherboards.

As we are seeing. X570 boards are going to be expensive. Lets look at a typical gaming mobo choice for many. the ASUS ROG STRIX F Gaming.

On Z390 its around £190
On X570 its going to be £299!! a £109 premium.

So that takes our grand total to £134 MORE for the X570-3800x system than the Z390-9900k system.
Thats with performance (by AMDs own metrics) pretty much identical.

So in all seriousness. Once the hype dust from Zen2 settles.
Is Intel now the best choice for gamers?

You picked all the highend kit you don't need to be a comparable system to the Intel.

 

[IT Troll]

Wait for reviews

Definitely this.

A couple of months ago I changed from single-channel 8GB to dual-channel 16GB and this might be striking, too.
But is dual-channel memory improving the discrete RX 560X performance? It is so much smoother now, and screen tearing appeared.

Could be if it is running out of VRAM and paging to system RAM. The extra bandwidth would help.

9700K cannot enable HT, if it cannot, then it isn't your choice.

HT has no benefit for gaming on a fast 8-core CPU. On slower 4-core CPUs it can however eek out a little extra performance.

 

[Deleted User 456458]

2080 Ti is a videocard designed around the specification of 3.0. Any comparison with it is illegal.

s.

which statutes are they violating?

 

[Grim5]

You picked all the highend kit you don't need to be a comparable system to the Intel.

But it’s true

Ryzen 3000 be fast but upgrading to it be expensive

Definitely this.


Could be if it is running out of VRAM and paging to system RAM. The extra bandwidth would help.


HT has no benefit for gaming on a fast 8-core CPU. On slower 4-core CPUs it can however eek out a little extra performance.

The 2080tiand Titan rtx has 5-7% better 1% low performance with 32gb ram compared to 16gb ram

I haven’t seen anyone produce a convincing theory why this is but this result has been replicated by several review sites

 

[Scougar]

How on Earth is it true? You do NOT need to buy a 5 series board. You do NOT need to buy expensive memory to get good frequencies or even need the good freqs for performance. Memory speed is not a magic bullet. You do not need pcie 4 if you were considering the Intel.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The B550 and A520 motherboards are being released next year,so the existing B450 and X470 motherboards will be fine,unless people think that a 65W TDP Ryzen 5 3600 is going to need a £150+ X570 motherboard!! Also,the OP conveniently forgot the Core i9 9900K lacks PCI-E 4.0 and the AMD X570 supports it,so that means multiple high speed NVME drives that Z390 does not support.

If you don't need high speed NVME drives,then a B450 or X470 motherboard will do the trick.