Top 5 Best CPUs: Intel Core vs. AMD Ryzen

[HardReset]

To remind just one year before the 3700X from the same manufacturer was 350€ and even the highly specced 3800X was 400€.

I guess some people here will defend AMD nevertheless...

That $1000 CPU (i7-5960X) is around 25% faster (because of higher core count) and has double price https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...5930k-processor-15m-cache-up-to-3-70-ghz.html

5800X is around same 25% faster than 3700X at same core count(!) and still is only 33% more expensive.

Your points are simply absurd

 

[Irata]

To be boring is your cheerleading AMD. You don’t need a better PSU for a 10700F. The PSU choice is influenced by the VGA you are going to use. It is absolutely ridiculous what you wrote here.
You are using a 1660Ti or a 3060? A good 550W is good for both. A 3070 ? Use a 650W for both. A 3080 ? The recommended size is 750W.
Those raw numbers are influenced by the GPU power needs, not the CPU.

And again, no one half competent is going to use the crappy included cooler you can find in a 5600X or in a 10700F.
A decent cooler (even less expensive than the dark rock Pro 4) would be enough for both.

The PSU should be chosen according to the entire system‘s max power consumption, including CPU, GPU and all other components. I personally like to keep a little reserve so that it never reaches 100% utilization even under a theoretical worst case.

So if the 10700‘s max power consumption is 214W and the 5600X‘s is 76W, that means I‘ll need to budget for an additional 138W, given that the PSU and power delivery circuitry don‘t have a 100% efficiency, 150W to be on the safe side.

So if a 550W PSU is sufficient for my 5600X build, I‘d need to get a 700W PSU for the same build with a 10700.

As for the cooler - you can use AMD‘s included cooler - I do so for my 2700X, although admittedly an aftermarket cooler would be nicer. Still it‘s doing its job and temps + noise are still OK and there is no throttling. A 10700 will come with a cooler that can handle 65W but not a permanent PL2 boost state, so you have to get an aftermarket cooler if you want to run it unlocked.

Even then, a cooler that can handle 100W will be fine for a 5600X build, but you should get one that can at least handle 200W for your 10700 build. Those two don‘t cost the same.

 

[AMN3S1AC]

In my region (SE Asia), AMD products are way, way overpriced. AMD CPUs are in short supply and even the R3 3100 is selling at some USD 20-30 above the MSRP if you can find them.

So right now, I am building PCs with Pentium G6400s for beginners, i3-10100s for productivity users and i5-10400F for gamers.

what is a beginner?

 

[Avro Arrow]

Comment deleted. Not worth debate... the differences here are in single digit percentages and I'm now bored....

I feel you. I was saying the same thing.

 

[131dbl]

This won't be a problem..

If you're talking about Tim from Hardware Unboxed, his test setup was flawed. I gave all the reasons why that test was flawed on Youtube.

First, you can't test load times using THEORETICAL gen4 drives to test gen4 interface, with drives that are only operating at gen3 speeds. FAIL. More than anything else, that's the biggest fail.

To do THAT particular testing, anyone who wanted to test that theory needed to WAIT until there were ACTUAL gen4 drives that were faster than gen3 drives, and not just sustained data transfers, but with different types of IO. There were none on the market when he did that test, and I think the 970 Pro at gen 3 speeds could beat out any of those drives with almost any type of load.

So, go find a video, if one exists yet, where a person tests the Samsung 980 Pro, the WD SN850, and the Sabrant Rocket 4 Plus, against gen 3 drives, AND, instead of using the CRAP system that was full of latency, use a LOW latency test setup, with either a Zen 3 CPU, USING 3600MHz memory, and not the 3200MHz memory they use for their test systems which is higher latency. Oh wait, they REFUSE to accept that skews results. It does, and other reviewers have shown that.

If you want to test the best GPUs on the market, you build a test setup that can give it the best results. Right now that's a Zen 3 platform. Well, if you want to test the best NVMe drives on the market, you first actually have to HAVE the best NVMe drives on the market, AND the best test setup. That video failed at both. If he would have waited two months to do that testing he would have had REAL gen4 drives that can run at gen 4 speeds, and he should have switched out the Zen 2 test platform with either an Intel 10th gen system which is lower latency, OR used Zen 3 which is also low latency.

