AMD Ryzen 5 3600 vs. Intel Core i5-9400F: Mainstream Titans Clash

[ruddevil]

As others have mentioned, it seems that the next gen Ryzen will still be offered on AM4. That's the the beauty of the chiplet design - you could could couple the new CPU core chiplets to one I/O die for AM4 an another for a new AM5 socket that would support DDR5....

And even if this is not the case, if you have the right mainboard you could always get a good deal on a 3900x or 3950x when they are EOL in a year, just like you can now for Ryzen 2xxx CPU. Depending on the budget you could go with a 3600 and one of the cheape X570 mainboards and you'd even have PCIe 4 support going forward.

Not to mention that the 3600 can be paired with a B350 with very little decline in performance.

Good point - so you should be able to easily upgrade from a Ryzen 3 1200 (Ryzen 1's entry level option) to a 3600 not having to change anything.

@Steve: Wouldn't that be a nice review ? Upgrading from a low end Ryzen 1 to a low end Ryzen 3 using the same board and memory.

I'd like to see this. I have exactly the setup mentioned, a B350 board + R3 1200 combo, and am looking to upgrade to either the 2600 or the 3600 in a couple of months' time.

 

[Lew Zealand]

I'd like to see this. I have exactly the setup mentioned, a B350 board + R3 1200 combo, and am looking to upgrade to either the 2600 or the 3600 in a couple of months' time.

I have the same as well, B350 + R3 1200. And yes the point of buying that setup was competent performance at the time with multiple options for big performance upgrades later on. When the R5 3600 receives it's first good price break or sale to about $160 or so, I'll buy. Yes, I'll probably be waiting a while until supply catches up with demand.

 

[Lounds]

I have the same as well, B350 + R3 1200. And yes the point of buying that setup was competent performance at the time with multiple options for big performance upgrades later on. When the R5 3600 receives it's first good price break or sale to about $160 or so, I'll buy. Yes, I'll probably be waiting a while until supply catches up with demand.

I have the the R5 1600 which was the most popular Ryzen sold for the 1000 series. Currently overclocked to 3.9Ghz based on Steve's recommendations, as 4Ghz needed too much voltage to get it stable. So would be nice to see stock/overclocked 1600 Vs 3600 as this will be the sweet spot for the majority of PC builders.

 

[Shadowboxer]

I have the same as well, B350 + R3 1200. And yes the point of buying that setup was competent performance at the time with multiple options for big performance upgrades later on. When the R5 3600 receives it's first good price break or sale to about $160 or so, I'll buy. Yes, I'll probably be waiting a while until supply catches up with demand.

Can’t see demand catching supply at this point unless Intel can get something more competitive out. In fact I can only see AMD prices going upwards, if they sell out this quickly at current prices then the execs won’t hesitate to mark them up, why wouldn’t they if they know users will pay?

This is the nature of this industry, the better performing chips are usually in higher demand and price whilst the second place manufacturer cuts prices in an effort to go entice buyers over with good value. We are currently seeing Intel and AMD change places after AMD dropped their 7nm parts so I would expect to see higher prices for AMD parts and more price cuts for Intel.

Also, if your 1200 can hold out just another year there’s a good chance that you’ll see the final iteration of AM4 parts release next year, might be worth waiting for that. Although nothing is confirmed as far as I’m aware, AMD did promise support till 2020 whether they mean they will release new chips for it next year or continue selling this year’s chips through till 2020 I’m not sure. My guess would be a Ryzen 2 refresh launching on AM4 in 2020.

 

[Lounds]

Can’t see demand catching supply at this point unless Intel can get something more competitive out. In fact I can only see AMD prices going upwards, if they sell out this quickly at current prices then the execs won’t hesitate to mark them up, why wouldn’t they if they know users will pay?

This is the nature of this industry, the better performing chips are usually in higher demand and price whilst the second place manufacturer cuts prices in an effort to go entice buyers over with good value. We are currently seeing Intel and AMD change places after AMD dropped their 7nm parts so I would expect to see higher prices for AMD parts and more price cuts for Intel.

Also, if your 1200 can hold out just another year there’s a good chance that you’ll see the final iteration of AM4 parts release next year, might be worth waiting for that. Although nothing is confirmed as far as I’m aware, AMD did promise support till 2020 whether they mean they will release new chips for it next year or continue selling this year’s chips through till 2020 I’m not sure. My guess would be a Ryzen 2 refresh launching on AM4 in 2020.

I can't see intel trading places with AMD on pricing. Also AMD has more leg room in margins on silicon pricing due to the Chiplet design. Intel will just stick to what they know and make a more complex but faster design which will mean they'll have to charge more to the CPUs. Look at Nvidia their GPU's are more than double the size of silicon compared to AMD, hence the price can't really drop below what it's at for the RTX cards.

 

[Ravalo]

Outside synthetic benchmarks, where will the leap in performance be? Heavy workloads employing lots of RAM and needing fast storage space? Because gaming will probably see only "meh" level improvements. PCIe 3.0 is enough for any current single GPU system (and multi-GPU has never really been a thing for gamers), so PCIe 4.0 will be overkill for the vast majority for several years still without some miraculous leap in GPU performance. Sure, PCIe SSD drives will work faster, but loads of people still store their game data on HDDs, so I doubt shorter load times are a big priority. What of DDR5, then? Gaming performance scaling with DDR4 leads me to believe that the DDR5 will not be a major improvement and the CPU's IPC and clock speed will still be the major factors contributing to FPS figures - unless, of course, that DDR5 is paired with an APU, but how many are biting their nails in anticipation of better APU performance?

Uhhhh, lowspecgamer and his fans?