Intel Core i5-9400F vs. AMD Ryzen 5 2600X

[144hzGamer]

So basically:

Buy a cheap B360 board + cheap 2666 ram + i5 9400f. No need for overclocks or bios tweaks apart from activating XMP. Low power consumption. No need for great cooler or PSU.

OR

Buy a decent B450 board with decent VRMs + expensive Samsung B die 3200/3400 ram (200€ in Europe) + 2600x. Need to overclock it on the bios, tweak settings to find optimal perfrormance. Need a decent cooler for 4,2ghz on most chips, and it will use more power.

In the end you get the same performance as Intel, slightly better on some games, slightly worse on others.

I would stick to Intel for budget builds for GAMING. Simple. Great performance out of the box for a good price.

You copy-pasted the comment from youtube where it got destroyed because of it's awful arguments that break down once you actually look at the numbers and even prices (and yes, I live in the EU and I know the prices there).
Out of the box the 2600x is just better hands down. Nobody in his right mind will sacrifice double the threads and a more future proof platform just to get on average 4 extra FPS and 0 extra FPS at the 1% lows in games. You'll also need the most expensive GPU on the market to even see those 4 extra FPS.

FYI you can easily find 3200MHz RAM for 110-115 euro in the majority of Europe. Tighten the timings on those or OC them and you'll get within 1-2% of the 3400MHz RAM used here. You don't need to OC the 2600x.

On a side-note, unless they have a crappy system all gamers generally have software running in the background which will benefit the 2600x more with its extra 6 threads. I personally never close Chrome and even game while listening to youtube or Twitch.

Next time please don't "copy-pasta" and actually write something worthwhile.

You think listening to music while playing gets more performance because of smt? How delusional. Also I have no idea if he copy pasted but I agree, 9400f way to go for budget gaming build

Not all 3200 ram will do 3400 cas15. This article is hiding the fact that 3400 cas15 ram is still expensive. The 120€ ram you mentioned is 1,35v ram at 16-18-18 wich will lower your fps on ryzen.

And no, you dont need a good gpu, you need tp tweak settings. If you check the most worldwide played games on twitch, they are mostly multiplayer titles where eye candy is irrelevant. In all of those titkes, if you spend on and the same you spend on intel with 2666ram and 50€ b360 board, intel completly obliterates.

Last time I used a 2700x at 4,1 ghz I couldnt even lock battlefield v and blackout to 144fps at 1080p low with a rtx 2070.Pathetic cpu for high refresh gaming. Great value for productivity tasks.

It is what it is. Out of the box intel i5 9400f provides more frames for the money and requires minimum tweaking.

You can try to "destroy" this argument but you simply cant.

 

[Lew Zealand]

The article lacks power measurement numbers, and being in the context of it, we can't really discuss how power hungry 9400F truly is. Another disadvantage of a stock 9400F is that it lacks sTIM, uses thermal paste under the cap instead.

Here's a single data point: my 8400 uses 72W at its all-core turbo of 3.8 GHz using all 6 cores at ~100% in Handbrake. Seeing as the 9400 is all of 100 MHz faster, tack on 2-3W, call it 75W. Undervolt it .07v in XTU and the 8400 uses 63W, so the 9400 will probably use 65W.

The thermal paste is mostly irrelevant as you can't OC the 9400 and even the Intel ultra-crap box cooler keeps it cool enough.

 

[Alicization]

This review just failed to mention that if you go with AMD you won't have SGX and consequently no 4K RIP. That is a big deal for a good chunk of people that burn media content.

 

[bluetooth fairy]

So basically:

Buy a cheap B360 board + cheap 2666 ram + i5 9400f. No need for overclocks or bios tweaks apart from activating XMP. Low power consumption. No need for great cooler or PSU.

OR

Buy a decent B450 board with decent VRMs + expensive Samsung B die 3200/3400 ram (200€ in Europe) + 2600x. Need to overclock it on the bios, tweak settings to find optimal perfrormance. Need a decent cooler for 4,2ghz on most chips, and it will use more power.

In the end you get the same performance as Intel, slightly better on some games, slightly worse on others.

I would stick to Intel for budget builds for GAMING. Simple. Great performance out of the box for a good price.

