Sherdog PC Build/Buy Thread, v6: My Power Supply Burned Down My House

I'd still get an Intel CPU. 9700k doesn't need hyperthreading. It's 8 physical Intel cores @ 4+ ghz. Games like physical cores more than hyperthreads.

Talking less than $80 more with a good cooler than the 3700x. Worth it.

Per core performance is still the main factor for CPU performance in games.

It's why this gen of consoles are so underpowered on the CPU side despite having 8 cores/16 threads you simply can't do much with sub 2ghz clock speed and low IPC of the weak AMD cores they used.
Physical cores are more important than multi-threading to game performance, but you've abandoned future-proofing as part of your argument. Past i7's have proven more resilient in Game Debate tracked spec requirement minimums over i5's from the same generation thanks to this. Furthermore, if you are going to argue from a practical point of view, 8 cores (vs. 6 cores) isn't the practical argument.

BTW, you brought up streamers earlier. They all use two PCs. One for gaming, one for streaming. If one wants to game and stream on a single PC these AMD processors will scorch their Intel counterparts thanks to that hyperthreading.

I'll do my best to steelman the 9700K below.
relative-performance-games-1920-1080.png
relative-performance-games-2560-1440.png


R5-3600

R7-3700X

i7-9700K
Evaluate the value curve, here. Let's take 1080p since that is still currently the most popular resolution, and treat the benchmark summaries like integer scores using the stock performance. Divide the score by the cost. Furthermore, to be even nicer to Intel, since value discrepancies diminish with the cost of the total build, I'll compare the values with the CPPC I did above today by creating the identical build on CPPC for an i7-9700K (3600=$1090; 3700X= $1210; 9700KF= $1380) .

VALUE SCORE

Discrete Market

5.56 pts = R5-3600
3.03 pts = R7-3700X
2.83 pts = i7-9700K

Microcenter

6.67 pts = R5-3600
3.56 pts = R7-3700X
3.71 pts = i7-9700K

CPPC

0.92 pts = R5-3600
0.85 pts = R7-3700X
0.78 pts = i7-9700K
 
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Physical cores are more important than multi-threading to game performance, but you've abandoned future-proofing as part of your argument. Past i7's have proven more resilient in Game Debate tracked spec requirement minimums over i5's from the same generation thanks to this. Furthermore, if you are going to argue from a practical point of view, 8 cores (vs. 6 cores) isn't the practical argument.

BTW, you brought up streamers earlier. They all use two PCs. One for gaming, one for streaming. If one wants to game and stream on a single PC these AMD processors will scorch their Intel counterparts thanks to that hyperthreading.

I'll do my best to steelman the 9700K below.
relative-performance-games-1920-1080.png
relative-performance-games-2560-1440.png


R5-3600

R7-3700X

i7-9700K
Evaluate the value curve, here. Let's take 1080p since that is still currently the most popular resolution, and treat the benchmark summaries like integer scores using the stock performance. Divide the score by the cost. Furthermore, to be even nicer to Intel, since value discrepancies diminish with the cost of the total build, I'll compare the values with the CPPC I did above today by creating the identical build on CPPC for an i7-9700K (3600=$1090; 3700X= $1210; 9700KF= $1380) .

VALUE SCORE

Discrete Market

5.56 pts = R5-3600
3.03 pts = R7-3700X
2.83 pts = i7-9700K

Microcenter

6.67 pts = R5-3600
3.56 pts = R7-3700X
3.71 pts = i7-9700K

CPPC

0.92 pts = R5-3600
0.85 pts = R7-3700X
0.78 pts = i7-9700K

All that being said I'd still get an Intel CPU. I don't care about value when the difference is less than $100. The graphs show Intel CPU's run games faster.

Pro streamers never use one PC to do everything. It's safer and more stable to stream off a seperate PC regardless of how much power you have. There are a multitude of reasons why.
 
