The Worst CPU & GPU Purchases of 2019

[Nobina]

Articles like this remind me how out of touch/inexperienced reviewers can be compared to actual IT personal working in the industry, and this topics comments remind me what this site has turned into.

Nvidia and Intel are the best purchases, AMD parts suck and are the worst purchases. Better?

 

[amstech]

Nvidia and Intel are the best purchases

For gaming yes, there is no close second.
The 8/16 9900K Intel WIPES THE FLOOR with the 8/16 3700X/3800X.
The 9700K is as fast (for gaming) as Ryzens much more expensive flagship.
This is why the top 2 CPU's for gaming

Best CPU for gaming in 2025: these are the chips I recommend for gaming, productivity, and peace of mind

Fire up your rig with the best CPU for gaming. More cores, more clocks, more of everything that matters.

www.pcgamer.com

are Intel CPU's.
So, if were counting, thats 3rd place.
You go ahead and get the CPU that zips files fast and wins the Blender benchmark.

AMD parts suck and are the worst purchases. Better?

Exactly, thats why the 95% of Steam gamers use Nvidia at every price point, and Nvidia owns the discrete GPU share at 75/80%.

 

[Eugene Sterling]

For gaming yes, there is no close second.
The 8/16 9900K Intel WIPES THE FLOOR with the 8/16 3700X/3800X.
The 9700K is as fast (for gaming) as Ryzens much more expensive flagship.
This is why the top 2 CPU's for gaming

Best CPU for gaming in 2025: these are the chips I recommend for gaming, productivity, and peace of mind

Fire up your rig with the best CPU for gaming. More cores, more clocks, more of everything that matters.

www.pcgamer.com

are Intel CPU's.
So, if were counting, thats 3rd place.
You go ahead and get the CPU that zips files fast and wins the Blender benchmark.



Exactly, thats why the 95% of Steam gamers use Nvidia at every price point, and Nvidia owns the discrete GPU share at 75/80%.

Surprising that you didn't even include 9600K.

I'm sure that's just an incredible an investment when pitted next to the 3600.

Hey, whatever it takes to gain that 1-5% yield in gaming at the expense of diminishing returns, right?

Then again. You ARE just talking about gaming here so any mention of productivity purposes would've been thrown out the window.

It's as if gaming is the be all end all use for people building PC nowadays and literally NOTHING else.

 

[treetops]

For gaming yes, there is no close second.
The 8/16 9900K Intel WIPES THE FLOOR with the 8/16 3700X/3800X.
The 9700K is as fast (for gaming) as Ryzens much more expensive flagship.
This is why the top 2 CPU's for gaming

Best CPU for gaming in 2025: these are the chips I recommend for gaming, productivity, and peace of mind

Fire up your rig with the best CPU for gaming. More cores, more clocks, more of everything that matters.

www.pcgamer.com

are Intel CPU's.
So, if were counting, thats 3rd place.
You go ahead and get the CPU that zips files fast and wins the Blender benchmark.



Exactly, thats why the 95% of Steam gamers use Nvidia at every price point, and Nvidia owns the discrete GPU share at 75/80%.

The 3970x seems to beat the 9900k in gaming, sometimes? mildly, looks like it comes down to the game? Also PCGamer is trash. The 9400f is fine at it's price point, but to say to it matches a 3900x gaming... Get real

"in our gaming suite it's basically tied with AMD's 3900X." -9400f

"The Ryzen 5 3600 is slightly behind the 3900X when it comes to gaming and other tasks, but the emphasis is on slight for a reason—it's typically a 5 percent difference or less" -3600

 

[Shadowboxer]

Lmao did techspot actually list the fastest gaming CPU you can buy as one of the worst buys of the year? They really don’t understand the Enthusiast PC builders market if so.

 

[grimmash]

That's better ...

What, no AMD whiners? There's three AMD branded parts on this list ... can we get a little hate for that to even things out here?

The article is "worst purchases" ... not "worst products" - context people, context. The article even states why they chose the products they did ...

I'll bite. For a hot few weeks, maybe more, the 3800 X was the only CPU available at the MSRP. So while on paper it was not worth it, when the chips launched, you could get a 3800X for less than a 3700X, or at some points the 3800X was all you could get period. When you can't get the cheaper part or you can't get it at MSRP, the 3800X is a fine purchase.