I don't know what the hell Tim tested, but it's not what he said it was. He produced a totally useless video. Faster drives load games faster, this is simple FACT, as long as the game engine uses the CPU correctly and uses all the cores that it has. This also means, when the game engine is programmed correctly, that the more cores you have, the faster a game loads too. What this also means is, if you have a slow CPU, then yes it will be true that a faster NVMe probably won't make any difference, but considering a lot of loading time is actually decompression, then a Zen 3 5950X paired with a Samsung 980 Pro AND paired with 3600MHz CL14 memory, which most people don't want to spend the money on, will all make a difference.

 

[Tyrchlis]

what is a beginner?

It's one of those things we all pick on and make fun of regularly, or step on accidentally when walking through the yard and have to scrape off of our shoes... Wait, that is a beginner, isn't it?

 

[Lionvibez]

If you're talking about Tim from Hardware Unboxed, his test setup was flawed. I gave all the reasons why that test was flawed on Youtube.

First, you can't test load times using THEORETICAL gen4 drives to test gen4 interface, with drives that are only operating at gen3 speeds. FAIL. More than anything else, that's the biggest fail.

To do THAT particular testing, anyone who wanted to test that theory needed to WAIT until there were ACTUAL gen4 drives that were faster than gen3 drives, and not just sustained data transfers, but with different types of IO. There were none on the market when he did that test, and I think the 970 Pro at gen 3 speeds could beat out any of those drives with almost any type of load.

So, go find a video, if one exists yet, where a person tests the Samsung 980 Pro, the WD SN850, and the Sabrant Rocket 4 Plus, against gen 3 drives, AND, instead of using the CRAP system that was full of latency, use a LOW latency test setup, with either a Zen 3 CPU, USING 3600MHz memory, and not the 3200MHz memory they use for their test systems which is higher latency. Oh wait, they REFUSE to accept that skews results. It does, and other reviewers have shown that.

If you want to test the best GPUs on the market, you build a test setup that can give it the best results. Right now that's a Zen 3 platform. Well, if you want to test the best NVMe drives on the market, you first actually have to HAVE the best NVMe drives on the market, AND the best test setup. That video failed at both. If he would have waited two months to do that testing he would have had REAL gen4 drives that can run at gen 4 speeds, and he should have switched out the Zen 2 test platform with either an Intel 10th gen system which is lower latency, OR used Zen 3 which is also low latency.

I don't know what the hell Tim tested, but it's not what he said it was. He produced a totally useless video. Faster drives load games faster, this is simple FACT, as long as the game engine uses the CPU correctly and uses all the cores that it has. This also means, when the game engine is programmed correctly, that the more cores you have, the faster a game loads too. What this also means is, if you have a slow CPU, then yes it will be true that a faster NVMe probably won't make any difference, but considering a lot of loading time is actually decompression, then a Zen 3 5950X paired with a Samsung 980 Pro AND paired with 3600MHz CL14 memory, which most people don't want to spend the money on, will all make a difference.

Tim from hardware unboxed?

my post was a response to avro arrow's and the video shows everything.

 

[Avro Arrow]

You should add the category: "Best Server CPU"

I'm sure that it would affect none of us directly but it would be interesting to see.

 

[qtbrn]

Something which may have been overlooked - AMD 5600X at similar price bracket performed slightly better than the Intel 10700 recommended here for best Gaming CPU. Refer to Techspot's own findings at 11 game average: https://www.techspot.com/review/2135-amd-ryzen-5600x/
Not to mention the superior efficiency.

Recommendation should disregard arbitrary bias based on conventional core counts disregarding actual metrics that matter (performance and dollars). Otherwise it renders testing moot.

 

[131dbl]

The idea of "futureproofing" has been proven to be a fool's errand so many times that I can't believe the word still exists. As a result, a lot of times, the biggest difference between two CPUs is the value preposition. When all of the CPUs are more than fast enough, what other criteria can you use? I mean, sure, you can use the criteria of ethics (I sure do) but ethics are something that not everyone has.

So, on this thread I've mostly agreed with what many people have said, but I'm going to take on this one point. I don't buy a system every 3 years. Even if I can sell and buy new, that doesn't always go well because prices may drop much more than you hope for because new products are great and priced low. So I buy for longevity. I don't care if someone is laughing their *** off about it, I'm simply not spending money for new systems every 2 - 3 years, so I could care less what Steve or GN says. Tech reviewers rarely buy their own products anyway and aren't on fixed budgets.

