Ryzen 7 5800X vs. Core i7-11700K vs. Ryzen 7 2700X: 30 Game Benchmark

[Steve]

Here's an updated look at the gaming performance of the Ryzen 7 2700X and comparing it with more modern 8-core, 16-thread CPUs such as the Ryzen 7 5800X and Intel Core i7-11700K. Is it worth the upgrade?

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/review/2287-ryzen-5800x-vs-core-11700k-vs-ryzen-2700x/

 

[R00sT3R]

Whenever I get that horrible itch to think about upgrading my 9900K, articles like this soon dispel any such foolish notions.

..I reckon it will be a good enough CPU for another two generations of GPU (Nvidia 40xx & 50xx) before it will be a serious bottleneck and worth the expense of building a new rig.

 

[elementalSG]

Although I don’t have a 2700X, I really appreciate when Techspot does these comparisons with older CPUs vs the newest ones to help us figure out whether or not it is time to upgrade!

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Although I don’t have a 2700X, I really appreciate when Techspot does these comparisons with older CPUs vs the newest ones to help us figure out whether or not it is time to upgrade!

People shouldn't need a site to review hardware to know if what I'm using is in need of an upgrade. You should be able to tell all by yourself if your system is performing to your own personal needs. You shouldn't need a review to say, "Hey! Upgrade your system because our review shows you information."

I know when I need to upgrade - when my system isn't performing to my personal needs. A good example is when I ran GTX 570s in SLI on my old Phenom II x4 940 (oc'ed to 3.71) for about a year and a half. I knew the CPU was a bottleneck, but I couldn't afford to upgrade my CPU/MB at the time. I eventually upgraded my CPU/MB/RAM and moved to an i5-4670k and even just running it at stock speed breathed new life into my GPUs. I almost saw double the performance in a lot of games I was playing with the same GTX 570s in SLI.

You should be able to tell when a certain aspect of your system is holding back your performance and when you should upgrade it. You shouldn't need some review to tell you.

The reviews are fun to look at it and I find them interesting to see how older hardware competes with more recent, but that's all they are to me.

 

[Irata]

Thanks for this article. This is really interesting and most appreciated.

My first thought looking at the 1080p results as a 2700X owner was ‚wow, upgrading to a 5800X or 5900X will really improve performance‘.

Looking a bit further, considering the fact that the system has a 5500XT that‘s hooked up to two 1080p 60hz monitors, I don‘t really think upgrading the CPU would do much for me.

Might be worth considering when I upgrade the primary monitor to a high refresh 1440p screen and the GPU to a 6700XT class model, but I‘m not sure how good worthwhile the performance increase would be, so the CPU upgrade will most likely happen once Ryzen 5000 starts getting near EOL prices.

Speaking of price - I bought my 2700X at EOL prices - € 150 including taxes, shipping, Borderlands 3 (wanted to buy the game anyhow) and the HSF which I‘m using, so I am still very happy with the purchase.

It might not be the best at single tasking gaming, but it does a great job gaming plus multi tasking and as the rest of my system is the limiting factor wrt fps, I feel that it offered the best value for money at that moment for my use case.

Still, good to know that upgrading to an eight or ten core Ryzen 5000 series will be a noticeable upgrade if the rest of the system is also upgraded.

 

[Jon Tseng]

Thanks

I'm never quite sure about the mobo/platform upgrade argument. I generally upgrade my GPU 2-3x over the lifetime of a CPU platform, so by the time I upgrade CPU even the drop-in replacements are so antiquated I rip-and-replace the lot. Don't know if other ppl (e.g. w productivity demands) think differently but from a gaming perspective the rise in CPU requirements just isn't that steep..

 

[Lionvibez]

Great review thank you.

People shouldn't need a site to review hardware to know if what I'm using is in need of an upgrade. You should be able to tell all by yourself if your system is performing to your own personal needs. You shouldn't need a review to say, "Hey! Upgrade your system because our review shows you information."

I know when I need to upgrade - when my system isn't performing to my personal needs. A good example is when I ran GTX 570s in SLI on my old Phenom II x4 940 (oc'ed to 3.71) for about a year and a half. I knew the CPU was a bottleneck, but I couldn't afford to upgrade my CPU/MB at the time. I eventually upgraded my CPU/MB/RAM and moved to an i5-4670k and even just running it at stock speed breathed new life into my GPUs. I almost saw double the performance in a lot of games I was playing with the same GTX 570s in SLI.

You should be able to tell when a certain aspect of your system is holding back your performance and when you should upgrade it. You shouldn't need some review to tell you.

The reviews are fun to look at it and I find them interesting to see how older hardware competes with more recent, but that's all they are to me.

Totally agreed with you but for people like us on this site that build and maintain our own machines we know this. These articles are great for the general public and the less tech savy. There is way more of them than us.