All that being said I'd still get an Intel CPU. I don't care about value when the difference is less than $100. The graphs show Intel CPU's run games faster.
Barely, for much more money, and with a massive sacrifice to overall horsepower at much higher temperatures. There is also a steep decline in that advantage, respectively, as one's gaming resolution increases. Coupled with the fact X570 motherboards will certainly support future AMD CPUs for potential upgrades, boast a PCIe 4.0 slot, and at the entry level include a higher number of ports and features on the latest standards, the AMD CPUs enjoy far superior "future proofing".

That's one of the points you originally raised in Intel's favor, but you were wrong. Now you suddenly don't care about future proofing.
Pro streamers never use one PC to do everything. It's safer and more stable to stream off a seperate PC regardless of how much power you have.
Is there an echo in here?

He isn't buying two PCs, so if he wants to stream, he definitely wants to go with AMD. Microcenter has the R9-3900X in stock.
 
Pro streamers never use one PC to do everything.

You misrepresenting the income Pro streamers make. Only looking at the top end streamers thinking other streamers have that sort of revenue stream.

One streamer i watch every morning(Deadlyslob) averages between 1K to 1.5K viewers. Pc he bought has a 3900X in it. As a streamer who uses the same Pc to game and stream the 3900X is a better performance option over a i9-9900K.
 
Barely, for much more money, and with a massive sacrifice to overall horsepower at much higher temperatures.

Less than $100 is not "much more money" it's barely anything in the big picture of building a PC. I don't even want to save that little bit of money if it means for the next 5 years anytime a game microstutters or bogs down on the CPU side and I'm thinking man I should have just got the Intel CPU because this AMD is struggling to run the latest battle royale at stable 144+ hz.

Massive sacrifice to overall horsepower? This guy is building a gaming PC right? All that theoretical power can't be used by games or most other software. AMD doing what AMD has always done best building CPU's that bulldoze benchmarks. All that power... but Intel still beats them in gaming.

9700k with a $40 cooler runs cooler than 3700x.
 
Less than $100 is not "much more money" it's barely anything in the big picture of building a PC. I don't even want to save that little bit of money if it means for the next 5 years anytime a game microstutters or bogs down on the CPU side and I'm thinking man I should have just got the Intel CPU because this AMD is struggling to run the latest battle royale at stable 144+ hz.

Massive sacrifice to overall horsepower? This guy is building a gaming PC right? All that theoretical power can't be used by games or most other software. AMD doing what AMD has always done best building CPU's that bulldoze benchmarks. All that power... but Intel still beats them in gaming.

9700k with a $40 cooler runs cooler than 3700x.
This was commentary on the nature of future proofing: a concept you originally brought up (wrongly) in defense of Intel.

It can be used for aforementioned streaming. Gaming and streaming at the same time is a massive win for AMD. Meanwhile, there's little benefit to the i7 & i9 Coffee Lake refresh chips in any game while they are running at effectively double the price of the R5-3600. It's a no brainer. The total horsepower will also give the CPU greater longevity of relevance to the highest end of gaming.

With the X570 motherboard he will also be able to buy future AMD CPUs that will be superior to the Intels in gaming, outright, without making any other changes to his system, and sell off his current CPU. This would entail superiority across the board, and once again with a more economic approach to upgrading that is less disruptive.
 
Sounds like the i5 is still the GOAT for gaming. <Moves>
 
This was commentary on the nature of future proofing: a concept you originally brought up (wrongly) in defense of Intel.

It can be used for aforementioned streaming. Gaming and streaming at the same time is a massive win for AMD. Meanwhile, there's little benefit to the i7 & i9 Coffee Lake refresh chips in any game while they are running at effectively double the price of the R5-3600. It's a no brainer. The total horsepower will also give the CPU greater longevity of relevance to the highest end of gaming.

With the X570 motherboard he will also be able to buy future AMD CPUs that will be superior to the Intels in gaming, outright, without making any other changes to his system, and sell off his current CPU. This would entail superiority across the board, and once again with a more economic approach to upgrading that is less disruptive.