Good points, except low latency, I.e. CL14, DDR4-3200 is a bit cheaper now, 185 euros on average on computeruniverse.

Steve uses AIO water cooling solution to keep the beast calm. From the day-one review we could see that OC 2600X system was twice more power hungry than i5-8400 one.

But only if we need to build it immediately and under no-brainer "out-of-the-box" statement, otherwise it is recommended (in the article) to wait a bit more.

Idk why some guys just ignore what is written in that content piece they discuss.

 

[urbanman2004]

Ryzen R7 3700X FTW, nuff said.

 

[Puiu]

You think listening to music while playing gets more performance because of smt? How delusional. Also I have no idea if he copy pasted but I agree, 9400f way to go for budget gaming build

Not all 3200 ram will do 3400 cas15. This article is hiding the fact that 3400 cas15 ram is still expensive. The 120€ ram you mentioned is 1,35v ram at 16-18-18 wich will lower your fps on ryzen.

And no, you dont need a good gpu, you need tp tweak settings. If you check the most worldwide played games on twitch, they are mostly multiplayer titles where eye candy is irrelevant. In all of those titkes, if you spend on and the same you spend on intel with 2666ram and 50€ b360 board, intel completly obliterates.

Last time I used a 2700x at 4,1 ghz I couldnt even lock battlefield v and blackout to 144fps at 1080p low with a rtx 2070.Pathetic cpu for high refresh gaming. Great value for productivity tasks.

It is what it is. Out of the box intel i5 9400f provides more frames for the money and requires minimum tweaking.

You can try to "destroy" this argument but you simply cant.

NOBODY cares that not all 3200MHz RAM can do 3400MHz CL15. You can just do 3333MHz or go higher with CL16. that's why I said that there will be just 1-2% difference.
Why are you insisting that such a small difference in the RAM will suddenly make the Ryzen system bad when it clearly won't? This type of argument can only only be classified as intentionally misleading.

Another intentionally misleading thing: the 2700x without OC has an average of over 160FPS in BF1 using a 1080ti and the 9900K has 180FPS (184 with OC). FYI both have small dips of under 144Hz. (and I am talking about max settings, not your fabled low settings) On average the 9900K is ~10% faster than the 2700x. You will see no benefit from using it with a 2070.

Another misleading thing: you mention 144Hz FPS in "popular" games on twitch and then go on to talk about BF? What? What you were trying to argue is that games like CS, DOTA, LoL or fortnite have problems hitting 144Hz which is false.

As I said before you don't need to OC the 2600x to get the same performance as the 9400F in games. Thus you can just buy something like the Asrock B450M-HDV which is around 60euro in europe and has good VRMs. You will want something better to OC the 2700x but you can definitely try to OC the 2600x with the one mentioned by me.
FYI you are talking of putting a 6 core Intel CPU in a bargain basement mobo and expecting to get 100% performance out of it while also using the box cooler... hahahaha.

Yes dude, enjoy your extra 20euros, although that disappears if want to replace the cheapo box cooler.
Yes dude, enjoy your extra 2-3% FPS (while using at least an 1080), I'm sure that you will never use the massive multi-threading performance that you are sacrificing. Games don't need to be installed, you will only play with fresh windows installs and zero background applications and you will never use archives bigger than 10MB.

In the end all of your posts are just attempts to troll people in the youtube comments and here with tons of intentionally misleading numbers and *ahem* "claims".

Anyway any of this will be pointless soon with Zen2. Like Steve you are better off waiting a bit more. You'll see price drops for Zen+ too.

 

[Stark]

So much nitpicking in this review. guys its data and there can numerous parameters by using which the end result can be effected, its also the availability of parts with the reviewer.
in any case it does provides some objective view for the comparison at hand.
for example use of water cooler shows the potential 2600x can be pushed without thermal limits.
anyway thanks for the read Steve.

 

[Puiu]

You are so triggered that you didnt even noticed to whom you replied. Who talked about youtube? Lol

And no, a 2700x + rtx 2080ti doesnt get 160 fps on multiplayer, and 9900k does warranty 200fps on average. Go check unph4zed streamer, he plays BF with a 9900k and he has the fps counter there, always 200+ fps. Talking about misleading.....

