[Genuine Question] AMD or Intel

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MarvinTheMartian
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[Genuine Question] AMD or Intel

Post by MarvinTheMartian » Sat, 24. Nov 18, 23:31

My current rig is 5 years old: i7-4770k + HD7850 with 32GB DDR3

I've been building my own for ~25 years and always used Intel, however, in the last couple of years AMD seem have have (more than) caught up so I'm interested in hearing from anyone who has made the switch in the last few years and if there are any gotchas or other considerations.

Looking at some benchmarks and reviews a good price/performance level has the Ryzen 2700X well ahead of i9-9900k/i7-9700k particularly when you factor in cooling. Relative price is more important than actual price so I could consider the TR2920X but that would be the price limit and I can also get the 9900k (excl. cooling) for 20% less than 2920X today & tomorrow.

While I don't need the top tier CPU, longevity is important, I don't expect to replace/upgrade for at least another 3-5 years.

Main uses/considerations are:
  • Virtualbox (1 or 2 smallish Linux guests)
  • Handbrake
  • Productivity e.g. Large MS Excel calcs & MS Project
  • Gaming e.g. X4 so single/quad performance is important
  • TPM would be nice but I don't expect that's available on consumer boards/CPU
  • Not always on so power consumption not a big concern
  • Noise level (air cooling only) is a factor
  • No overclocking except any auto option on the mobo
I like to have plenty of RAM headroom, quad channel sounds good but not sure I'd ever benefit from it. Nvidia will probably be GPU of choice, got badly burned with Radeon a few years ago and not forgiven that yet, the HD7850 was effectively free and replaced a struggling GTX570. Already have an NVMe SSD for the OS.

Cheers.
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red assassin
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Re: [Genuine Question] AMD or Intel

Post by red assassin » Sat, 24. Nov 18, 23:54

I just switched from Intel to AMD. My previous system had an i5 3350p (and all my previous systems were Intel as well), and I bought a Ryzen 5 2600 a couple of months ago, so I'm a step down the performance ladder from you. I hadn't found my previous one was cripplingly slow or anything, but I wanted a RAM upgrade and it wasn't practical to add more to my old system, so I did a motherboard/CPU/RAM switch.

Likewise I found that Intel just doesn't touch the second generation Ryzens by any reasonable price:performance metric. With the first Ryzens I'm not sure which way I'd have gone - higher per-thread performance on the Intel ones vs more threads on Ryzen - but with the current ones, the single threaded performance is close enough and the extra cores make a big difference.

YMMV, etc, but I'm very happy with it so far. One word of warning: they seem to be super picky about RAM support - I had a bunch of trouble, and I found quite a few people on the internet with similar issues. Make sure the RAM you buy is explicitly on the supported list for your motherboard (same model line but a slightly different clock speed doesn't seem to be reliably safe, for example).
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Re: [Genuine Question] AMD or Intel

Post by MarvinTheMartian » Sun, 25. Nov 18, 00:21

red assassin wrote:
Sat, 24. Nov 18, 23:54
One word of warning: they seem to be super picky about RAM support - I had a bunch of trouble, and I found quite a few people on the internet with similar issues. Make sure the RAM you buy is explicitly on the supported list for your motherboard (same model line but a slightly different clock speed doesn't seem to be reliably safe, for example).
Priceless info, thank you. I've always struggled to find available DRR at local retailers matching mobo support lists so I might even start from this angle.

It's tricky to know whether to go to the next rung down, performance today is not as important as relative performance in 3 years time, I'd rather not have to upgrade. But if I'm honest with myself, apart from gaming, even the old 4770k is adequate for 80% of my needs so in the realm of wanting to upgrade as it's been a while and it will go into upgrading the HTPC.
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Re: [Genuine Question] AMD or Intel

Post by Antilogic » Sun, 25. Nov 18, 00:52

You're gaming, so Intel. Unless you really need the money saving in the budget, then AMD. I would strongly recommend a cheap pre-built watercooler (such as https://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsair-CW-906 ... 54Y2Q?th=1) even if you're not overclocking.

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Re: [Genuine Question] AMD or Intel

Post by MarvinTheMartian » Sun, 25. Nov 18, 04:32

Just noticed the TR doesn't come with a thermal solution which makes the i9 attractive with the Black Friday pricing.

So really down to single/quad thread performance versus having an extra NZ$357 (+ cooler cost) towards a GPU

While I resent paying such a high premium for single core performance this isn't going to be an easy decision.
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Re: [Genuine Question] AMD or Intel

Post by eladan » Sun, 25. Nov 18, 05:03

Antilogic wrote:
Sun, 25. Nov 18, 00:52
You're gaming, so Intel. Unless you really need the money saving in the budget, then AMD.
It does depend on the games you're playing, but yeah, this. Certainly so with the X series, which tend to hammer the CPU more than most games. Unfortunately, while many modern games now use some multithreading (including X4,) single thread performance is still the king. Intel chips still have the edge over AMD in that.

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Re: [Genuine Question] AMD or Intel

Post by pjknibbs » Sun, 25. Nov 18, 05:53

eladan wrote:
Sun, 25. Nov 18, 05:03
It does depend on the games you're playing, but yeah, this. Certainly so with the X series, which tend to hammer the CPU more than most games. Unfortunately, while many modern games now use some multithreading (including X4,) single thread performance is still the king. Intel chips still have the edge over AMD in that.
It dioes also depend on (a) is gaming the *primary* purpose of the platform and (b) what else are you doing at the same time? OP mentions having a couple of Linux guest VMs, for instance, and if those are running at the same time as the games are, then the extra core count of Ryzen would be an advantage. As for the primary purpose thing, the OP lists a whole bunch of things *other* than gaming that they do with their PC, most of which will be faster with Ryzen--so (IMHO) it would be worth sacrificing a few percent of game performance (which is all the single-thread performance difference is between Intel and AMD these days, it's not like a couple of years ago) to get much greater gains in the other stuff you use the machine for.

