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Intel, Still King In Gaming.

Leonidas

Member
Yeah it's sad that certain fanboys can't handle the facts without turning to name calling, deflecting and derailing...
Things could change in 2020, but in 2019 the OP firmly stands, full stop.
 
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xPikYx

Member
Honestly I was waiting for this 3rd gen ryzen but now I don't know what to buy anymore, essentially I;m buying my new cpu only to play games, I don't use the pc for productivity, plus upon review the I7 9700k seems to be the best buyer for gamers (and also got a big overclocking margin), especially because I play @1080p and I.ve seen differences in order of even 20fps per second between the I7 9700k/9900k and Ryzen 3700k/3900k. Plus my concern is if my actual ddr4 module will be compatible with the AMD's cpus, what do you suggest?
if I buy a I7-9700k I miss the pciE 4.0 but I don't have either a PCI gen 4 M.2 ssd and pci EX 4 GPU, if I buy AMD I need to do changes to my custom waterloop cpu block, with an intel cpu only need to swap the cpu, plus I play @1080p and intel seems to give the best performance, I don' use my PC for nothing but play games and watch movies or browsing, for that my current I7 7700k is more than enough, what do you think guys?
 

LordOfChaos

Member
Going forward, that will change though.

I think the weak Jaguar cores of the current gen were really a blessing in disguise for multi-core engines in general and AMD in particular. The single-threaded performance is so piss-poor that studios must utilize many cores to get any reasonable results.

Yep. Games were only tepidly multicore on PC for the 7th gen as they still had one main worker thread with a few side jobs, audio even took a good portion of a core on 360. The 8th gen really improved things as Jaguar had such ass single threaded performance you really had to use them all for modern AAAs.

I hope the 9th gen sees another big improvement to multicore use on PC, given that it should have 16 threads (if they don't disable SMT, which I hope and think they should leave as an option at least, as game engines have largely taken care of SMT jitter already and it's "free" aggregate performance).
 
Intel still wins in gaming, though the lead is increasingly small. That being said, Ryzen 3000 series is amazing in terms of it's value and price-performance, and unless you are specifically chasing 1080p and 144hz refresh the reality is that Intel's real-world gaming advantage is increasingly questionable and growing smaller in relevance in a world where PC gaming is moving towards higher resolutions like 1440p and 4K.

Sad to see games still using extra CPU cores so poorly.
That's just not how games work.

Games require not that many threads, because ultimately you can only throw off more threads on a limited basis. The game has AI threads, rendering threads, physics threads, misc threads like audio and input, but the number of threads will always have a finite limit unlike say x264 which can be threaded almost infinitely because you just split the rendering workload evenly.

Simultaneously, games are very tightly threaded. All threads must process in coordinated fashion, and the slowest thread will hold up the entire pipeline because you can't exactly send the next frame of the scene to the GPU for rendering before the AI is done, the engine is done, the physics are done, etc. Again, unlike say x264, you are highly timing dependent on all threads finishing before you move on to the next frame in the engine.

The reason Intel continues to win now, with AMD largely caught up in IPC, is because Intel still has a better memory controller and they still benefit from their monolithic core design whereas AMD is now on their second-gen Infinity Fabric and (arguably revolutionary) chiplets design. So really, it has nothing to do with "using extra CPU cores so poorly" and everything to do with how games inherently are and also the design paradigm AMD uses vs. the design paradigm Intel uses.

That being said:
The majority of gamers still game at 1080p with settings maxed as far as possible. Intel retains a 5-10% performance advantage in these pure gaming scenarios. Now is that worth it to you?

Let me tell you my answer:
If you have already advanced to 1440p or even 4K resolution gaming like I have, then you are dramatically GPU-bound anyways and Intel's performance lead in 1080p means literally fuck-all compared to the advantage of having 12 cores instead of 8, or 8 cores instead of 6, for things like the previously mentioned x264 where more cores and more threads straight up means more rendering speed. I am seriously considering Ryzen 9 3900X because I would really love to have 12 cores instead of the 6 cores of my current 5820K. That's literally almost a linear halving of my video rendering times in x264 and that's a huge fucking deal, much bigger than the probably almost ZERO frame rate benefit to me from upgrading from a 5820K to a 3900X because I play games in 4K and am almost entirely performance bound by my 1080 Ti at that resolution.
 

JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
BUT MY VALUE. Are we master race or not? When's price come into it?

Winnings winnings lads, it doesn't matter if you win by an inch or a mile :messenger_tears_of_joy:
Value matters when you can spend $329 on a cheaper CPU and put the $150 towards a better video card. If the choices are get a 9900K and a 2070S or get a 3700X and get a 2080S. The 3700X/2080S demolishes.
 

PhoenixTank

Member
Yeah it's sad that certain fanboys can't handle the facts without name calling and derailing the topic...
Things could change in 2020, but in 2019 the OP firmly stands, full stop.
But does it matter in reality?
AMD used to be really rubbish for gaming pre Ryzen. Then it was probably good enough with Ryzen, but wasn't without compromise. Now, from the results I've seen, the gap is small enough that I'm not sure I care beyond the academic nature of it.

BUT MY VALUE. Are we master race or not? When's price come into it?

Winnings winnings lads, it doesn't matter if you win by an inch or a mile :messenger_tears_of_joy:
I love great hardware, but PCMR is a parody. Making better performance more affordable would be something to praise if you're going with the PC vs consoles schtick.
 

nowhat

Member
Games were only tepidly multicore on PC for the 7th gen as they still had one main worker thread with a few side jobs, audio even took a good portion of a core on 360.
Yeah, I found it really fascinating that the Naughty Dog engine (they are Sony's gaming R&D department too) was essentially single-core during the PS3 era, despite all the possibilities for parallelism. Perhaps Cell was just so hard to work with. The GDC talk on porting TLoU to PS4 is an interesting watch if you're into the subject matter at all.
 

nowhat

Member
That's what anyone that actually has brain cells and some sense would conclude.

35532j.jpg
 

Ivellios

Member
still not better in gaming but almost close to intel
what a shitty standard to have as AMD

just wreck intel so they make better stuff.
this is not the way amd.

you fucked up your gpu's and again cpu's

This is not what the majority of the tech media are saying, quite the opposite in fact.
 
Comparing the 9900k to the 3900X - As of right now TODAY, yes Intel does still hold a minor win in gaming and a major loss in productivity.

But for people thinking of buying or upgrading TODAY ( and you use a CPU for 5+ years like most people ) it's hard to recommend Intel, even if all you do is game. If you upgrade your CPU every year disregard the following. I wish I could upgrade my CPU, Mobo, RAM every year but I just can't justify the cost. I'm still running a 3770k.

You can expect a 3900X to have a lot longer legs than a 9900k. Not hard to imagine the 3900x closing the small gaming gap that currently exists and then surpassing the 9900k in many cases over the next few years. That's what's already happened to the 1800x vs 7700k.



Another reason for longer legs is PCIe 4.0. AMD has it, Intel doesn't. We have been hearing about these new ultra fast/secret SSDs the next gen consoles will have. Peel away the smoke and mirrors and what they will be is NVMe SSDs running on PCIe 4.0 rather than 3.0.

In a couple years it's likely we will see console games loading/streaming faster than anything you can manage with your 9900k because it's limited by PCIe 3.0. Sure, there will be SSD's available that will allow PC to match and surpass consoles... but only if your MoBo has PCIe 4.0.

It's the same when it comes to upgrading your GPU. TODAY PCIe 3.0 is no bottleneck for GPUs. But in 2-3 years you can expect to see the latest GPUs being bottlenecked if installed in an "old PCIe3.0 port."

If you are planning on upgrading soon and tend to keep your CPU for 5+ years, don't be fooled by 720p benchmarks... the 3900X will undoubtedly serve you far better over its lifespan than a 9900k will.
 

J4K

Member
How are processor fanboys a thing.

I mean at least in the console space your choice has some stakes. Growing up picking one system over another meant you and your buddies couldn't play online together and your access to exclusives would vary.

But processors? Fuck sake people. Put whatever silicon rock you want in your box and cover it with your preferred RGB lights. It doesn't matter.

*Everyone* should be pleased by AMD's recent success -- even Intel fans -- because it essentially means we're all going to get better performance per dollar going forward regardless of which brand you go with.
 
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KungFucius

King Snowflake
Good luck running a PCIe gen 4 M2 SSD at full speed on that Intel system.

