Radeon VII & GeForce RTX 2080 using Ryzen 7 2700X & Core i7-8700K

[Badelhas]

I'm really wondering what frequency was the 8700k running at. Was it stock or OC'd to something like 4.8 GHz?
I know it's not meant to be a CPU test, but I've been wondering if I should go for a 2700x or pay (noticeably) more for an intel CPU. I have a 1440p 144hz monitor with a GTX 1080 ti so I really wanna push those frames, but it's really hard to find tests that push the 2700x to the max, using 3200+ CL14 memory (which I also have).

This particular test would convince me to go for the much cheaper AMD platform since the margins aren't that big in most games, but if the 8700k is running stock, probably there would be a much more noticable difference if it was OC'd.

If the extra framerates justify the current extra $100+ price difference then go for it. The 2700x has a very decent performance regardless of its lower IPC when compared to the i7 8700k and its multi-threaded performance it's great. If you're still in the face and don't mind waiting, the Ryzen 2 (3000) CPUs are right around the corner.

When, exactly? I'm holding on to my champion i5 2500k overclocked to 4.8ghz, with a 1070 @1440p but I believe it's time to upgrade... I hope Ryzen 2 lives up to the expectations.

 

[Toju Mikie]

I bought a 8700k and feel like I will never buy the 9700k because of VMs, and 9900k yeah... I like my electricity bill low and my room cool.

The 8700K and 9700K have the same TDP. Your electricity bill and room temperature won't be different with either processor.

I believe he was taking about the i9 9900k

 

[Sausagemeat]

So unless you are unlucky enough to pick some of the few random titles that for some reason perform badly on Ryzen (Hitman 2, resident evil) then it doesn’t matter which CPU you have.

Still, I’d pick blue with green over any other combination, then you don’t have to worry about the small chance of a game randomly performing badly and by looking at the tests it seems that you’d get the best performance and overclocking. Also you might be able to get away with cheaper memory on Intel. And finally you won’t have to deal with Radeon 7’s unfortunate loudness problem.

 

[NightAntilli]

gigabyte auros m is my mobo

Yeah... That's likely the reason. XFR/Precision boost will be more limited on that motherboard compared to higher end ones. They don't state which hardware they used here, but there's a high chance they used a board with better VRMs. Check the tier list here;
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-ZwVuH_tinzgpsOdfMvYeCLI5ZbIpnq5fyiWD4NCkkU/edit#gid=0

Not that you should worry about it. The differences are not THAT big.

 

[ThatNeerGUI]

Considering that the 2700x it's currently $100 cheaper than the i7 8700k, the small frame rate difference does not justify the difference in value between. Unless you're an elitist and don't care about the money, the 2700x it's definitely the best bang for your buck and even better if you're also doing productivity work. It's good to see this fierce competition coming from Amd, in the end we the consumer win. Hopefully this continue and more companies keep optimizing their software for the AMD platform.

Depending on where you shop the price difference is only $50 between the 2700X and 8700K. Anyone that lives within driving distance of a Microcenter store will have a much smaller price difference.

The issue with going for a slower CPU with more threads is hoping and wishing game developers actually take advantage of more threads in games in the near future. Its been 2 years since the release of the R7 1800X and still most games perform better with a faster clock speed CPU with less threads than a slower clock speed CPU with more threads. Its the same with Adobe Photoshop and Premiere. In many cases a faster CPU with less threads performs equally well or better than a slower CPU with elss threads.

If we’re going to nitpick then yeah, and still you need to get a heat sink which till puts the price above $50. Micro Center stores are scarce therefore the majority shops on Newegg, Amazon is EBay where the difference it’s still $90+ when you account for the heat sink. Your information about the faster and lower core count it’s is also half way wrong. The most important part when It comes to CPU performance in games it’s the IPC where Intel always have the upper hand and not the core count. In other generations AMD had CPUs which ran at higher clock speeds than Intel, but Intel always had the upper hand because of their better IPC. In the end, there’s no “issue” with going with a slower higher core count CPU, it all comes to the individual budget and needs.

 

[amstech]

"8700K is still king, even over the 9700K for gaming..."I wouldn't go quite that far. There are a number of tech websites out there showing head-to-head comparisons of those two procs on various games, and the 9700k outdoes the 8700k in every game, albeit not by a whole lot. .

I've been watching youtube vidoes comparing them both live & running the same exact content at 5.0GHz, I went back and just looked, so I guess I am not as right as I thought! The 8700K creeps ahead on min frames in Battlefield and has better Average frames in Assassins Creed, but the 9700K does edge it out by just smidgen in 4-5 games, then the rest they just about are even. But overall they are 99% identical in gaming performance, so my bad. When I first looked into this a month or so ago the first 5/7 games I saw showed the 8700K winning, but in a larger sample size the 9700K overall wins by a split hair.