 

[Nobina]

So will 1440p gaming be cheaper than 1080p since you can mostly ignore CPU and just focus on GPU therefore save money?

 

[Gimp65]

People shouldn't need a site to review hardware to know if what I'm using is in need of an upgrade. You should be able to tell all by yourself if your system is performing to your own personal needs. You shouldn't need a review to say, "Hey! Upgrade your system because our review shows you information."

I know when I need to upgrade - when my system isn't performing to my personal needs. A good example is when I ran GTX 570s in SLI on my old Phenom II x4 940 (oc'ed to 3.71) for about a year and a half. I knew the CPU was a bottleneck, but I couldn't afford to upgrade my CPU/MB at the time. I eventually upgraded my CPU/MB/RAM and moved to an i5-4670k and even just running it at stock speed breathed new life into my GPUs. I almost saw double the performance in a lot of games I was playing with the same GTX 570s in SLI.

You should be able to tell when a certain aspect of your system is holding back your performance and when you should upgrade it. You shouldn't need some review to tell you.

The reviews are fun to look at it and I find them interesting to see how older hardware competes with more recent, but that's all they are to me.

Sometimes you dont know what ur missing out on, an article like this could make one aware of it.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Sometimes you dont know what ur missing out on, an article like this could make one aware of it.

If your system is performing at a level that's good for you, then what exactly are you missing out on?
Spending unnecessary money on something?
Wishing you could get something better and making yourself sad because you can't afford to upgrade?

 

[MaxSmarties]

TL;DR, AMD cpu before Zen3 weren't exactly good at gaming...

 

[Lew Zealand]

TL;DR, AMD cpu before Zen3 weren't exactly good at gaming...

Yes they were, both Zen 2 and frequently Zen+ and Zen were good at gaming.

They weren't great at 1080p gaming with a 6900XT. Which didn't exist yet. And if you're using a 6900XT at 1080p, you're doing it wrong.

They were OK at gaming with a 2080Ti at 1080p (also a waste) and only slightly behind at 1440p, but if you're spending $1200 on a GPU, just get the best gaming CPU which was Intel at the time. Once you get to a relatively normal higher end setup like a 2070 Super at 1440p, the 2600x or 3800x were only a few % slower than Intel, which would not be noticeable in-game.

That is *good* in gaming.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Yes they were, both Zen 2 and frequently Zen+ and Zen were good at gaming.

They weren't great at 1080p gaming with a 6900XT. Which didn't exist yet. And if you're using a 6900XT at 1080p, you're doing it wrong.

They were OK at gaming with a 2080Ti at 1080p (also a waste) and only slightly behind at 1440p, but if you're spending $1200 on a GPU, just get the best gaming CPU which was Intel at the time. Once you get to a relatively normal higher end setup like a 2070 Super at 1440p, the 2600x or 3800x were only a few % slower than Intel, which would not be noticeable in-game.

That is *good* in gaming.

A few percent? I mean sure, if you had your blinders on from the 2005 AMD press event.

The rest of the world saw zen + being able to play games but being comparable to slower i5s at best, and we all knew they'd age worse then the competition due to their slow core latency. Original zen doest even begin to compare to even the slowest of 6 core I series chips. Zen 2 was good enough for many, but still recognized as slower then intel, even on 1080p systems with a 2080 (and no, a 2080ti was not a waste at 1080p if one was pushing 120 or 144hz refresh rates).

 

[Lew Zealand]

A few percent? I mean sure, if you had your blinders on from the 2005 AMD press event.

The rest of the world saw zen + being able to play games but being comparable to slower i5s at best, and we all knew they'd age worse then the competition due to their slow core latency. Original zen doest even begin to compare to even the slowest of 6 core I series chips. Zen 2 was good enough for many, but still recognized as slower then intel, even on 1080p systems with a 2080 (and no, a 2080ti was not a waste at 1080p if one was pushing 120 or 144hz refresh rates).

You're splitting hairs to defend Intel, why?

My original statement still is valid: both Zen 2 and frequently Zen+ and Zen were good at gaming.

They didn't have to be the best and they did force Intel into releasing 6-core CPUs at reasonable prices. Had Intel released 6-core CPUs before AMD, their prices would have been much higher. That would have been corrected after AMD released Zen, but the Intel fans would already have been squeezed for their money.

Because Zen (and later Zen + and Zen 2) was good at gaming. That's the point. If they weren't then Intel would never have needed to be concerned. But they were, and responded accordingly.

 

[Bulllee]

I think I'm slowing down faster than my 2700X and the old 1070 on 4K.

 

[Irata]

If your system is performing at a level that's good for you, then what exactly are you missing out on?
Spending unnecessary money on something?
Wishing you could get something better and making yourself sad because you can't afford to upgrade?