Intel is a shitty company, Too many CPU models and too many chipsets with arbitrarily locked features, they are also a lousy employer and a way too fucking slow at releasing the goddamn Cobalt interconnect chips. I worked on that tech back in 2013-14 at AMAT and have wanted to buy a CPU with it in it since 2016 as that was the last thing I worked on in that industry. I am sick of waiting. Hopefully TSMC will use it in their 5nm chips for my next GPU.

I was always a lame AMD fanboy until I took an awful, and short lived job at Intel, but seriously AMD has sucked for the last 10 years and I could not justify an AMD purchase outside of a cheap APU system I built. The new CPUs and the new Chipset actually excite me compared to the 9500k machine I built last winter. So what if they are not miles ahead? They are reasonably priced and they are not designed by a company that was fined heavily for fucking their competition over with unethical and unfair business practices.
 

SonGoku

Member
I hope the 9th gen sees another big improvement to multicore use on PC, given that it should have 16 threads (if they don't disable SMT, which I hope and think they should leave as an option at least, as game engines have largely taken care of SMT jitter already and it's "free" aggregate performance).
Even if they disable SMT (very unlikely) devs will be forced to use more than 8 threads on PC to double (or triple) the framerate of 30fps console games
 

LordOfChaos

Member
GN approves. 9900K is recommended for gaming PCs over the fastest competing gaming CPU.



Bruh, most of us understand Gaming Jesus just fine, yes it's the absolute fastest if you're only playing a 2019 game.

The thing is that AMD captured most of the value sweet spots today, which most gamers actually buy instead of parts like the 9900K.

And even there, are you
-Only ever gaming? Do you have any projects going in the background on all those cores in a 3900, or do you stream? Then the 3900 pulls ahead
-Worried about future proofing? With 16 thread consoles on the horizon, if you hold onto this system for years we'll hopefully be getting titles that put 12 cores to better use, where currently the execution thread sweet spot is definitely below 8.
-Interested in PCI-E 4, whether that's for GPGPU, GPU future proofing, or higher throughput SSDs? You can only get it on AMD until Ice Lake desktop ships eventually probably well into 2020.
-Do you even care about high framerate gaming, or will you be targetting 4K, in which case that extra tiny bit of CPU gaming performance is limited by the GPU anyways?


We get that the 9900k will post the highest framerates in current games. It's just it's not only a one dimensional analysis that matters.
 
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Leonidas

Member
Honestly I was waiting for this 3rd gen ryzen but now I don't know what to buy anymore, essentially I;m buying my new cpu only to play games, I don't use the pc for productivity, plus upon review the I7 9700k seems to be the best buyer for gamers (and also got a big overclocking margin), especially because I play @1080p and I.ve seen differences in order of even 20fps per second between the I7 9700k/9900k and Ryzen 3700k/3900k. Plus my concern is if my actual ddr4 module will be compatible with the AMD's cpus, what do you suggest?
if I buy a I7-9700k I miss the pciE 4.0 but I don't have either a PCI gen 4 M.2 ssd and pci EX 4 GPU, if I buy AMD I need to do changes to my custom waterloop cpu block, with an intel cpu only need to swap the cpu, plus I play @1080p and intel seems to give the best performance, I don' use my PC for nothing but play games and watch movies or browsing, for that my current I7 7700k is more than enough, what do you think guys?

PCIe 4 isn't worth it right now IMO, increased platform cost, no benefit for gaming, more expensive SSDs and chipset fan required on most boards.
I'd say hold onto the 7700K as long as you can if you are still happy with your current gaming performance. Overclock if you haven't done so already. Once overclocked you'll most likely be ahead of Ryzen 3000 gaming performance.

There is also a chance Intel could make some deals on the 9700K/9900K so you could wait a bit to see if that pans out, if you were looking at upgrading soon...
 
Not bad for a 2015 microarchitecture still on 14nm.
You would still need a brand new everything if you were an Intel fan... have we had any definitive benchmarks from a trustworthy source (I was out in the woods today)... I mean if 10% is an average, it would mean that by example if you were to try around 30 titles in most titles they are equal or the "looser" wins by a small margin, then one of two that for some reason Intel has wide gains.