Future proof is a way of saying longer lasting whilst maintaining acceptable performance in new games. Nothing is actually future proof. You want to keep going back to that term but it's clear what I mean: the Intel part will last longer before needing an upgrade (historically, since nobody really knows how Ryzen will perform down the road)
 
Future proof is a way of saying longer lasting whilst maintaining acceptable performance in new games. Nothing is actually future proof. You want to keep going back to that term but it's clear what I mean: the Intel part will last longer before needing an upgrade (historically, since nobody really knows how Ryzen will perform down the road)
Except that isn't true for the reason I mentioned earlier. The Ivy League and Haswell i7's have outlasted the i5's from the same generation thanks to hyperthreading. The Haswell refresh generation, in particular, offers insight into this truth. The i7-4770K has outlasted the i5-4690K despite identical frequencies (both stock and turbo) thanks to its hyperthreading and cache advantages; the same the Ryzen 3rd gen enjoys over the Coffee Lake refresh. That's why the Game Debate algorithm weights the i5 an "8", and the i7 a "9", according to its database of minimum/adjusted/recommended CPU specification requirements.

As a CPU ages a boosted frequency helps it endure, but that higher frequency becomes less relevant as other factors for CPU performance increase. This is why you can't just overclock a Sandy Bridge i5 to 5.0 GHz, if you can get it there, and expect it to hold up to game demands the same as a Coffee Lake i5 at that same frequency. The former CPU showed remarkable endurance, but the point I'm driving is that today's Intel CPUs, unlike that one, come with highly aggressive turbo frequencies out of the box. There isn't nearly the same overclocking potential. Thus, as these CPUs age, that turbo boost advantage which is giving Intel the wins in games today will see its positive influence wane.

If this is the concern the R9-3900X is worth the $500 price tag (since we're pretending we don't care about cost).
 
Future proof is a way of saying longer lasting whilst maintaining acceptable performance in new games. Nothing is actually future proof. You want to keep going back to that term but it's clear what I mean: the Intel part will last longer before needing an upgrade (historically, since nobody really knows how Ryzen will perform down the road)

Actually that used to be true but in today's day and age, with 6+ cores becoming the standard, you'll soon see games taking advantage of hyperthreading and multicore use moving away from the current single core dominance. Once this happens (most likely in the next 2 years with AMD being the main console chip manufacturer) we'll sell a massive improvement in gaming for the likes of AMD's current CPU's, Intel I imagine will still retain their dominance when that happens as they know the way the market is heading AMD just happened to beat them there this generation.
 
I'd go with an Intel CPU instead. More future proof.

That being said I still think it makes sense to spend the extra $100-200 on an Intel CPU when it's something that can potentially last you 5+ years.

...dude, what? intel's in the process of becoming obsolete... unless they have some crazyass hail mary that no one's heard of.
 
Actually that used to be true but in today's day and age, with 6+ cores becoming the standard, you'll soon see games taking advantage of hyperthreading and multicore use moving away from the current single core dominance. Once this happens (most likely in the next 2 years with AMD being the main console chip manufacturer) we'll sell a massive improvement in gaming for the likes of AMD's current CPU's, Intel I imagine will still retain their dominance when that happens as they know the way the market is heading AMD just happened to beat them there this generation.

People have been saying this literally since the XB1 and PS4 came out with their 8 core/16 thread AMD CPU's back in 2013.
 
People have been saying this literally since the XB1 and PS4 came out with their 8 core/16 thread AMD CPU's back in 2013.

That's entirely dependent on the engines the games are using. As the game engines advance so to does their use of technology, Game engines often stick around for 5 to 10 years before they move onto newer ones instead of just creating updates of the same engine still dependent upon the architecture of the old engine. Come on mah dude use your noggin.
The Unreal 4 engine has been around since 2005 and is still one of the most commonly used engines.
The CryEngine is one of the most commonly updated engines receiving a new version every 3 - 4 years.
Frostbite 3 (used in Anthem) is from 2013 still back when single core performance was still relevant.

OpenGL used to force a single core to do the heavy lifting, no idea if it still does.
DirectX 12 is far better at handling multicore operations than DirectX 11 and yet most games are still set to DirectX 11 as default or simply don't support DirectX 12. Technology advances quicker than the programs that use it chief.
 