Also there is a big difference on 1% lows from 3200 16-18-18 to 3466 15-15-15 on ryzen. Pretty much any video analysis on ryzen performance shows you that. That difference is enough to be slower than the 9400F.

You are clueless, triggered and I love it. But what could we expect from someone that praises SMT extra threads because of "listening to music while paying games". Like if we dare to listen to music while playing on the 9400f, the pc will crash. Ahahahah hilarious!

yeah I confused you with the troll that likes to copy paste the same comment everywhere, I didn't look at the name. sorry. but it isn't my fault that your post was similar in nature

As for your "it can't do it" go check the 9900k review done by techpowerup. it has BF1 at 1080p with a 1080ti.

As for using the 2080ti, trusted reviews are hard to find but Steve did test the 2700x and the 8700k and the averages were 164 vs 183 with the 1% lows being over 100 for both but well below the 144Hz mark. I don't see the point in comparing the 2700x with a 9900k here anyway.

Telling me to go "check" a streamer's FPS counter... really? Those don't update fast enough to show the small dips and I don't know all of his settings. If you want to stream, the 2600x will blow the 9400F out of the water. It's not even close.
But to please you I did check. His BF V video from Dec 17, 2018 shows his FPS counter swing from 170+ to 240+ (270 when looking at the sky) on his 2080ti + 9900k rig (I picked it because of the name used). The video actually starts at under 200 FPS.

The FPS will be lower if you open youtube or twitch while gaming, that is normal. Since we are arguing about extremely small percentages (1-2-3%) it should be taken into account, right? Otherwise what is the point of recommending the 9400F over the 2600X? Every intel fan likes to point out the extra 2-3 FPS but never look at the simple fact that it is up to 50% slower in many other thread intensive tasks.

A gaming PC is not a console, you can and will do other things with it too.

I would also like you to show me any benchmark from a trusted source that shows that big of a difference in performance for the RAM (not a streamer again please) because most tests tell a similar story to what I wrote. You also like to ignore the simple fact that if someone is going to tighten the timings on the 3400MHz RAM then he will do the same on the 3200MHz one so all you are left with is a small bump in speed.

PS: yes I am triggered by people trying to intentionally fool me with fake or intentionally misleading arguments. but beyond confusing the name I only responded with things that can be verified by everybody.

 

[bluetooth fairy]

This review just failed to mention that if you go with AMD you won't have SGX and consequently no 4K RIP. That is a big deal for a good chunk of people that burn media content.

Would you be so kind to disclose the connection between SGX and "burn media content"? Just because the only relevant thing about SGX I have found, is https://software.intel.com/en-us/sgx, which is about "Application Security".

 

[amghwk]

...

Hardware Unboxed being AMD biased as usual. ...

Biased, that´s all I can say.

From the Closing Remarks:
"When it comes to gaming it’s fair to say there’s no wrong option here and the Ryzen 5 2600X and Core i5-9400F are evenly matched."

"If you're mostly playing games on your PC, you will be happy buying either processor. Both proved to be solid options and are evenly matched with a slight advantage to the Intel chip if you don't tune up the Ryzen processor."

"Looking at those 1% low results, the 2600X was arguably more consistent, but for the most part you wouldn’t know which processor you were using."

Cripes, Steve... at least try to conceal your "usual" AMD bias a little bit.

True. It's a biased review.

Last time techspot advocated amd because it's cheaper for similar performance, but now, even when the i5-9400F is cheaper, he still advocates ryzen, when the performance is similar, if not better in most benchmarks.

 

[bluetooth fairy]

...

Hardware Unboxed being AMD biased as usual. ...

Biased, that´s all I can say.

From the Closing Remarks:
"When it comes to gaming it’s fair to say there’s no wrong option here and the Ryzen 5 2600X and Core i5-9400F are evenly matched."

"If you're mostly playing games on your PC, you will be happy buying either processor. Both proved to be solid options and are evenly matched with a slight advantage to the Intel chip if you don't tune up the Ryzen processor."

"Looking at those 1% low results, the 2600X was arguably more consistent, but for the most part you wouldn’t know which processor you were using."