Or is this about the 1% low? or the plain average?

I'll go look at a few reviews and we shall see what the verdict is, but thanks you spend twice as much for a possible gain of 10% (in one game or across 50?)
 

Leonidas

Member
have we had any definitive benchmarks from a trustworthy source (I was out in the woods today)... I mean if 10% is an average, it would mean that by example if you were to try around 30 titles in most titles they are equal or the "looser" wins by a small margin, then one of two that for some reason Intel has wide gains.

Or is this about the 1% low? or the plain average?

I'll go look at a few reviews and we shall see what the verdict is, but thanks you spend twice as much for a possible gain of 10% (in one game or across 50?)

Yes, I only post trustworthy sources, you'll not see me posting videos from fanboys on YouTube making false claims like I've seen on this forum numerous times before...

GN for example found some games being ~30% faster with 9900K, text review not up yet but timestamped the part where he discusses gaming performance and in some places it's not even close, Intel has a huge lead in instances.

 
I mean we only game here right? This is Neogaf the video game forums not Neogaf the work at home forums!

Joking aside I am curious to see what happens after more tests come out. AMD always seems to be a bit slower when compared to Intel via gaming tests but that is not to say things won't change. Bang for your buck AMD has brought a lot to the table for people that were priced out of the market because top of the line Intel CPU plus top of the line GPU always was a scary number that made ones bank account cry.
 
So it sounds like for someone who wants to stream + game on 1 PC, then the 3900X would be the clear choice over the 9900K. I am also curious on how the 3700X will do in this same scenario. Decisions decisions, 3900X, 3700X, 2700(at $200).
 
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Leonidas

Member
Joking aside I am curious to see what happens after more tests come out. AMD always seems to be a bit slower when compared to Intel via gaming tests but that is not to say things won't change. Bang for your buck AMD has brought a lot to the table for people that were priced out of the market because top of the line Intel CPU plus top of the line GPU always was a scary number that made ones bank account cry.

The quotes in the OP are compiled from the most reliable sources in the industry.
It's an undeniable fact at this point in time.

Sad thing is deranged fanboys will believe whatever their favorite cult influencer tells them to believe.
 
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Agent_4Seven

Tears of Nintendo
If anything, Ryzen 3000 launch will hopefully make Intel drop prices and 9700K/KF and 9900K/KF/KS will be more affordable. I mean, Intel have to do this now especially considering that they wont be launching new high-end 10nm consumer CPUs for desktop PCs till 2021 or maybe even 2022 at least and gaming crown can only help them so much now that AMD has a lot more competative CPUs in terms of performance and pricing.
 
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Does Intel plan on dropping their prices at all?
There were rumors of an Intel 15% price cut for Ryzen 3000 launch. Every reviewer is straight up saying Intel needs to cut prices too. Intel obviously wasn't going to show their hand until Ryzen 3000 has actually launched, now it has so probably Intel will announce their price cuts this week and then we'll see how the value proposition stacks up. Intel doesn't really want a price war with AMD and everyone knows it, so I think any cuts Intel does will be conservative. 15% seems reasonable to me.
 

JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
*Everyone* should be pleased by AMD's recent success -- even Intel fans -- because it essentially means we're all going to get better performance per dollar going forward regardless of which brand you go with.
Not
Does Intel plan on dropping their prices at all?
Intel is not known for price cuts, but an unprecedented 15% cut was announced.
 

Xyphie

Member
I think when they launch Comet Lake (10C/20T) we might see everything move down a tier. So the 10C/20T 10900K replaces the 9900K etc. What really needs to happen is for Intel to be less stingy about disabling HT on lower-end parts.
 
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Silver Wattle

Gold Member
Intel only holds the crown if you do not install the security mitigation patches, which is a risky decision.

If you are buying a desktop CPU, AMD is the smart choice.

I just bought a 9750h+1660ti laptop, I would have went Zen 2 but they ain't in laptops.
 

llien

Member
And to achieve even those 2%, Intel consumes 168W vs 90W on Ryzen 3700x:

111362.png


Something something power hog something.
 
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V2Tommy

Member
Minimum framerate is the only gaming benchmark metric that matters, and Intel wins easily in this round. Who cares about average framerate when the minimum dips to 59fps and stutters? Y'all in denial, AMD lovers.
 

dirthead

Banned
Sad to see games still using extra CPU cores so poorly.

