Ryzen 9 3950X on Good and Bad B450 Motherboards

[Julio Franco]

As we anticipated when we reviewed AMD's new flagship 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X, rather than testing it on the very high-end Gigabyte X570 Aorus Xtreme, we want to see how it does on budget AMD B450 boards. Maybe this combo doesn't make sense right now, but it will in the future as a potential upgrade for many AM4 owners.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/review/1942-ryzen-9-3950x-b450-motherboards/

 

[Dimitrios]

I use to be a GURU3D long time reader but they wouldn't dare to do something like this. I have been a reader for about 10-15 years and see how bias they get with AMD lately. Recent 2 article's has disappointed me and was just obvious one being the "beast" of the "new" INTEL i9 9900KS pushing the AMD Ryzen 3950X article & benchmark down the list when in fact the Ryzen was the newer article. We all know that INTEL chip was cherry picked to run 5GHZ. Running all cores at 5GHZ isn't new. How old is that INTEL architecture now?

Also the benchmarks on AMD GPU's if their tied with Nvidia the AMD cards are pushed below making it look like they performed worse if you're glancing it quickly. I can name more things and if you own INTEL stock don't be doing $hit like this, sell that INTEL stock and man up!

INTEL fanboys have to admit INTEL's greedy shady monopoly run business spotlight is gone for now. I have followed INTEL & AMD since I was a kid waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in 1990. Sorry INTEL your time has gone for now and some sites need to stop buttering INTEL and trying to make AMD look inferior & reviewers need to take that butter and dip their bread into it and celebrate. From me -----> Thank you Lisa Su!

This article proves how great AMD's ecosystem is , AMD is like GM's LS1 engine and you can drop it into almost every vehicle.

 

[yeeeeman]

Hopefully, those stupid "is a b450 motherboard good enough for 3950x" questions will stop.Or maybe not...

 

[Irata]

Hopefully, those stupid "is a b450 motherboard good enough for 3950x" questions will stop.Or maybe not...

Seems like the answer is "yeah, if you managed to buy a good one".

Now the final frontier would be the "too silly to bother with" A320 boards

Serious though, I would love to see how well a 3950x would work on a B350 board - that would really be the ultimate upgrade path - going from a lower end Ryzen 1000 series to a 3950X.

Edit: For the A320 boards, why not test the 3950x in the 65W mode ? That should actually work.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Can Techspot PLEASE stop huffing AMD's farts for 5 minutes? I mean, look at this phrase:

"What’s more shocking is that in late 2019, for almost all tasks the 1700X is a significantly better processor. Moreover, within another year or two there’ll be almost no new game or application where the quad-core Core i7 can hold a candle to the 8-core Ryzen 7."

That is a HEAPING load of bull. I speak as someone with an OCed 1700, a 3570k, and a 9700k at his disposal. The 1700, at 1800x boost speeds, is about the same speed as the 3570k at 4.2 GHz in multi threaded games, and significantly slower in single threaded games like starcraft II of sins of a solar empire. Even in multi threaded games, you feel that terrible IPC, with longer loading times and more hesitation. There is a reason the 1700 now cost a quarter of what it used to, while the 7700k still costs over $200.

I bought the ryzen 1700 aroudn the "OMG IT IS SO MUCH SMOOTHER AND MORE POWERFUL" meme. It's jsut that, a meme. Sure, the ryzen 3000s are a lot better, but it isnt like pentium 4 VS athlon 64 where AMD is magically super amazing, AMD has an advantage largely thanks to its massive cache size. It's clock rates still leave something to be desired, and you feel it in games that need it.

 

[grumblguts]

No one is going to spend £750 on the new 3959 to just throw it into a b450 board worth £120
No one is that stupid.
The hole idea is *****ic. It may work but no one is going to do it.

 

[veLa]

That's great and all, but I'd really like to see some X370 and X470 charts with the new chip. A lot of us don't care about PCIe 4.0 yet and don't want to upgrade our boards to new X570 models for what we assume will be 1-2% in the best case scenario.

 

[hahahanoobs]

lol@1700X better than a 7700K in 2019.
Why, cuz cinebench says so?
This Zen hype is out of control. So much praise for a company catering to the 20% and not the 80%.

 

[Irata]

No one is going to spend £750 on the new 3959 to just throw it into a b450 board worth £120
No one is that stupid.
The hole idea is *****ic. It may work but no one is going to do it.