So, concept of future proofing in play. When I bought into AMD Ryzen, it was after the 400 series boards came out because part of the 300 series had compatibility issues. But I only bought one board. There are 4 systems in this house. Once I found out X570 was going to have PCIe gen4, I knew that was the best option. The other three systems all have X570 boards. Regardless of how people feel about future proofing, my system has been future proofed. DirectStorage needs PCIe gen4. CHECK. It needs faster NVMe drives, well they now exist, I have a Samsung 1TB 980 Pro. CHECK, again. It meets the specs for DirectStorage. But, the entire board is PCIe gen4, not just whatever hooks up to the CPU, like with a B550 board. The CPU-chipset link is twice as fast as the B550 boards. These give, will give real advantages either now or in the future. Well, since I bought X570, that Future proofing has already paid off, since the NVMe ports off the chipset, which can run gen4 speed, can run at their rated speeds, and there are faster drives coming out in 2022.

While I can't prove this, my guess is that by the time RDNA 4 comes rolling out, which will align with Nvidia 5000 series GPU if they stick with their current naming, having PCIe gen4 is going to make a difference. On top of that, X570 also has a gen4 X4 port off the chipset. Since the CPU-chipset link is 8GB/s, I can use that X4 port for a drive controller and as long as it's X4 gen3/4 I can get full performance from it. What all this comes down to is it's a low end HEDT, and no matter how I configure storage for it, I get LOTS of bandwidth for that storage, and no CPU can output processed data (rendering, compression/decompression, etc.....) that's going to exceed those speeds, at least not for the AM4 platform.

So I view these systems as 6 - 8 year investments. They're that good. People are still gaming with older Intel CPUs, as long as they're 4c/8t and while they're not chart toping, they work fine in most games. These systems with X570 and Zen 3 or Zen 3 w. Vcache are like that, only much better to deal with today's and tomorrow's games. So people can laugh all they want to. That's the way I buy, and frankly AM4 with PCIe gen4 is good enough for many years to come. It won't be the best after Intel releases Core 12th gen and AMD releases Zen 4, but it's not going to matter to me. It won't change the fact that I game at 2K now, and that's GPU intensive, and I'll eventually move to a 4K OLED, when there's a GPU that gets really good framerates across many games, WITH HDR. My assumption that's going to be once again, RDNA 4 and Nvidia 5000 series rolls out, that's when there will be TRUE HDMI 2.1 GPUs, gaming with very high or best quality settings in general, maybe turning down one thing or another depending on the game, at 4K with HDR AND 120 fps. With that ONE upgrade, my systems will be 4K gaming machines, and since the heaviest load is on the GPU, and Zen 3 CPUs are top tier gaming CPUs right now towards the end of 2021, that's going to be good enough for years.

I'll let everyone else deal with replacing their parts every 2 - 3 years. But here's where patience pays off. I first started with one Zen + CPU to go with the X470 board. When Zen 2 came out I bought an X570 board but not a CPU. The pricing was good for the MB, if you can say such a thing for an X570 board. It wasn't MSI, but then due to problems MSI was having with their cheap builds for X570, they came out with the MEG Unify. For what it offers it's a great buy for the price. I bought. So now I have MBs that are state of the art, but no CPUs. Once Zen 2 started dropping in price, I waited. I bought a 3700X for about $270 USD. This was after Zen 3 released. By this time I knew I wanted the 5800X, regardless of, once again what Steve and Steve at GN says. I value their data, just not their opinion. Their opinions were based on MSRP. I didn't pay MSRP for the 2 5800Xs I bought. I bought one at $450, but it came with Far Cry 6, a $60 USD game. I bought the 2nd one for $350 USD. I bought all my CPUs from Micro Center since they have the best pricing. So, the "TERRIBLE" buy of a 5800X at $450? Well it depends on what you need to use your PC for, it's better than spending another $100 USD for 4 more cores if you never need that many cores, so if it suits your needs it's a good buy. Certainly better than the $500 USD 9900K. However my $350 USD 5800X is a GREAT buy.

So now I just have to wait to buy a 5800X with Vcache and I have 3 gaming systems that will run for years, all with 5800Xs that I got for good deals, and on a platform that Intel only caught up to in 2021, with complete gen4 support. They're all fine for 2K and 4K gaming. It's only upgraded GPUs they'll need. And I'm far from the only human being on the face of this earth that uses a PC for all it's worth for this long of a time period. People did exactly the same thing with Intel systems between 2011 and 2020. An X570 MB is an almost quintessential example of what a future proof system is built on. The same will be true with these new Z690 MBs.

So, with this, what I have that gets booted out of these systems is, a 2700X and GPUs that get replaced. All the X570 boards I bought have 3 NVMe ports. They're all capable of NVMe RAID for the two drives off the chipset. The X470 system is just general purpose computing, with a 65W TDP 3700X. Not too shabby.