Still I will take the 6/12 over the 8/8.

 

[Someone8MyPosts]

So, in the end, the price to performance ratio is better on the AMD side for both CPU/GPU and considering the more than respectable frame rates of all games for those. I still lean toward AMD/Nvidia myself, but for what I save on CPU, I can easily buy the GPU. Granted, I wouldn't be buying a 1080 ti over a 1660 ti at this point. Again, it comes down to price/performance and frankly who gives a crap past a certain FPS.

 

[ChristopherB]

If we are doing an apples to apples comparison, then anyone who buys an Intel K series processor is probably going to overclock. So they wouldn't want a stock heatsink/fan anyways. Also overclocking would greatly increase the CPUs performance in most games. The 2700X has minimal overclocking headroom without more extreme cooling. My 2400G and 1700X are the same. There isn't much overclocking headroom in either. Overclocking the 2700X isn't that relevant because of the minimal overclocking headroom and minimal gaming performance increase in most games from the 2700X overclocking.

Microcenter stores are not that scarce. At least half the U.S. population is in within an hour drive or public transit ride of their stores. Their locations are in many major cities. Being accessible to 160-170+ million people isn't scarce. Of course prices in every market around the world vary.

My information is not half wrong. I'm talking about current processors, not processors from 6 to 10 years ago. The 2700x vs 8700K or 9700K IPC differences are small depending on what single threaded benchmarks you use. I've seen the 2700x vs 8700K and 9700K benchmarks when all processors were run at the same speed(4.0 GHz) differ by 3% to 6%. Yet the Intel CPUs are faster in games because of their clock speed and would still be faster with the same IPC because of their clock speed.

The price difference between a 2700X and a 9700K over 3 to 5 years of ownership is small. You also have to factor in the fact that the Ryzen CPUs require faster ram to perform optimally, which adds to the cost. Until the very recent RAM price drops, the difference in cost would make the price gap much smaller due to the cost of the 3000+ MHz RAM being much more expensive than 2666 MHz RAM. The comparisons I've seen on Intel CPUs in games at 1080p with 2666 vs 3000 MHz RAM is usually in the range of 3 to 5 FPS. Its less at 1440p and 4K. Basically its insignificant except for the most extreme professional esports players.

Look at the price difference for a high end system with both CPUs and excessive extra cooling for the 8700K(you don't really need a 360mm rad for the 8700K:

2700X system: $2354.09 as of today https://pcpartpicker.com/list/DbnnRJ
9700K system: $2427.17 as of today https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Jd8Ktg

Its about a $73 difference between the two systems. The same price difference would apply to a lower priced system because the only difference in the CPU, cooling, and RAM. You could spend a few extra dollars and upgrade the Intel system to 3000 MHz RAM, but it wouldn't be a huge price difference.

Over 3 years the difference is about $24 per year
Over 5 years the difference is about $15 per year

There is still an issue if you are building the system for gaming. You are giving up performance for a few dollars a year or under $100 difference in total system cost. Most people who are spending $1500 or more for a gaming PC aren't going to avoid a significant upgrade over $73(or less at Microcenter).

 

[AKBrian]

[Snip]

Look at the price difference for a high end system with both CPUs and excessive extra cooling for the 8700K(you don't really need a 360mm rad for the 8700K:

2700X system: $2354.09 as of today https://pcpartpicker.com/list/DbnnRJ
9700K system: $2427.17 as of today https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Jd8Ktg

Its about a $73 difference between the two systems. The same price difference would apply to a lower priced system because the only difference in the CPU, cooling, and RAM. You could spend a few extra dollars and upgrade the Intel system to 3000 MHz RAM, but it wouldn't be a huge price difference.

[Snip snip]

Now I'm no rocket surgeon, but you might need a motherboard to make use of that 9700K.

 

[Christiaaan]

The 8700K and 9700K have the same TDP. Your electricity bill and room temperature won't be different with either processor.

Okay? I wasn't comparing the 8700k and 9700k tdp, it was the 9900k vs 8700k.

 

[pit1209]

If we are doing an apples to apples comparison, then anyone who buys an Intel K series processor is probably going to overclock. So they wouldn't want a stock heatsink/fan anyways. Also overclocking would greatly increase the CPUs performance in most games. The 2700X has minimal overclocking headroom without more extreme cooling. My 2400G and 1700X are the same. There isn't much overclocking headroom in either. Overclocking the 2700X isn't that relevant because of the minimal overclocking headroom and minimal gaming performance increase in most games from the 2700X overclocking.