From the article:

"The R9 3950X is a $750 processor, so pairing it with motherboards priced a little over $100 wouldn’t be considered by most right now. However, in the not too distant future you’ll be able to snag a second hand 3950X at a significant discount, that’s just the way it seems to go with AMD processors"

 

[Irata]

So much praise for a company catering to the 20% and not the 80%.

Care to elaborate ? Just interested to see what makes you come to this conclusion.

-> Assuming you mean that Intel caters to the 80% (of PC users) vs. AMD who only caters to the 20% because...

 

[Samuel Aponte]

Personally I'm not going to buy no more MSI motherboards. They tend to work well for the first year then came the problem. First faulty motherboards and when you clame the warranty they send you another faulty motherboard. So after you send the warranty shipping $80 box you get a faulty motherboard. Asus is more reliable components. If I invest in a motherboard I expects to be less faulty. I dont geave a dam if is hotter or slower I expect to be durable.

 

[hahahanoobs]

Care to elaborate ? Just interested to see what makes you come to this conclusion.

-> Assuming you mean that Intel caters to the 80% (of PC users) vs. AMD who only caters to the 20% because...

Because software that people use daily get no benefit from high core counts and slower clocks. For even a chip like the 3600, you have to be using it for something MT'd to justify it's slow performance performing day to day tasks like email, Facebook, browsing and uploading photos.

AMD's marketing does cater to the 80% that will see the high core count and low price and think it's better for day to day when it's far from it.

Wake me when AMD takes the day to day crown from Intel. I've been around too long to keep giving AMD passes for being "good enough."

 

[Evernessince]

Can Techspot PLEASE stop huffing AMD's farts for 5 minutes? I mean, look at this phrase:

"What’s more shocking is that in late 2019, for almost all tasks the 1700X is a significantly better processor. Moreover, within another year or two there’ll be almost no new game or application where the quad-core Core i7 can hold a candle to the 8-core Ryzen 7."

That is a HEAPING load of bull. I speak as someone with an OCed 1700, a 3570k, and a 9700k at his disposal. The 1700, at 1800x boost speeds, is about the same speed as the 3570k at 4.2 GHz in multi threaded games, and significantly slower in single threaded games like starcraft II of sins of a solar empire. Even in multi threaded games, you feel that terrible IPC, with longer loading times and more hesitation. There is a reason the 1700 now cost a quarter of what it used to, while the 7700k still costs over $200.

I bought the ryzen 1700 aroudn the "OMG IT IS SO MUCH SMOOTHER AND MORE POWERFUL" meme. It's jsut that, a meme. Sure, the ryzen 3000s are a lot better, but it isnt like pentium 4 VS athlon 64 where AMD is magically super amazing, AMD has an advantage largely thanks to its massive cache size. It's clock rates still leave something to be desired, and you feel it in games that need it.

You do realize that they provided a link to an article proving their position in the very words you qouted:

https://www.techspot.com/review/1863-two-years-later-ryzen-1800x-vs-core-i7-7700k/

It's not just a meme, Ryzen achieves a tight frame time variance.

No one is going to spend £750 on the new 3959 to just throw it into a b450 board worth £120
No one is that stupid.
The hole idea is *****ic. It may work but no one is going to do it.

Given that the 3950X consumes less power then the 9900K or 3900X, I don't exactly see the *****ic part of doing this. TechSpot has already tested thermals of B450 boards with a 3900X and a good chunk of them handle it well and by extension the 3950X. Feature set wise a B450 motherboard provides everything a majority of people will need so unless you need the PCIe 4.0 I don't see a reason not to get a B450 if the price is good. You are going to have to give me a reason besides pairing an expensive CPU with an expensive mobo.

Because software that people use daily get no benefit from high core counts and slower clocks. For even a chip like the 3600, you have to be using it for something MT'd to justify it's slow performance performing day to day tasks like email, Facebook, browsing and uploading photos.

AMD's marketing does cater to the 80% that will see the high core count and low price and think it's better for day to day when it's far from it.

Wake me when AMD takes the day to day crown from Intel. I've been around too long to keep giving AMD passes for being "good enough."

Um, you do realize the 3600 beats even the 8700K in regular applications right? Even single threaded ones

https://www.techspot.com/review/1871-amd-ryzen-3600/

FYI the 3600 is priced near the 9400 and 9600, which absolutely loose in regular application performance.

AMD already took the day to day crown from Intel, you just haven't been keeping up. Perhaps you can cite these "chrome" and "day to day" performance benchmarks you derived your opinion from eh?