 

[Avro Arrow]

So, on this thread I've mostly agreed with what many people have said, but I'm going to take on this one point. I don't buy a system every 3 years. Even if I can sell and buy new, that doesn't always go well because prices may drop much more than you hope for because new products are great and priced low. So I buy for longevity. I don't care if someone is laughing their *** off about it, I'm simply not spending money for new systems every 2 - 3 years, so I could care less what Steve or GN says. Tech reviewers rarely buy their own products anyway and aren't on fixed budgets.

So, concept of future proofing in play. When I bought into AMD Ryzen, it was after the 400 series boards came out because part of the 300 series had compatibility issues. But I only bought one board. There are 4 systems in this house. Once I found out X570 was going to have PCIe gen4, I knew that was the best option. The other three systems all have X570 boards. Regardless of how people feel about future proofing, my system has been future proofed. DirectStorage needs PCIe gen4. CHECK. It needs faster NVMe drives, well they now exist, I have a Samsung 1TB 980 Pro. CHECK, again. It meets the specs for DirectStorage. But, the entire board is PCIe gen4, not just whatever hooks up to the CPU, like with a B550 board. The CPU-chipset link is twice as fast as the B550 boards. These give, will give real advantages either now or in the future. Well, since I bought X570, that Future proofing has already paid off, since the NVMe ports off the chipset, which can run gen4 speed, can run at their rated speeds, and there are faster drives coming out in 2022.

While I can't prove this, my guess is that by the time RDNA 4 comes rolling out, which will align with Nvidia 5000 series GPU if they stick with their current naming, having PCIe gen4 is going to make a difference. On top of that, X570 also has a gen4 X4 port off the chipset. Since the CPU-chipset link is 8GB/s, I can use that X4 port for a drive controller and as long as it's X4 gen3/4 I can get full performance from it. What all this comes down to is it's a low end HEDT, and no matter how I configure storage for it, I get LOTS of bandwidth for that storage, and no CPU can output processed data (rendering, compression/decompression, etc.....) that's going to exceed those speeds, at least not for the AM4 platform.

So I view these systems as 6 - 8 year investments. They're that good. People are still gaming with older Intel CPUs, as long as they're 4c/8t and while they're not chart toping, they work fine in most games. These systems with X570 and Zen 3 or Zen 3 w. Vcache are like that, only much better to deal with today's and tomorrow's games. So people can laugh all they want to. That's the way I buy, and frankly AM4 with PCIe gen4 is good enough for many years to come. It won't be the best after Intel releases Core 12th gen and AMD releases Zen 4, but it's not going to matter to me. It won't change the fact that I game at 2K now, and that's GPU intensive, and I'll eventually move to a 4K OLED, when there's a GPU that gets really good framerates across many games, WITH HDR. My assumption that's going to be once again, RDNA 4 and Nvidia 5000 series rolls out, that's when there will be TRUE HDMI 2.1 GPUs, gaming with very high or best quality settings in general, maybe turning down one thing or another depending on the game, at 4K with HDR AND 120 fps. With that ONE upgrade, my systems will be 4K gaming machines, and since the heaviest load is on the GPU, and Zen 3 CPUs are top tier gaming CPUs right now towards the end of 2021, that's going to be good enough for years.

I'll let everyone else deal with replacing their parts every 2 - 3 years. But here's where patience pays off. I first started with one Zen + CPU to go with the X470 board. When Zen 2 came out I bought an X570 board but not a CPU. The pricing was good for the MB, if you can say such a thing for an X570 board. It wasn't MSI, but then due to problems MSI was having with their cheap builds for X570, they came out with the MEG Unify. For what it offers it's a great buy for the price. I bought. So now I have MBs that are state of the art, but no CPUs. Once Zen 2 started dropping in price, I waited. I bought a 3700X for about $270 USD. This was after Zen 3 released. By this time I knew I wanted the 5800X, regardless of, once again what Steve and Steve at GN says. I value their data, just not their opinion. Their opinions were based on MSRP. I didn't pay MSRP for the 2 5800Xs I bought. I bought one at $450, but it came with Far Cry 6, a $60 USD game. I bought the 2nd one for $350 USD. I bought all my CPUs from Micro Center since they have the best pricing. So, the "TERRIBLE" buy of a 5800X at $450? Well it depends on what you need to use your PC for, it's better than spending another $100 USD for 4 more cores if you never need that many cores, so if it suits your needs it's a good buy. Certainly better than the $500 USD 9900K. However my $350 USD 5800X is a GREAT buy.