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People have been saying this literally since the XB1 and PS4 came out with their 8 core/16 thread AMD CPU's back in 2013.
Stop. First, the FX chips were not "true" eight core chips. It was a bifurcated design of eight physical cores. Second, the Vishera CPUs trailed their Intel Ivy Bridge counterparts by a gaping margin both in terms of IPC and effective single core performance (-83%) while the Ryzen 3rd gen is neck-and-neck with the Coffee Lake Intels (-5%). Third, don't hate on the FX-8350. It actually outlasted the i5-3470 in terms of relevance, and that was its real counterpart due to the fact it never commanded its MSRP. Fourth, if people were wrong about the core expansion, then why has Intel been forced to make 6-core and 8-core CPUs today in order to compete? You're recommending an 8-core CPU.
BTW, example of the deal rotation I mentioned, @bdreason, is that today the deal is a Free 512GB Intel 660p SSD with the purchase of an HDD (not the $50 AMEX Gift Card). Assuming you planned on buying an additional HDD for storage this is one of the two best deals I've tracked in terms of the resulting total. These are deals in their rotation I've tracked, recently:
  • Daily Deal: Free $50 American Express Gift Card with any build purchase over $1000
  • Daily Deal: Free 512GB Intel 660p m.2 SSD with any HDD purchase
  • Daily Deal: Free 3TB 7200 RPM HDD with any SSD purchase
  • Daily Deal: Free Upgrade to 16GB ADATA D80 3200 MHz RAM (from 16GB Generic)

There's a glitch, so it won't let me take the Seagate 2TB HDD as the Primary Drive for +$2 (vs. their nondescript 2TB HDD), in order to trigger eligibility for the free Intel 512GB SSD box below, but otherwise, this build is identical the one in my quote box:
($1090) CyberpowerPC VR Ready RX 5700 XT Custom Configuration [Free 512GB Intel 660p SSD w/HDD purchase Daily Deal variant]

Comes out $27 cheaper, effectively, with this daily deal (would be $25 cheaper if not for Seagate HDD glitch). Only difference is the 512GB Intel 660p vs. 500GB WD SN500: the latter is slightly better (QLC vs. TLC).

Also know that I took the time to fire off an email to them once. I asked if the Primary Hard Drive was an HDD, such as with a deal like this, but the freebie was an SSD, and if a customer did opt to take Windows in your configuration, to which drive would they install Windows? The customer rep answered that by default they will always install Windows to the fastest drive. Nevertheless, there is a comment box when you make an order, so I don't think it would hurt to make that request specifically if you did do this (i.e. "Please install Windows to Intel 660p SSD).
Oh, holy shit, @bdreason, I almost forgot. Use the SPRING0410 code at checkout if you decide to go with CyberpowerPC instead of Microcenter. That will give you an additional 5% off for subtotals over $1000. That brings the total of the above to $1036.

Too bad you didn't look into this last week. They had dropped the base price on that "VR Ready RX 5700 XT" foundation from $1299 to $1215 (lasted around 5-6 days). The total would have been $956 for this base.
 
Stop. First, the FX chips were not "true" eight core chips. It was a bifurcated design of eight physical cores. Second, the Vishera CPUs trailed their Intel Ivy Bridge counterparts by a gaping margin both in terms of IPC and effective single core performance (-83%) while the Ryzen 3rd gen is neck-and-neck with the Coffee Lake Intels (-5%). Third, don't hate on the FX-8350. It actually outlasted the i5-3470 in terms of relevance, and that was its real counterpart due to the fact it never commanded its MSRP. Fourth, if people were wrong about the core expansion, then why has Intel been forced to make 6-core and 8-core CPUs today in order to compete? You're recommending an 8-core CPU.

Of course core counts are going to increase. Never said they wouldn't.

Still not gonna consider buying an AMD CPU until they beat Intel in IPC.
 
You guys make me feel out of the loop, I thought Linus and JayzTwoCents could teach me everything I needed to know about new pc tech
 
You guys make me feel out of the loop, I thought Linus and JayzTwoCents could teach me everything I needed to know about new pc tech
If you ever want to dive deeper, check out Hardware Unboxed or Gamers Nexus. They do in depth reviews with lots of benchmarks.
Tech Deals is another great one to check out.
 
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