Also, PCMark tests general application performance like web browser, office suite performance ect. The 3600, as mirrored by every professional review on the net, beats all the similarly priced competition from Intel:

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-5-3600-review,6287-9.html

I even gave you the benefit of the doubt by citing tom's, who just loves to sell Intel and Nvidia products. They even had to give Intel a handicap by adding another variant of the 3600 that runs slower then the stock config and that still beat the 9600k

 

[jbc029]

Because software that people use daily get no benefit from high core counts and slower clocks. For even a chip like the 3600, you have to be using it for something MT'd to justify it's slow performance performing day to day tasks like email, Facebook, browsing and uploading photos.

AMD's marketing does cater to the 80% that will see the high core count and low price and think it's better for day to day when it's far from it.

Wake me when AMD takes the day to day crown from Intel. I've been around too long to keep giving AMD passes for being "good enough."

In that "daily usage" scenario, you shouldn't be using an Intel processor either. You should be on an ARM processor, on your phone or tablet. Both AMD and Intel are overkill for all of that.

 

[Steve]

Can Techspot PLEASE stop huffing AMD's farts for 5 minutes? I mean, look at this phrase:

"What’s more shocking is that in late 2019, for almost all tasks the 1700X is a significantly better processor. Moreover, within another year or two there’ll be almost no new game or application where the quad-core Core i7 can hold a candle to the 8-core Ryzen 7."

That is a HEAPING load of bull. I speak as someone with an OCed 1700, a 3570k, and a 9700k at his disposal. The 1700, at 1800x boost speeds, is about the same speed as the 3570k at 4.2 GHz in multi threaded games, and significantly slower in single threaded games like starcraft II of sins of a solar empire. Even in multi threaded games, you feel that terrible IPC, with longer loading times and more hesitation. There is a reason the 1700 now cost a quarter of what it used to, while the 7700k still costs over $200.

I bought the ryzen 1700 aroudn the "OMG IT IS SO MUCH SMOOTHER AND MORE POWERFUL" meme. It's jsut that, a meme. Sure, the ryzen 3000s are a lot better, but it isnt like pentium 4 VS athlon 64 where AMD is magically super amazing, AMD has an advantage largely thanks to its massive cache size. It's clock rates still leave something to be desired, and you feel it in games that need it.

Comprehension isn't your strong suit I see. The quote talks about future gaming, not decade old games like SC2 (facepalm).

Anyway I'll save this comment for a 7700K vs. Ryzen 7 update in a year or two, should be fun to look back on

lol@1700X better than a 7700K in 2019.
Why, cuz cinebench says so?
This Zen hype is out of control. So much praise for a company catering to the 20% and not the 80%.

Hi Intel marketing team. ?

 

[NorySS]

Comprehension isn't your strong suit I see. The quote talks about future gaming, not decade old games like SC2 (facepalm).

Anyway I'll save this comment for a 7700K vs. Ryzen 7 update in a year or two, should be fun to look back on



Hi Intel marketing team. ?

Steve,
I respect your work alot. But I must say, you bring up the used Intel market quite a bit. Intel stuff just holds better value.
Don't hate the player, hate the game.

 

[brucek]

The assertion that "within a year almost all new games and applications will benefit from 8 cores" got my attention too. If that's true, 1) that is huge, seismic, industry changing news; and 2) then many of those games and applications must be in the active development pipeline now, and perhaps even available to discuss under the right terms.

I think this assertion merits an article of it's own.

As much as I'd like it to be true, I'm highly skeptical. Outside of the usual multi-threaded suspects, which have been the same categories of specialized use cases for years now, most applications for most users do very little with more than one core. That's because the fundamental issues - either that the tasks are just not suited for parallel computation, or that the programmer cost to achieve it exceeds the value of the solution, or that there is years of legacy code / plugins / compatibility issues that can not be solved by a single developer - have not changed in years either.

To be clear my comment has nothing to do with any specific chip or whose team I'm on. The issues are more fundamental than that and if there's reason to believe something has truly shifted, I'd like to know the evidence and what was behind it.

 

[Evernessince]

Steve,
I respect your work alot. But I must say, you bring up the used Intel market quite a bit. Intel stuff just holds better value.
Don't hate the player, hate the game.

I don't see what price over time has to do with performance but ok. I definitely don't see it as a positive either. A used 7700K is $260 on eBay. You can get an Ryzen 1700 for $130. If you are dropping $260 plus the cost of a cooler and Z class motherboard, you just wasted a lot of money. Considering a Ryzen 3600 beats the 7700K in everything including gaming, you can spend $130 less plus. Not including that you don't have to buy a CPU cooler and there are plenty of great used motherboard deals out there (or you could buy new too). Unfortunately for the 7700K, you need a Z class mobo and due to the fact that Intel changes sockets so much, you are going to end up paying more on the mobo as well for an equal quality board.