So now I just have to wait to buy a 5800X with Vcache and I have 3 gaming systems that will run for years, all with 5800Xs that I got for good deals, and on a platform that Intel only caught up to in 2021, with complete gen4 support. They're all fine for 2K and 4K gaming. It's only upgraded GPUs they'll need. And I'm far from the only human being on the face of this earth that uses a PC for all it's worth for this long of a time period. People did exactly the same thing with Intel systems between 2011 and 2020. An X570 MB is an almost quintessential example of what a future proof system is built on. The same will be true with these new Z690 MBs.

So, with this, what I have that gets booted out of these systems is, a 2700X and GPUs that get replaced. All the X570 boards I bought have 3 NVMe ports. They're all capable of NVMe RAID for the two drives off the chipset. The X470 system is just general purpose computing, with a 65W TDP 3700X. Not too shabby.

Not too shabby at all. For someone who hasn't built a PC so many times that they could do it with their eyes closed, your points are all 100% valid. I was only using my own perspective because quite often, let's say you have a budget of $600 for a CPU, if you spend $300 now and $300 five years down the road, that leftover $300 will get you a far more powerful CPU than even $600 will now.

What I meant when I said that futureproofing is a fool's errand is when some people spend like $3000-$5000 on a PC that's only for gaming. If that money were split in half, they'd be ahead of the game in 5 years while still not sacrificing perfectly good gaming performance. That's all.

 

[131dbl]

Not too shabby at all. For someone who hasn't built a PC so many times that they could do it with their eyes closed, your points are all 100% valid. I was only using my own perspective because quite often, let's say you have a budget of $600 for a CPU, if you spend $300 now and $300 five years down the road, that leftover $300 will get you a far more powerful CPU than even $600 will now.

What I meant when I said that futureproofing is a fool's errand is when some people spend like $3000-$5000 on a PC that's only for gaming. If that money were split in half, they'd be ahead of the game in 5 years while still not sacrificing perfectly good gaming performance. That's all.

And I agree with those points. If someone spends that much money on a gaming PC it's pretty insane, unless they're making money off of it. My situation doesn't match either the budget or the top end. While the MB is top quality, though not the most expensive X570s out there, the CPUs aren't ridiculus. I bought one 5800X on sale for $350 USD. I bought the other one at MSRP, but it came with Far Cry 6. No, I wouldn't buy a 5950X just because sometimes it gives you 1 - 2% better framerates and it double the cost of what I paid for the 5800X. So, smart shopping.

The main point I was trying to make is for people who own a system for many years, which is pretty common, you have to do some evaluation. If you see the current technology is going to be good for many years based on your years of experience working with PCs and gaming systems in particular, it's a good time to buy for longevity. Ever since X570 boards came out, it's been a good time to buy for longevity with AMD. Ever since Zen 3 came out, it's been a good time to buy a CPU for longevity. Now that Intel boards have PCIe gen4 or gen5, same with Intel systems, although for gaming clearly Intel 12th gen is better. Thread per thread it's matching Zen 3 (12600K almost = 5800X in gaming and both are 16 thread CPUs). That changes when Zen 3 3D Vcache comes out.

Right now an RTX 3080 barely exceeds the bandwidth of PCI gen3 X8. X8! So how future proof is an X570 that is 100% PCIe gen4? Well, you double the bandwidth of an RTX 3080 and now you're at PCIe gen3 X16. You double that again and now you're at PCIe gen4 X16. So, my X570 based systems can handle a quadrupling of today's near best GPU's bandwidth. And then for NVMe, gen4 is good enough for DirectStorage so, future proofed again.

My final upgrade is getting Zen3 3D Vcache, for the last of the 3 gaming systems, and that phases out a 3700X. So, 2 5800X's on X570 for 2K and 4K gaming systems, and the newer Zen3 Vcache to convert the last 1080p gaming rig into most likely another 2K gaming rig ( I only need 1 4K gaming rig) That and another GPU in the future.

I think those machines will play any games that come out in the next few years and I won't have to touch them again or replace them for at least 6 - 7 years if you consider the GPU upgrades I talked about.

 

[Strawman]

Of course furtute proofing IS a thing. Sometimes paying more money in front saves you from an upgrade that will ultimately cost you more down the line. Case in point, an r5 1600 was around 180 to 200 euros while the 8700k was 330 to 350. Paying that extra money is future proofing and worth it cause basically the 8700k can plau anything you throw at it even today, while the 1600 has stopped doing that for a couple of years.