Microcenter stores are not that scarce. At least half the U.S. population is in within an hour drive or public transit ride of their stores. Their locations are in many major cities. Being accessible to 160-170+ million people isn't scarce. Of course prices in every market around the world vary.

My information is not half wrong. I'm talking about current processors, not processors from 6 to 10 years ago. The 2700x vs 8700K or 9700K IPC differences are small depending on what single threaded benchmarks you use. I've seen the 2700x vs 8700K and 9700K benchmarks when all processors were run at the same speed(4.0 GHz) differ by 3% to 6%. Yet the Intel CPUs are faster in games because of their clock speed and would still be faster with the same IPC because of their clock speed.

The price difference between a 2700X and a 9700K over 3 to 5 years of ownership is small. You also have to factor in the fact that the Ryzen CPUs require faster ram to perform optimally, which adds to the cost. Until the very recent RAM price drops, the difference in cost would make the price gap much smaller due to the cost of the 3000+ MHz RAM being much more expensive than 2666 MHz RAM. The comparisons I've seen on Intel CPUs in games at 1080p with 2666 vs 3000 MHz RAM is usually in the range of 3 to 5 FPS. Its less at 1440p and 4K. Basically its insignificant except for the most extreme professional esports players.

Look at the price difference for a high end system with both CPUs and excessive extra cooling for the 8700K(you don't really need a 360mm rad for the 8700K:

2700X system: $2354.09 as of today https://pcpartpicker.com/list/DbnnRJ
9700K system: $2427.17 as of today https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Jd8Ktg

Its about a $73 difference between the two systems. The same price difference would apply to a lower priced system because the only difference in the CPU, cooling, and RAM. You could spend a few extra dollars and upgrade the Intel system to 3000 MHz RAM, but it wouldn't be a huge price difference.

Over 3 years the difference is about $24 per year
Over 5 years the difference is about $15 per year

There is still an issue if you are building the system for gaming. You are giving up performance for a few dollars a year or under $100 difference in total system cost. Most people who are spending $1500 or more for a gaming PC aren't going to avoid a significant upgrade over $73(or less at Microcenter).

With the Motherboard for the Intel build that it hasn't been taken into account (probably a mistake) that will put the Intel build $200+ above the AMD build and with AMD you will have a path to upgrade without changing anything except your CPU. Personally I don't think of any objective reason to buy Intel and more so if Ryzen 2 delivers.

 

[darkzelda]

The, AMD CPU it is for my next build.

 

[John832]

The only Ryzen worth a darn the $80 R5 1600. Actually it is now $50 with that $30 mobo discount. See:
https://www.microcenter.com/product...-am4-boxed-processor-with-wraith-spire-cooler
Overclocked and it will be par for games compared to a 2700x. Overclocked or NOT the 2700x is not even 2x the performance of the R5 1600 and is in no ways justified for the 3x price delta.

I you are willing to pay to diminishing returns for bragging rights then it make no sense to go with a 2700x that ends up in 2nd place compared to even the 8700k. I wouldn't go past a GTX2060 with a 2700x, anymore and the video card is getting gimped. Doesn't makes sense to spend $500+ and GPU and cheap out the CPU and lose those FPS. Go ahead and insult people about being elitist or whatever, at least they know better than just be mediocre. It makes a heck a lot more sense to go for the top maximum budget bang for the buck with a R5 1600 or go for broke and get bench topping performance with a 9900K or something. See:

https://www.3dmark.com/hall-of-fame-2/timespy+3dmark+score+extreme+preset/version+1.0/1+gpu

You see 9900K and 8700k on the board here, but 2700x doesn't even crack the top 100.

If people are going to pay more for bragging rights they ought to be able to show something that they can brag about. Buying a 2700x just go and say it's mediocre and can't even soundly beat a R5 1600 in games... that is sad.

The only good AMD is the cheap AMD. I am a cheapskate and proud. I am so tempted to get the R5 1600 just to replace the 8 year old i5-2500k.

 

[LogiGaming]

A good showing for the 2700X, its not far behind in the games listed besides 2-3 of them.
That being said the 8700K is faster by several FPS in just about every title, and most are going to run the 8700K at 5.0GHz or higher, and that 300MHz will add to the difference further.
The 8700K is still king, even over the 9700K for gaming, but hard to argue bang for the buck on the 2700X.
Still if building a gaming rig the 8700 and 8700K with a 6/12 are the way to go IMO.

9700k > 8700k. Not only it needs less voltage to reach the same clocks, it clocks higher and 8 real cores is perfect for high refresh gaming. Hyper Threading actually hinders performance in some scenarios, like Battlefield V, where 9700k runs circles even around 9900k.

Games will always look for any thread and use that thread, then they go to the next one. When a game gets a logical thread instead of a physical one, performance has an instant hit (even tho by small margins 10%-15%). If you only feed real cores, performance will be better.