I switched from Intel to AMD years ago for cost reasons--don't have much money to spare and I'm still running an Athlon 860K because it was the cheapest CPU announcing itself as a 4-core I could get (the low-end Pentiums with hyper-threading didn't exist at the time). When I upgrade next year, almost certainly going with Ryzen.

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Re: [Genuine Question] AMD or Intel

Post by eladan » Sun, 25. Nov 18, 08:32

pjknibbs wrote:
Sun, 25. Nov 18, 05:53
It dioes also depend on (a) is gaming the *primary* purpose of the platform and (b) what else are you doing at the same time?
Well, the question is being asked here... ;) (Certain assumptions will tend to be made, depending on where you ask a question.) But I concede your point. Intel's dropped the ball fairly badly (again) recently, letting AMD catch up again, which can only be good for all of us.

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Re: [Genuine Question] AMD or Intel

Post by Terre » Sun, 25. Nov 18, 10:32

Currently running a Ryzen 2600X and nothing I've run on it has made it blink, yet.
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Re: [Genuine Question] AMD or Intel

Post by Chips » Sun, 25. Nov 18, 14:32

People say Intel is king for gaming, but are you implying that if you have an AMD chip it's a noticeable impact on the game performance?
When I eventually upgrade, already got Ryzen down - it's so much cheaper and I'm always a budget performance person when it comes to the PC.
But i'm certainly not expecting that to mean my games are choppy and/or poorer than if i'd invested into the intel.

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Re: [Genuine Question] AMD or Intel

Post by red assassin » Sun, 25. Nov 18, 16:03

Chips wrote:
Sun, 25. Nov 18, 14:32
People say Intel is king for gaming, but are you implying that if you have an AMD chip it's a noticeable impact on the game performance?
When I eventually upgrade, already got Ryzen down - it's so much cheaper and I'm always a budget performance person when it comes to the PC.
But i'm certainly not expecting that to mean my games are choppy and/or poorer than if i'd invested into the intel.
Yeah, there isn't that much in it even for performance processors - https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/A ... 3958vs4030 The 2700X OP is considering is maybe 15% slower per thread than a 9700K that costs 30% more, it's not like your games are going to be unplayable even if they don't thread well. And serious multithreading is becoming more common in CPU-hungry games.

At the price point I went for (a 2600 for £150), it's hard to find an Intel processor that's measurably faster single-threaded, and certainly not with more than 4 cores and no hyperthreading (vs the Ryzen with 6 cores/12 threads).
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Re: [Genuine Question] AMD or Intel

Post by MarvinTheMartian » Mon, 26. Nov 18, 08:39

Cheers for the balanced replies peeps.

I was tempted by the i9 badge but priced one up on an entry level z390 board with a relatively cheap CM Hyper 212X air cooler (same as I have on the 4770k which works a treat) and even then it made my eyes water. The biggest issue is the cost of GPU on top, I was hoping that I could get my hands on a 1070ti or bottom-end (if there is such a thing) 1080 at a discount now that the RTXs have come out but there simply are none left in stock, just a few 1080s at the same price as a 2070.

Trying not to get too influenced by the Intel edge when it comes to single core performance and even quad for things like handbrake as those really are occasional cases and a Ryzen will be streets ahead of what I have now. Virtualisation support is important but even that isn't full time, just a LAMP server for web development which I'm not even doing much of any more. The (depressing?) truth is that the 4770k is adequate for 98% of my needs and it's only gaming (X4 specifically) that warrants any kind of upgrade, perhaps just a RTX2070 is enough - but I'll price up a Ryzen 2700X, perhaps it's time I took the plunge.

All the same, can't be unhappy with Intel that a 5 year old processor is still going strong without issues. If this was a personal purchase and not a depreciable and goods-tax reclaimable business asset then I doubt I'd even consider it yet. X4 is really the only game I have that needs something better than I have now but it's been a long time since I got that X Universe buzz and strangely prepared to sink this kind of money to get that fix again :o
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Re: [Genuine Question] AMD or Intel

Post by OmegaKnight » Tue, 4. Dec 18, 00:57

MarvinTheMartian wrote:
Sat, 24. Nov 18, 23:31
Main uses/considerations are:
  • TPM would be nice but I don't expect that's available on consumer boards/CPU
While not normally something you'll find built in on gaming motherboards,
there is a TPM header on most current motherboards including the cheap ones for both AMD and Intel chip sets.
It's usually along the bottom edge next to the USB headers.

So you could get an add in card like this

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Re: [Genuine Question] AMD or Intel

Post by MarvinTheMartian » Sun, 9. Dec 18, 08:44

I have deferred the decision.

The price of a new system has me scratching my head a bit, it's my own fault for wanting 2nd tier stuff for the (perceived) longevity of the solution, that is, the thinking that I can put off upgrading next time for longer by paying more upfront. I feel somewhat justified in this approach given the 4770k I have today has served me well for 5 years and may well do so for a bit longer.

I have managed to source two unused Gigabyte G1 GTX1070s for the price of the cheapest RTX2070 I can find and have them in SLI running very smooth in X4, there's some tearing when inside stations but the monitor is also getting on a bit and it was not designed for gaming. The CPU seems to be holding up well although I suspect as the universe and my empire expand it might hit a ceiling at some point.

So... happy I can play X4 (when I have the time) at high settings and will upgrade CPU when justifiable which will stagger the cost instead of being staggered by the cost!

EDIT: Turns out X4 doesn't use SLI that I can see (putting the SLI indicator on) so just the improvement with the GTX1070. It is working with other games though and makes a massive difference!
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