Even though I personally change cpus on a yearly basis, when I did have the 8700k I kept it for 3 years cause there was no point in changing it. And the only reason I did back in 2020 is cause, as ive said before, I tend to change my system yearly, so after 3 years I was getting itchy.

 

[Avro Arrow]

And I agree with those points. If someone spends that much money on a gaming PC it's pretty insane, unless they're making money off of it. My situation doesn't match either the budget or the top end. While the MB is top quality, though not the most expensive X570s out there, the CPUs aren't ridiculus. I bought one 5800X on sale for $350 USD. I bought the other one at MSRP, but it came with Far Cry 6. No, I wouldn't buy a 5950X just because sometimes it gives you 1 - 2% better framerates and it double the cost of what I paid for the 5800X. So, smart shopping.

Exactly. That's where the point of diminishing returns is. I'm considering getting a 5800X for my ASRock X570 Pro4. Like you, not exactly a top-end board but more than enough for my uses. Like you say, that's what a smart shopper buys.

The main point I was trying to make is for people who own a system for many years, which is pretty common, you have to do some evaluation. If you see the current technology is going to be good for many years based on your years of experience working with PCs and gaming systems in particular, it's a good time to buy for longevity. Ever since X570 boards came out, it's been a good time to buy for longevity with AMD. Ever since Zen 3 came out, it's been a good time to buy a CPU for longevity. Now that Intel boards have PCIe gen4 or gen5, same with Intel systems, although for gaming clearly Intel 12th gen is better. Thread per thread it's matching Zen 3 (12600K almost = 5800X in gaming and both are 16 thread CPUs). That changes when Zen 3 3D Vcache comes out.

I usually buy with the expectation that I'll be upgrading in 3-5 years, depending on what it is that I bought. You're right about the X570 platform having longevity because up to a Ryzen 3000-series, an X370 motherboard can still be used without issue.

My stepfather's ASUS TUF X570 motherboard was giving him problems so I offered to lend him my ASRock X370 Killer SLI motherboard, install it and then go back and install his replacement board after he RMAs his. Now, he lives 3½ hours away from me so there was a price he had to pay (that is 14 hours of driving after all...lol). The price wasn't in money, it was in a very specific piece of equipment that he had.

I bought him a Unicomp Classic 104-key Model M for his 70th birthday a couple of years ago and while he loved the feel, he was so used to quiet keyboards that he sound drove him nuts and he put the thing in his basement. When I found this out, I said "Tell you what, I'll drive to your place, swap my old X370 motherboard into your rig so that you can keep using your R9-3900X while your ASUS TUF is gone for RMA. Don't worry about compatibility because I updated the BIOS for the Ryzen 3000-series years ago and had been using it with my R5-3600X for years without issue.

Then, when your mobo comes back from ASUS, I'll come back and do the re & re for you. Of course, this will come at a cost because we're talking 14 hours of driving even before I do the work. I don't want your money but I DO want that Unicomp Model M that I bought for you, the one that you NEVER use. Deal?"

So I'm typing this on a Unicomp Classic 104 USB (UNI044A) in its original IBM beige. It's absolutely glorious and it is the very definition of longevity.

Right now an RTX 3080 barely exceeds the bandwidth of PCI gen3 X8. X8! So how future proof is an X570 that is 100% PCIe gen4? Well, you double the bandwidth of an RTX 3080 and now you're at PCIe gen3 X16. You double that again and now you're at PCIe gen4 X16. So, my X570 based systems can handle a quadrupling of today's near best GPU's bandwidth. And then for NVMe, gen4 is good enough for DirectStorage so, future proofed again.

With regard to the video cards, it has always been the case that they've lagged far behind the connectivity of whatever the current PCI-E generation was at the time. Keep in mind that the RTX 3080 barely exceeding the bandwidth of PCI-E3 x8 means that it also barely exceeds the bandwidth of PCI-E2 x16. I remember years ago when Intel made a big deal of their PCI-E3 video card slots (this was Intel's early i7 era). The Intel fanboys were making a big deal of it until I pointed out (quite rightly) that it was a scam because the slot was only x8 which made it no better than the PCI-E2 x16 slots in the AMD boards. The RTX 3080 is the first card that would experience even a slight performance bottleneck from using a PCI-E2 x16 slot from an old AMD 790FX motherboard from almost exactly 14 years ago. This is why I couldn't understand the obsession that some people had with how PCI-E4 affected the performance of video cards. I was like "PCI-E3 is ALREADY more than we could possibly use so how would PCI-E4 help?"