Cripes, Steve... at least try to conceal your "usual" AMD bias a little bit.

True. It's a biased review.

Last time techspot advocated amd because it's cheaper for similar performance, but now, even when the i5-9400F is cheaper, he still advocates ryzen, when the performance is similar, if not better in most benchmarks.

In his previous review he put more details, why he'd prefer 2600 against 8400
https://www.techspot.com/review/1627-core-i5-8400-vs-ryzen-5-2600/page8.html

I'd say that 1 year old review is a more accurate in making points and providing solid arguments. But I assume Steve could be tired already of this stuff, just tired of saying same things using different words about almost the same hardware.

 

[Lew Zealand]

True. It's a biased review.

Last time techspot advocated amd because it's cheaper for similar performance, but now, even when the i5-9400F is cheaper, he still advocates ryzen, when the performance is similar, if not better in most benchmarks.

Steve has explained the reasons for that, ad nauseum.

1. The FPS difference in gaming is less than 5%, which Steve has time and again said is not significant.
2. You can overclock the AMD chip to eliminate most of that 5% difference. You cannot overclock the Intel chip
3. You have the option to install a next gen AMD CPU in any reasonable mobo, you cannot install a next gen Intel CPU with the Intel mobo.
4. The AMD chip supports twice the threads, which leads to better performance in highly multithreaded workloads (yes, this is a more niche case).
5. If you do install the higher performance current-gen 9900K for more performance, you need a Z series mobo to OC and if you have an older one, it may not have adequate power delivery up achieve the max OC for your chip.

Yes, the Intel has advantages, being somewhat higher performance for both low latency sensitive (gaming) and non-highly multithreaded workloads out of the box and it also has a significant lead in AVX workloads. This is why I have an i5-8400 (it was also cheaper at the time), as the two things that tax my processor the most are gaming and x265, both of where the 8400 had a clear lead at the time. I traded higher performance then for higher performance tomorrow and we'll just see what Ryzen 2 has to offer, I may upgrade to that if it's worth it.

 

[144hzGamer]

yeah I confused you with the troll that likes to copy paste the same comment everywhere, I didn't look at the name. sorry. but it isn't my fault that your post was similar in nature

As for your "it can't do it" go check the 9900k review done by techpowerup. it has BF1 at 1080p with a 1080ti.

As for using the 2080ti, trusted reviews are hard to find but Steve did test the 2700x and the 8700k and the averages were 164 vs 183 with the 1% lows being over 100 for both but well below the 144Hz mark. I don't see the point in comparing the 2700x with a 9900k here anyway.

Telling me to go "check" a streamer's FPS counter... really? Those don't update fast enough to show the small dips and I don't know all of his settings. If you want to stream, the 2600x will blow the 9400F out of the water. It's not even close.
But to please you I did check. His BF V video from Dec 17, 2018 shows his FPS counter swing from 170+ to 240+ (270 when looking at the sky) on his 2080ti + 9900k rig (I picked it because of the name used). The video actually starts at under 200 FPS.

The FPS will be lower if you open youtube or twitch while gaming, that is normal. Since we are arguing about extremely small percentages (1-2-3%) it should be taken into account, right? Otherwise what is the point of recommending the 9400F over the 2600X? Every intel fan likes to point out the extra 2-3 FPS but never look at the simple fact that it is up to 50% slower in many other thread intensive tasks.

A gaming PC is not a console, you can and will do other things with it too.

I would also like you to show me any benchmark from a trusted source that shows that big of a difference in performance for the RAM (not a streamer again please) because most tests tell a similar story to what I wrote. You also like to ignore the simple fact that if someone is going to tighten the timings on the 3400MHz RAM then he will do the same on the 3200MHz one so all you are left with is a small bump in speed.

PS: yes I am triggered by people trying to intentionally fool me with fake or intentionally misleading arguments. but beyond confusing the name I only responded with things that can be verified by everybody.

You keep ignoring the fact I said multiplayer, not single player. Also check ryzen fps on gta v, black ops 4, escape from tarkov and quake, compared to intel. Is a massive difference. I have a 240hz monitor and wanted to play at 160fps to 200fps. With ryzen it was literally impossible in most games. It would drop frames for no reason. Since I switched to Intel, I didmt even need to overclock and here I am blasting everything at 200fps+.