In the end you are spending anywhere from 1.8 to 2 times as much for a CPU that performs worse in every metric possible and is used. This is just a friendly reminder that just because something is expensive doesn't mean it's better.

 

[NorySS]

You forget the mention Ryzens weakness, and Intels strength. The 7700k can be easily overclocked to 5GHz. Easily surpassing a 3600, even with PBO enabled.

You guys keep crying about used parts pricing. The issue is supply and demand. The 7700k is still a great chip. Many many where sold, but not many are getting upgraded/resold.
Ao there's a ton of people on Intel's z170/z270 platform looking to upgrade.
Yes AMD chip is cheaper but there's also a mobo cost involved. Thus eliminating any savings.
What's sad is how many used 1st gen Ryzen chips are out there, being sold for dirt cheap.
Supply and demand.

 

[acme64]

How about a miniITX board for this sort of setup, any recommendations?

 

[Evernessince]

You forget the mention Ryzens weakness, and Intels strength. The 7700k can be easily overclocked to 5GHz. Easily surpassing a 3600, even with PBO enabled.

You guys keep crying about used parts pricing. The issue is supply and demand. The 7700k is still a great chip. Many many where sold, but not many are getting upgraded/resold.
Ao there's a ton of people on Intel's z170/z270 platform looking to upgrade.
Yes AMD chip is cheaper but there's also a mobo cost involved. Thus eliminating any savings.
What's sad is how many used 1st gen Ryzen chips are out there, being sold for dirt cheap.
Supply and demand.

1. The 7700K, 8700K, and 9900K all have marginal gains from overclocking. Just look at the 9900KS, which clocks all cores to 5 GHz out of the box, essentially emulating an OC. It's maybe 3% faster. That's more or less what AMD processors gain with PBO, except PBO is far more efficient at doing it.

Intel Core i9-9900KS Review

Intel launched today the "new" Core i9-9900KS processor which appears to be a pointless release, similar to the Core i7-8086K that we never bothered to look at....

www.techspot.com

2. No, the 7700K's high price comes from the fact that upgrade options are limited for those on older boards. The same as every prior top end Intel processor before it, people pay the increased prices because either they don't want to go through the hassle of changing platforms or they don't have the money. It's a lot more expensive to buy a new processor, motherboard and ram than it is just a CPU.

3. A 3600 can be used with B350, B450, X370, X470, and X570 motherboards. Not only do you have far more choices, they also encompess a far wider price range and include new products. The 7700K can only be used with boards that are used or out of production. You are sorely mistaken if you think an Intel motherboard for the 7700K will be cheaper.

4. Older AMD chips selling for cheap isn't sad, it's good. Not everyone is a PC elitist who need the absolute best. Being able to get an 8 core CPU on the cheap for young PC owners or those entirely new to the space is a blessing. You may not consider it but those on the lower end of the PC totem poll are a very important part of the PC ecosystem. The bigger the PC market, the more devs will cater to it in addition to people willing to take the risk of making their own game for the market.

The assertion that "within a year almost all new games and applications will benefit from 8 cores" got my attention too. If that's true, 1) that is huge, seismic, industry changing news; and 2) then many of those games and applications must be in the active development pipeline now, and perhaps even available to discuss under the right terms.

I think this assertion merits an article of it's own.

As much as I'd like it to be true, I'm highly skeptical. Outside of the usual multi-threaded suspects, which have been the same categories of specialized use cases for years now, most applications for most users do very little with more than one core. That's because the fundamental issues - either that the tasks are just not suited for parallel computation, or that the programmer cost to achieve it exceeds the value of the solution, or that there is years of legacy code / plugins / compatibility issues that can not be solved by a single developer - have not changed in years either.

To be clear my comment has nothing to do with any specific chip or whose team I'm on. The issues are more fundamental than that and if there's reason to believe something has truly shifted, I'd like to know the evidence and what was behind it.

I did the work:

The 1800X gained significant ground, especially in the case of 1% lows.