My final upgrade is getting Zen3 3D Vcache, for the last of the 3 gaming systems, and that phases out a 3700X. So, 2 5800X's on X570 for 2K and 4K gaming systems, and the newer Zen3 Vcache to convert the last 1080p gaming rig into most likely another 2K gaming rig ( I only need 1 4K gaming rig) That and another GPU in the future.

I've been gaming at only 720p-1080p with maximum eye candy because my 4K TV upscales games flawlessly to 2160p (I wasn't expecting that). As a result, my RX 5700 XT is more than enough in most cases. The only drawback is that, for Far Cry 6, the HD textures require more than 11GB of VRAM and the 5700 XT only has 8.

I think those machines will play any games that come out in the next few years and I won't have to touch them again or replace them for at least 6 - 7 years if you consider the GPU upgrades I talked about.

Yep, you should be laughing with the upgrades that you're describing. The only caveat is, have you SEEN what those cards cost ATM? I'll be waiting a LONG time before upgrading my 5700 XT. It shouldn't be a problem because even my old R9 Fury can still handle most games (even Godfall) at 1080p with eye candy turned down (specifically shadows). With the way my TV behaves, I could probably play those games at 720p with decent settings on the R9 Fury. That card is already old as dirt so the 5700 XT should be good for at least another 5 years or so. I really don't give a rat's posterior about ray tracing anyway.

 

[131dbl]

Yep, you should be laughing with the upgrades that you're describing. The only caveat is, have you SEEN what those cards cost ATM? I'll be waiting a LONG time before upgrading my 5700 XT. It shouldn't be a problem because even my old R9 Fury can still handle most games (even Godfall) at 1080p with eye candy turned down (specifically shadows). With the way my TV behaves, I could probably play those games at 720p with decent settings on the R9 Fury. That card is already old as dirt so the 5700 XT should be good for at least another 5 years or so. I really don't give a rat's posterior about ray tracing anyway.

Yes, I've seen what current GPUs cost at the moment. I've been debating selling a couple older RX 580s I have. Buying the 6800 XT is by far the most expensive thing I've ever bought for a PC, but I've been waiting to put this system together for too long now. I've been wanting to game on the 2K monitor I bought last shopping season for about a year now at it's proper resolution.

And this is why I'm not upgrading GPUs other than the one until 2 generations from now. By then more fabs will be online. That's going to be 3 - 4 years until that purchase. In the mean time those machines game at 1080p. I don't have the 4K TV I'll be gaming on anyway. I'm waiting for OLEDs to drop in price.

The strategy for buying GPUs in 2 generations from now is, next gen GPUs at the top end are going to be what I call true HDMI 2.1 gaming GPUs, 4K HDR @120 fps and be able to do that in enough gamse without reducing quality settings. But it's going to use a lot of power. I don't want a heater in the house. The next gen after that (GPUs should either be on Samsung or TSMC 3nm) you should have true HDMI 2.1 gaming further down the product stack, which means they'll cost less money AND won't use the same amount of power.

While I see many comments about power consumption going way up to try to get to this point, the fact that next gen is stepping down to 5nm means power reduction, Sure I see at the top end they'll probably be power hungry like current gen GPUs and I imagine 300 - 350W, maybe up to 400W but I'm skeptical of them getting up to 400W. In two generations though, that same level of performance should be back down to something more acceptable, like in the 200 - 225W range the way the 6800 XT is. On top of that, I want the one gaming machine that's running 4K to have ray tracing capability. But even today's GPUs are weak for RT. I think it's going to be about 2 more generations before the hardware can give what the software wants to push.

On top of that, the 3rd gaming machine is almost surely going to be 2K. I don't have that monitor either. On either 2K gaming machine I could care less about ray tracing just like you. So in two generations from now, getting a GPU for 2K gaming without ray tracing means middle of the product stack.

Call me optimistic but I think the supply chain issues will be worked out in another 3 years from now when I go to make those 2 final GPU upgrades, one for kick *** HDMI 2.1 in all its glory but without the top of the product stack power consumption and price, and then a step down from that for 2K non ray traced gaming so another step down the product stack. I'm thinking that the power consumption is going to be 140 - 175W for that 2K caliber GPU. Maybe I have to wait for a sale or price drop, but I'm pretty sure that in that 3 - 4 year time period supply will be good again and prices will be reasonable. And frankly, if 2K gaming is what I expect it to be in 2 generations, then maybe I accept a loss and sell off the 6800 XT I bought since it was overpriced (Red Devil Power Color) and go ahead and buy another 2K GPU for the power reduction. But it would have to be a significant power reduction like closer to 140W and a good price.