Ryzen sucks for high refresh rate
Ryzen is too sensitive to ram speeds
Ryzen clocks are low combined with an already worse IPC

I5 9400F offers an objectively easier out of the box experience for less money, while having the same performance.

Meanwhile techspot/hu were basically the only ones saying 2600 is the winner vs 9400f. Wonder why...

 

[bluetooth fairy]

Meanwhile techspot/hu were basically the only ones saying 2600 is the winner vs 9400f. Wonder why...

I couldnt find any 9400F review, actually

 

[bluetooth fairy]

There's another sidenote to the article, I hope, the final one.

There were at least two different DDR4-3400 memory subsystems tested, while they all have the same name on graphic diagrams. Which is surely misleading.

As far as I remember from day-one 2600X TS review (and from other reviewers), you could get very small (1-2%) gains from Ryzen 2600X/2700X overclock while gaming, because Ryzen itself, being placed on X470 board with active Precision Boost 2.0, managed its frequency from 3.6 to 4.2 GHz pretty smoothly across number of active cores (not like the 1st gen Ryzens did). But here in Steven's review we could see even double digit gains in certain titles (15-16% at most).

Returning to diagrams, we would come to a conclusion that Ryzen had gained mostly from overclocking of processing cores, while i5 - from memory overclocking. Is that what TS really wanted us to think? Are we convinced by TS to think that way?

So, my questions are as follows:
* how much exactly was gained from tight memory sub-timings, and how much from all core upfilt to 4.2 GHz.

* what DDR4-3400 timings (and sub timings) were used with i5-9400F. It wasn't clearly indicated, how they were placed relatively to two Ryzen configs.

Thanks in advance, Steve.

 

[Puiu]

True. It's a biased review.

Last time techspot advocated amd because it's cheaper for similar performance, but now, even when the i5-9400F is cheaper, he still advocates ryzen, when the performance is similar, if not better in most benchmarks.

Except that only the gaming performance is similar. You still get a massive boost in multithreading compared to the 9400F. They did the sensible thing and recommend the AMD CPU because it just is better, 6 extra threads can't just be ignored. You can make that argument once intel adds HT to their i5 line.

 

[Puiu]

You keep ignoring the fact I said multiplayer, not single player. Also check ryzen fps on gta v, black ops 4, escape from tarkov and quake, compared to intel. Is a massive difference. I have a 240hz monitor and wanted to play at 160fps to 200fps. With ryzen it was literally impossible in most games. It would drop frames for no reason. Since I switched to Intel, I didmt even need to overclock and here I am blasting everything at 200fps+.

Ryzen sucks for high refresh rate
Ryzen is too sensitive to ram speeds
Ryzen clocks are low combined with an already worse IPC

I5 9400F offers an objectively easier out of the box experience for less money, while having the same performance.

Meanwhile techspot/hu were basically the only ones saying 2600 is the winner vs 9400f. Wonder why...

You are now ignoring the "streamer" since I proved that you were lying about him and now are just taking numbers out thin air. What a way to build a counter-argument. I wonder who is the one triggered now You are also giving names of games that are known to play better on intel and ignoring the ones that play better on the 2600x compared to the 9400F. Most of those games are fine anyway with very high FPS.

You argument boils down to this: because 9900K gets over 200FPS in one game you saw a streamer playing then you should buy the 9400F over the 2600X.

Your argument about "out of the box it is better" is also not in any way, shape or form applicable here because the 2600x is also good out of the box. You don't need to OC it or tweak the RAM. You will get slightly higher avg FPS with the 9400F (in the tune of 2 to 5%) but the same min FPS. Actually the min FPS on the AMD side is more consistent (unless you buy a Z mobo with fast RAM) which makes it better for you since you like to play at 144Hz.

In the end all you did not provide any RAM benchmarks to show the impossible "huge" performance difference and any gaming benchmarks.

All you did was talk and try to mislead people here. But unlike reddit or youtube, you will find that people here actually like to fact check claims such as the ones you are making.