FYI most game engines have multi-threading tools built in like Unity. This isn't a conversation of when games take advantage of 6 or more cores, many of them already do. Given that Intel is going from an 8 core to a 10 core mainstream processor I expect upcoming games to take advantage of the additional cores more and more. If we assume the current trajectory continues, I expect 8 cores will be mainsteam in another 2 years and some games will start using more then 8 cores. Then again 8 cores being mainstream isn't that big of a jump given 6 cores at $200 is already mainstream.

 

[brucek]

Wow, that's interesting stuff. Thank you for taking the time to do that. I'm still having trouble matching that up to my intuition/experience that most of my gaming has been GPU vs. CPU bound, and that the cpu meters I often keep up on a 2nd display rarely show much motion on more than a couple cores. Still consider me intrigued and wanting to dig in more.

 

[Irata]

Because software that people use daily get no benefit from high core counts and slower clocks. For even a chip like the 3600, you have to be using it for something MT'd to justify it's slow performance performing day to day tasks like email, Facebook, browsing and uploading photos.

AMD's marketing does cater to the 80% that will see the high core count and low price and think it's better for day to day when it's far from it.

Here's where the "Only Sith think in absolutes" quote would apply

There is not just slow and fast, there is also slower and faster. Just using absolutes would be like comparing two cars - one does 0-60 in 4 seconds, the other in 4.5 - and then calling the one that needs 4.5 seconds "slow". That's just plain...not very smart. Now, if one did it in 4 and the other in 14, "slow" would be correct.

Your mention of "day to day tasks that matter" sound very much like Intel's recent marketing line after they were losing badly on benchmarks / apps that they championed not too long ago.

As for getting a top of the line CPU to upload photos or browse the web...a lower end CPU, even a two core, will be just fine, but you will notice the difference when you try to do several things at once (or Windows is installing updates while you surf the web).

That's where imho the strong point of multi core CPU lies (ideally with a multi monitor set up) - you needn't worry about your system becoming unresponsive or tasks slow even when running multiple tasks at the same time. Better I/O helps here, as well.

As an example, my kid would like to game while recording/streaming game play, having a browser window with Youtube open (to have something to do while waiting to rejoin the game in case his character gets fragged) and running discord. Then there's the various background apps and processes that also run on Windows.

Imho, this multi-tasking aspect is not really benchmarked / tested much. and it would really interest me how the different core / thread combinations work. I just remember one test a while ago which compared gaming and simultaneously streaming on a 4C/8T and 8C/16T CPU - you could basically forget doing this on the 4C without noticeable fps loss even at low quality video settings.

But - that is not for everyone, so really it depends on ones use case.

 

[hahahanoobs]

Here's where the "Only Sith think in absolutes" quote would apply

There is not just slow and fast, there is also slower and faster. Just using absolutes would be like comparing two cars - one does 0-60 in 4 seconds, the other in 4.5 - and then calling the one that needs 4.5 seconds "slow". That's just plain...not very smart. Now, if one did it in 4 and the other in 14, "slow" would be correct.

Your mention of "day to day tasks that matter" sound very much like Intel's recent marketing line after they were losing badly on benchmarks / apps that they championed not too long ago.

As for getting a top of the line CPU to upload photos or browse the web...a lower end CPU, even a two core, will be just fine, but you will notice the difference when you try to do several things at once (or Windows is installing updates while you surf the web).

That's where imho the strong point of multi core CPU lies (ideally with a multi monitor set up) - you needn't worry about your system becoming unresponsive or tasks slow even when running multiple tasks at the same time. Better I/O helps here, as well.

As an example, my kid would like to game while recording/streaming game play, having a browser window with Youtube open (to have something to do while waiting to rejoin the game in case his character gets fragged) and running discord. Then there's the various background apps and processes that also run on Windows.

Imho, this multi-tasking aspect is not really benchmarked / tested much. and it would really interest me how the different core / thread combinations work. I just remember one test a while ago which compared gaming and simultaneously streaming on a 4C/8T and 8C/16T CPU - you could basically forget doing this on the 4C without noticeable fps loss even at low quality video settings.

But - that is not for everyone, so really it depends on ones use case.

8+ cores are for the minority...
AMD's lack of sub $200 Ryzen chips speaks volumes. Tells me Zen is not worth the time with anything fewer than 12 threads.

 

[Irata]

8+ cores are for the minority...
AMD's lack of sub $200 Ryzen chips speaks volumes. Tells me Zen is not worth the time with anything fewer than 12 threads.

What lack ? You have both Zen 2000 chips as well as Ryzen based APU. The Athlon 3000G starts at $49 including an HSF. So there's plenty to chose from.

The Dali APU is rumored to start at 2 cores and may be released next year.