Anyway that's the plan, I'll see how much difference there is between the 5800X and for lack of a better name, the 5800X 3D Vcache CPUs. If I feel like at 2K I'll need the benefit of Vcache then I'll buy a 2nd if priced well enough when I go to buy. For some reason though I don't think they will ever be priced well. I think demand from all the gamers who bought AM4 platforms and want the best CPU they can drop in, for "future proofing" is going to be so great it will be hard enough to buy one at MSRP. Maybe if the CPU gets limited to 500 series boards the demand won't be so heavy. There are SO MANY 400 series board out there. I think that's when a good chunk of the buy in to AM4 happened.

Anyway peace dude, this is long enough already

Patience and planning.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Yes, I've seen what current GPUs cost at the moment. I've been debating selling a couple older RX 580s I have. Buying the 6800 XT is by far the most expensive thing I've ever bought for a PC, but I've been waiting to put this system together for too long now. I've been wanting to game on the 2K monitor I bought last shopping season for about a year now at it's proper resolution.

And this is why I'm not upgrading GPUs other than the one until 2 generations from now. By then more fabs will be online. That's going to be 3 - 4 years until that purchase. In the mean time those machines game at 1080p. I don't have the 4K TV I'll be gaming on anyway. I'm waiting for OLEDs to drop in price.

The strategy for buying GPUs in 2 generations from now is, next gen GPUs at the top end are going to be what I call true HDMI 2.1 gaming GPUs, 4K HDR @120 fps and be able to do that in enough gamse without reducing quality settings. But it's going to use a lot of power. I don't want a heater in the house. The next gen after that (GPUs should either be on Samsung or TSMC 3nm) you should have true HDMI 2.1 gaming further down the product stack, which means they'll cost less money AND won't use the same amount of power.

While I see many comments about power consumption going way up to try to get to this point, the fact that next gen is stepping down to 5nm means power reduction, Sure I see at the top end they'll probably be power hungry like current gen GPUs and I imagine 300 - 350W, maybe up to 400W but I'm skeptical of them getting up to 400W. In two generations though, that same level of performance should be back down to something more acceptable, like in the 200 - 225W range the way the 6800 XT is. On top of that, I want the one gaming machine that's running 4K to have ray tracing capability. But even today's GPUs are weak for RT. I think it's going to be about 2 more generations before the hardware can give what the software wants to push.

On top of that, the 3rd gaming machine is almost surely going to be 2K. I don't have that monitor either. On either 2K gaming machine I could care less about ray tracing just like you. So in two generations from now, getting a GPU for 2K gaming without ray tracing means middle of the product stack.

Call me optimistic but I think the supply chain issues will be worked out in another 3 years from now when I go to make those 2 final GPU upgrades, one for kick *** HDMI 2.1 in all its glory but without the top of the product stack power consumption and price, and then a step down from that for 2K non ray traced gaming so another step down the product stack. I'm thinking that the power consumption is going to be 140 - 175W for that 2K caliber GPU. Maybe I have to wait for a sale or price drop, but I'm pretty sure that in that 3 - 4 year time period supply will be good again and prices will be reasonable. And frankly, if 2K gaming is what I expect it to be in 2 generations, then maybe I accept a loss and sell off the 6800 XT I bought since it was overpriced (Red Devil Power Color) and go ahead and buy another 2K GPU for the power reduction. But it would have to be a significant power reduction like closer to 140W and a good price.

Anyway that's the plan, I'll see how much difference there is between the 5800X and for lack of a better name, the 5800X 3D Vcache CPUs. If I feel like at 2K I'll need the benefit of Vcache then I'll buy a 2nd if priced well enough when I go to buy. For some reason though I don't think they will ever be priced well. I think demand from all the gamers who bought AM4 platforms and want the best CPU they can drop in, for "future proofing" is going to be so great it will be hard enough to buy one at MSRP. Maybe if the CPU gets limited to 500 series boards the demand won't be so heavy. There are SO MANY 400 series board out there. I think that's when a good chunk of the buy in to AM4 happened.

Anyway peace dude, this is long enough already

Patience and planning.

I get you brother, I wait as long as I can to get a new video card as well. I'll leave it at that.