Thing is you often get used to a situation and do not realize how much better things can be.

For me the decision to upgrade my old (Trinity or Kaveri APU) desktop came when I first used my Matebook with a Ryzen 2500U. The desktop had twice as much RAM, an RX 550 4 GB graphics card but still the laptop was so much smoother to use. With the desktop I had gotten used to single tasking but the fact that a reasonably cheap laptop was so much more enjoyable to use was eye opening.

It‘s the same with cheapo sound systems. They feel good enough most of the time until you‘ve listened to something better.

Everyone has a point where the additional cost outweighs the benefit and that‘s individual.

 

[phinn888]

TL;DR, AMD cpu before Zen3 weren't exactly good at gaming...

Yes but we’ve known that a long time. It wasn’t until Zen 3 (5600X and 5800X) that Ryzen became #1 at gaming.

 

[Reehahs]

Whenever I get that horrible itch to think about upgrading my 9900K, articles like this soon dispel any such foolish notions.

..I reckon it will be a good enough CPU for another two generations of GPU (Nvidia 40xx & 50xx) before it will be a serious bottleneck and worth the expense of building a new rig.

Try almost an decade if you are stubborn enough.

 

[GamerNerves]

R5 5600X is not even mentioned in the conclusion and R7 2700X is called "a pretty awful gaming CPU". I might be nitpicky, since the data is very nice, but darn, some standards.
I agree with people who say that you should actually notice a bottleneck before necessarily upgrading - or upgrade just for funzies, but you shouldn't upgrade just because somebody tells you so.

 

[b3rdm4n]

People shouldn't need a site to review hardware to know if what I'm using is in need of an upgrade. You should be able to tell all by yourself if your system is performing to your own personal needs. You shouldn't need a review to say, "Hey! Upgrade your system because our review shows you information."

For me it's just about extracting maximum performance. And indeed my 3700X was holding back a stock clocked RTX3080 @ 3440x1440 / 144hz in many situations.

Was the 3700X acceptable performance? oh heck yeah. Does a 5900X let the 3080 stretch it's legs even further? you bet.

Gaming and being a PC enthusiast (tweaking, modding, overclocking etc) is my primary hobby, so I'm happy to spend on upgrades here and there, even if the leaps aren't massive (well the 5900X was for the video editing I do too, but less 'massive' in games). Reviews like this definitely help let me know what I could stand to gain.

Great content as we've come to expect @Steve

 

[Mr Majestyk]

I wonder how badly my old 1700X fares at 1440p which is my only game resolution. I'll update that when the 6800X comes out and may finally update the 1080 Ti with RT7700XT.

 

[AIC1Drew]

Reviews like this are a nice compliment and at least add a footnote in the back of my mind when going forward with deciding on hardware. But ultimately it comes down to personal/practical needs, understanding how scaling affects older builds. For example my current build with the 4790K is now about 7 years old. It was paired initially with the 780ti and then a 2060. I had briefly considered one more bump with maybe a 3060ti (given availability/at MRSP) but since the current GPU market sucks I will more than likely hold off and do a complete new build when DDR5 launches and gets a little seasoned.

I've managed to skip every other RAM generation starting in the mid 2000s (had DDR1, skipped 2, got 3, skipped 4). So at around 8-10 years per base build, each one has seen at least 1 GPU upgrade during its lifecycle. With DDR5 on the horizon, that should provide a sweet bump in performance coupled with core count/single-threaded performance.

 

[parowOOz]

People shouldn't need a site to review hardware to know if what I'm using is in need of an upgrade. You should be able to tell all by yourself if your system is performing to your own personal needs. You shouldn't need a review to say, "Hey! Upgrade your system because our review shows you information."

I know when I need to upgrade - when my system isn't performing to my personal needs. A good example is when I ran GTX 570s in SLI on my old Phenom II x4 940 (oc'ed to 3.71) for about a year and a half. I knew the CPU was a bottleneck, but I couldn't afford to upgrade my CPU/MB at the time. I eventually upgraded my CPU/MB/RAM and moved to an i5-4670k and even just running it at stock speed breathed new life into my GPUs. I almost saw double the performance in a lot of games I was playing with the same GTX 570s in SLI.

You should be able to tell when a certain aspect of your system is holding back your performance and when you should upgrade it. You shouldn't need some review to tell you.

The reviews are fun to look at it and I find them interesting to see how older hardware competes with more recent, but that's all they are to me.

How did you know there was anything wrong with the performance of your setup back then ? How did you determine it was the CPU that was the problem ?

 

[ISETech]

Very Informative.

 

[Loli Pop Carbon]

TL;DR, AMD cpu before Zen3 weren't exactly good at gaming...

Good luck finding 10900K or 5800X at that time