 

[Roquen]

True. It's a biased review.

Last time techspot advocated amd because it's cheaper for similar performance, but now, even when the i5-9400F is cheaper, he still advocates ryzen, when the performance is similar, if not better in most benchmarks.

Except that only the gaming performance is similar. You still get a massive boost in multithreading compared to the 9400F. They did the sensible thing and recommend the AMD CPU because it just is better, 6 extra threads can't just be ignored. You can make that argument once intel adds HT to their i5 line.

And that massive boost in multithreading performance benefits who exactly? Your typical user with a gaming rig isn't doing productivity like rendering or 3D modeling or Folding. They're using their PC for gaming, web browsing, porn watching, and email. In those cases the 9400F is the clear winner. Even if you tried to make the argument that future games will use more threads, the 9400F still won in Far Cry 5 which makes use of 8 threads even though the 9400F was disadvantaged by 2 threads. The same goes for Assassin's Creed Origins (which wasn't tested on this particular article, but it was over at Tom's). It uses 12 threads and yet the 9400F is still able to pull ahead even with a 6 thread disadvantage. That speaks to future performance for sure.

 

[Roquen]

I would have been far more interested in seeing these two chips tested with 3000MHz RAM. That's the sweet spot most people are buying these days. I would wager that the 9400F performance would have remained close to the 3400MHz results while the 2600x would have fallen behind a little bit more at both overclock and stock.

 

[Puiu]

And that massive boost in multithreading performance benefits who exactly? Your typical user with a gaming rig isn't doing productivity like rendering or 3D modeling or Folding. They're using their PC for gaming, web browsing, porn watching, and email. In those cases the 9400F is the clear winner. Even if you tried to make the argument that future games will use more threads, the 9400F still won in Far Cry 5 which makes use of 8 threads even though the 9400F was disadvantaged by 2 threads. The same goes for Assassin's Creed Origins (which wasn't tested on this particular article, but it was over at Tom's). It uses 12 threads and yet the 9400F is still able to pull ahead even with a 6 thread disadvantage. That speaks to future performance for sure.

Really? Far Cry 5? That game is known to not benefit from many threads. It may use 8 threads but most of them are just for light stuff that they offloaded from the main threads.

As for what it can be used for, it is simple: faster game installs and less time playing with archives, easier time running multiple applications (for example Eve Online players like to run multiple clients, or like I said having a stream open in the background as you play), the ability to easily stream if you want (or to record while playing).

The biggest benefit of them all is consistency. You'll always have extra room to do anything your PC wants and in-game frame latency spikes are less likely to appear. You are forgetting just how bloated some windows installations can get 1 or 2 years down the line or how updates just happen when playing.

Why are you focusing just on the FPS on a fresh windows install while running only the game? This situation is the ideal situation that you'll never see in the real world.

It's a gaming PC not a benchmarking PC and also not a console as you try to make it seem to be.

FYI this is coming from an CS:GO player that has been playing CS since its inception with tens of hours under my belt. I know know all about high FPS gaming and high refresh rates. Anyone saying that they can notice 20-30 extra FPS when running at over 200-300FPS is just trolling you.

Do you know what I do notice? When the CPU goes to 100% when windows starts making random updates while I game (if I forget to turn them off) or when windows defender starts to scan something. Or when it takes forever to install the latest windows build.

Try to convince me with something tangible that I should not get the extra 6 threads and just go for an insignificant bump in average FPS that nobody can notice if you don't tell them. Especially when the 1% lows are the same.

 

[amghwk]

The biggest benefit of them all is consistency. You'll always have extra room to do anything your PC wants and in-game frame latency spikes are less likely to appear.

I tend to agree to this point.

 

[Roquen]

Really? Far Cry 5? That game is known to not benefit from many threads. It may use 8 threads but most of them are just for light stuff that they offloaded from the main threads.

Steve at Gamer's Nexus would disagree with that. He's been quoted as saying that Far Cry 5 takes advantage of 8 threads, that stutter is introduced at 4 threads affecting 1% and 0.1% lows, and that more threads translate to better performance.

or like I said having a stream open in the background as you play

That's about the only use I agree with. But you could do that on a Pentium G without any real cuts to FPS. That's not much of a multiple threads needed situation. Contrary to popular belief, not everyone is streaming their gameplay or recording it.