Honestly, for gamers in particular--but for average computer users in general--many core CPUs are basically snake oil. It is DIFFICULT to use a lot of them well. Other than tasks like video encoding and just raw graphics, which is already massively parallelized by GPUs, most shit in a game is dependent on state meaning that the cores need to be kept synchronized, which makes you lose most of the performance of throwing extra cores at it.

Having to write programs for multiple CPU cores is neither desirable nor reliable. There's a reason no one wanted to write Sega Saturn or PS3 games. All it does is introduce a never ending stream of bugs into programs.

Multicore is basically Intel and AMD's pathetic attempt to pretend that CPU technology didn't hit a brick wall a decade ago. Real performance hasn't improved for shit in a long long time. But they can't just admit that and continue to sell CPUs for a grand, so they can just slap on some useless extra cores that aren't doing anything and keep the prices high.

Something major really needs to happen with computers.
 
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xPikYx

Member
PCIe 4 isn't worth it right now IMO, increased platform cost, no benefit for gaming, more expensive SSDs and chipset fan required on most boards.
I'd say hold onto the 7700K as long as you can if you are still happy with your current gaming performance. Overclock if you haven't done so already. Once overclocked you'll most likely be ahead of Ryzen 3000 gaming performance.

There is also a chance Intel could make some deals on the 9700K/9900K so you could wait a bit to see if that pans out, if you were looking at upgrading soon...
Honestly I purchased a I9 9900k Z390 combo, I've been waiting this 3rd gen ryzen proc to see if it was worth, but since gaming is all what I do I9 seems the best choice as long as my RAM and all the rest is perfectly compatible with an intel upgrade, unfortunately my current CPU do not detect the GPU and this is the only reason why I am upgrading otherwise I could have waited. Circumstances given I9 is the best choice (less headaches for the building part too, whilst with a Ryzen I should mount the compatible support for AMD on the cpu block) is 80quid less expensive than the 3900x x570 combo, and performancewise if I am happy with my i7 7700k even more I will with the i9, and also there is much more overclocking margin, I've never been so willing to buy an AMD cpu for the first time but gaming performance really disappointed me and pricewise intel combo is cheaper. On the other hand the i9 won't bottleneck the future upgrade to ampere gpu
 
Yes, I only post trustworthy sources, you'll not see me posting videos from fanboys on YouTube making false claims like I've seen on this forum numerous times before...

GN for example found some games being ~30% faster with 9900K, text review not up yet but timestamped the part where he discusses gaming performance and in some places it's not even close, Intel has a huge lead in instances.
Yup, I like these guys, GN especially.

Note the following points:
- When you go from 300FPS to 270, or even 155 to 125 I don't think it's very relevant, unless you are looking for bragging rights (it does win, and people who wand to cheer up AMD would do exactly what you do now).
- This CPU benefit gets negated as soon as you either up the resolution above 1080p or happen to cheap out just a little bit on the GPU
- You still need to buy an expensive motherboard to overclock Intel's K CPUs
- It's not a clean win if you don't win in the productivity applications as well
- As others have pointed out the Ryzen do all this while consuming less power
- There are many games where the 1% low frame rates on the Ryzen 3900x are higher - still you can argue that both are "high enough"

Winnings winnings lads, it doesn't matter if you win by an inch or a mile :messenger_tears_of_joy:
Tho when you outpace the other while sweating to death, while the other guy came an inch from you but barely broke a sweat (those AMd CPUs use less power and generate less heat)... you may ask yourself what the next run will be like?


NOTE: Oh well, I would have preferred AMd to win all the way, but what made their platform better over all is even more true now, if I was looking for a new system I'd probably go with a 3600 + B450 board and be done with it! the 3900X is a beast in general, and even when it gets outclassed in games it still performs very nicely... you could argue it either way, your mom probably only needs a Ryzen 3 or a core i3 anyway (maybe a pentium with enough RAM to load Facebook in chrome will do the work too).
 

10000

Banned
I don't get why peoples still fanboying and defend intel after all they did in cpu market. I mean after all these CPU overpricing and stagnation caused by them.. It just like to be willingly shit-punched in your face as a consumer
 
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