 

[amstech]

Hyper Threading actually hinders performance in some scenarios, like Battlefield V, where 9700k runs circles even around 9900k..

In 8/10 or most cases hyperthreading is great for gaming, going on about 7 years.
This is why a 2/4 matches a 4/4, and why a 4/8 can match an 8/8.
The 6/12 is a better processor then the 8/8, and IMO is more future proof.
I would never upgrade from a 4/8 to an 8/8...waste of money.
But a 4/8 to a 6/12 or 8/16? Now your talking.

In 2-4 years when games demand more threads, the 8700 might pull ahead of the 9700.
It's 2019. An 8/8 is worth $200 to me, and not a penny more. Give me the beefy 6/12.
I own a 4/8 and if I had a 4/4, I would have had to upgrade generations ago.

 

[paul s2]

In the Fornight graphs you dont show the 20% difference as you state below the in the text.
@editor

 

[Tantor]

Very nice article.

It looks like these particular GPU performance differences are strongly affected by the developer choices in software tools and optimizations. How else can one explain the relatively excellent Radeon VII performance in Assassin's creed, Project Cars, etc?

The Radeon VII is an interesting beast that inspires a certain amount of tinkering. I suspect that performance will improve as developers work with it.

By the way, the Radeon VII package with bundled software and free 3-5 day delivery has been readily available on AMD.com since it was introduced. It's available right now, I just checked.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

So basically the Nvidia GPU and Intel Core are better optimized than the AMD GPU or CPU.

And the 2080 is better than all of the AMD GPU.

That was easy...

 

[144hzGamer]

Hyper Threading actually hinders performance in some scenarios, like Battlefield V, where 9700k runs circles even around 9900k..

In 8/10 or most cases hyperthreading is great for gaming, going on about 7 years.
This is why a 2/4 matches a 4/4, and why a 4/8 can match an 8/8.
The 6/12 is a better processor then the 8/8, and IMO is more future proof.
I would never upgrade from a 4/8 to an 8/8...waste of money.
But a 4/8 to a 6/12 or 8/16? Now your talking.

In 2-4 years when games demand more threads, the 8700 might pull ahead of the 9700.
It's 2019. An 8/8 is worth $200 to me, and not a penny more. Give me the beefy 6/12.
I own a 4/8 and if I had a 4/4, I would have had to upgrade generations ago.

You are wrong. You cant compare 8 real cores to 4c/8t. Real cores will work up to 5 times more than logical ones, so he is right. 9700k is better than 8700k and every review shows you that. 8700k is effectively a 6 core CPU. 6 hyper threading threads can never be as strong as 2 real cores because those real cores will do more work and faster.

Battlefield is a great example. With a 5ghz 8700k you get like 160fps-170fps on 64 player maps. With the 8700k you never drop from 200. Same thing happens in blackout. Check the reviews.

I would take a 9700k over a 8700k anyday for gaming.

 

[skline00]

Steve, thank you for the article. I own a 2700x/Radeon VII combo so it was very interesting to see the comparisons.
The Radeon VII is an interesting card.

 

[amstech]

You are wrong. You cant compare 8 real cores to 4c/8t.

You should look at gaming comparisons and charts of 2/4 chips vs 4/4 chips, and 4/8 chips vs 8/8 chips.

9700k is better than 8700k and every review shows you that.

Every review I looked at with them both at 5.0GHz shows them performing just about exactly the same... the 9700K is usually winning but not by much. In many games the 9700K has a better average, but the 8700K has a better minimum/low 1% as its has more brute strength to push at 1440p.

I would take a 9700k over a 8700k anyday for gaming.

Not me.
8/8 will run into limitations before a 6/12.

 

[shakattack]

Intel 8700K will cost about $150 more when you factor in cooling and all else. That changes everything, considering that the 2700X is far more superior in non-gaming applications

 

[LNCPapa]

@amstech @144hzGamer @LogiGaming
Slightly off topic for the thread but for you guys discussing the 8700K vs 9700K at realistic speeds here is a decent video

 

[amstech]

Wow the 8700K is faster then the 9700K in PUBG, Fortnite, CS:GO and Rainbow Six Siege. Didn't know about those 4, thanks for sharing @LNCPapa. Must be because Hyperthreading is useless for gaming! Hahahaha!

 

[total]

It's an obvious GPU bottleneck, why to even test it that way?
Sorry, you obviously put a lot of work in it, but seriously, go for a 2080ti and you will see more of a difference between the CPUs at that resolution and graphics level.

If you're building a gaming only PC then Intel is a better choice, Ryzen is better for non-gaming stuff like rendering (Blender, Corona). Hopefully Zen 2 will change that, but for now it's like that.