Why are you focusing just on the FPS on a fresh windows install while running only the game?

I'm not focusing on a fresh install at all. I am, however, focusing on just playing a game, and maybe having a browser open. That's what I do, and that's what almost everyone I know does. I think that's the majority.

Do you know what I do notice? When the CPU goes to 100% when windows starts making random updates while I game (if I forget to turn them off) or when windows defender starts to scan something. Or when it takes forever to install the latest windows build.

Why are you letting Windows 10 update whenever? Set a group policy for God sake. That lets you control when it's downloaded, when it's installed, and how often it tells you that updates are available. I have mine set to never notify me, do not download, and only check/download when I do a manual check. I then check about every 2 weeks on my own time.

The biggest benefit of them all is consistency.

Are we reading the same data? The 9400F had the same exact 1% lows in the 18 game overall result as the 2600x.

 

[Roquen]

I tend to agree to this point.

The data in the 18 games result shows the 1% low being an exact match, so I'm not sure why people are saying the 2600x is more consistent. Consistency is literally the same on average, and average FPS on average is higher on 9400F.

 

[Roquen]

So basically:

Buy a cheap B360 board + cheap 2666 ram + i5 9400f. No need for overclocks or bios tweaks apart from activating XMP. Low power consumption. No need for great cooler or PSU.

No, no. Definitely buy a Z390 UD. It's only a few $ more and it'll allow you to go above 2666 (which as we see in the data, there ARE tangible benefits). It will also allow an upgrade path to the 9700K or 9900K, both of which would not run without throttling on a B360 board with cheap VRMs/power delivery. Not to mention you wouldn't be able to overclock them. The build quality of the UD is also just better overall. The UD is only $109 right now, vs. $94 for the ASRock B365 board (so a $15 difference). Those are the only 2 chipsets to support 9th gen out of the box, by the way. B360 might need a BIOS update.

 

[Puiu]

Sorry my quotes got screwed up in my previous post and it would not let me edit. Here's what I meant to say:


Steve at Gamer's Nexus would disagree with that.

That's about the only use I agree with. But you could do that on a Pentium G without any real cuts to FPS. Contrary to popular belief, not everyone is streaming their gameplay or recording it.

I'm not focusing on a fresh install at all. I am, however, focusing on just playing a game, and maybe having a browser open. That's what I do, and that's what almost everyone I know does. I think that's the majority.

Why are you letting Windows update whenever? Set a group policy for God sake. That lets you control when it's downloaded, when it's installed, and how often it tells you that updates are available. I have mine set to never notify me, do not download, and only check/download when I do a manual check. I then check about every 2 weeks on my own time.

I've seen that article from Steve and it doesn't go against what I said.

You can't stream on a Pentium G unless maybe if you use the GPU encoding which looks ugly as hell compare to even low settings on CPU streaming. You game may be fine with not much FPS drop in-game but the stream will be a slideshow.

99.999999% (number taken out of my ... ) of the gamers don't even know what a group policy is. They don't even know that you can set your wifi as metered to stop downloads of updates. It's like they've seen Jesus when I tell them they can do that (it may be because of my long hair too ). Also almost nobody does "manual checks" they just the let the AV do its own thing in the background.

You are still not making a compelling argument as to why people should sacrifice so much multithreading performance just for a non noticeable difference in games.

I did a quick check on the prices for full PC builds and I ended up saving about 25-30 euros with the Intel system (the 9400F CPU is around 15 euros cheaper than the 2600x), but that's going with a low end mobo, the cheapest 2666MHz RAM I could find and the intel stock cooler. I don't know if performance will be as good as the one seen here and as you've pointed out 1-2% is important for gamers.

If your budget really is that tight then yes, the 9400F is a good purchase otherwise the 2600x just makes more sense. (I ended up making a more sound argument than most people trying to convince me here)

As a side-note I was surprised to find the 1600X at around 40 euros cheaper than the 9400F in most online stores I've checked, at 130 euros. It's much cheaper than even the 2600. When did this happen? ;D