 

[Ravalo]

So that means if we can get the Chinese and Indians to drop their populations down to a reasonable 300 million each we can save 300,000,000,000,000 tons of CO2 per year and I don't have to listen to the echo warrior garbage anymore. I think it's time the climate cult focuses on their real enemy. China and India populations, and then they can leave us to our comps and cars.

And to do that we would need to legalize abortion in those countries

 

[Ravalo]

Breathing puts out about 1000lbs of CO2 per year ... Just sayin'

... and in Canada (where I live), the vast majority of our electricity comes from water - there's no CO2 from electricity produced by hydro ... So your numbers don't apply to Canadians

Soooo my minecraft server would produce nearly the same pollution as breathing? xD

I guess it wouldn’t make that much of a difference in Canada if you use either the rx 570 or the gtx 1650

 

[Irata]

@JimboJoneson
Athlon 3000G is missing too.

Why should the 3000G be on the list ? I personally think that - considering the price - it is actually a rather good purchase. At stock it is good enough and if you want to you can even overclock it with the supplied hsf.

Can you get a better package for the money ? Probably not.

Now, is the 2200G a better buy ? If you have the money, yes, as it's a 4C vs. a 2C, however it also costs over 60% more and for that money you can already get a decent stick of 8GB RAM.

 

[haroldd]

I'm still bummed my 3900x CPU only boosts to 4.2GHz. I fell for the Ryzen hype.

 

[JimboJoneson]

I'll bite. For a hot few weeks, maybe more, the 3800 X was the only CPU available at the MSRP. So while on paper it was not worth it, when the chips launched, you could get a 3800X for less than a 3700X, or at some points the 3800X was all you could get period. When you can't get the cheaper part or you can't get it at MSRP, the 3800X is a fine purchase.

That was hardly a tirade ...

But you have to admit it was a bit pointless ... not as bad as the current NVidia spread of cards with 428+ SKUs in $2 / 3fps increments between models, but 3600 to 3700x to 3900x to 3950x would have sufficed.

 

[JimboJoneson]

I'm still bummed my 3900x CPU only boosts to 4.2GHz. I fell for the Ryzen hype.

Only boosts to 4.2? maybe its defective ... ?

But 3900x is a lousy performer across the board ... so I feel for you, you know, assuming that the performance would be good based on the 4.6 boost claim and all - bulldozer all over again ...

 

[JimboJoneson]

Why should the 3000G be on the list ? I personally think that - considering the price - it is actually a rather good purchase. At stock it is good enough and if you want to you can even overclock it with the supplied hsf.

Can you get a better package for the money ? Probably not.

Now, is the 2200G a better buy ? If you have the money, yes, as it's a 4C vs. a 2C, however it also costs over 60% more and for that money you can already get a decent stick of 8GB RAM.

TBH, I'm going to defend Noobs in this instance, considering his further post of thinking the title should be "most disappointing ..." as opposed to "worst purchases ..." which the article title is ... the 3000g is NOT a bad purchase at $50 bucks ... but it did get a bit too much hype before launch, making it somewhat disappointing. Its a solid chip for the price, but not a game changer, and didn't quite live up to the hype (which was a bit unrealistic anyway)/ Lets face it, quad is the minimum you want for gaming these days ... six core+ with SMT/HT is probably any serious gamers or enthusiasts best bet.

So is it a bad purchase? No.
Was it disappointing? A little.

 

[candle_86]

There's a 3rd low-profile 1650, the Asus GTX1650-O4G-LP-BRK. It comes with a nice backplate too.

And then you say it has nothing against the RX 570. Yeah, it's "only" TWICE as power efficient. 150W vs 75W TDP.

And to be frank, I'm getting really pissed that literally no one seems to care about power efficiency. Not even these days. We talk about pollution caused by coal and nuclear power, but somehow noone seems to realize that most important thing about reducing pollution is reducing power usage.

But efficiency? Nah, that doesn't matter. It's only for pussies. All that matters is price. What the heck.

To honor you I'm going to run my Pentium D 965, and my triple GTX 280 rig today

 

[RagnarokEOTW]

Someone has already mentioned the ASUS Low Profile GTX 1650 - and I'd add that I'm currently using a Gigabyte GTX 1650 LP OC. So clearly someone didn't do their research when they said there was only the MSI and Zotac low profile GTX 1650 models on the market.

I'd have loved to have bought the 1650 Super, but the choice to make it a 100 Watt card basically rules out the possibility that it'll exist in a low profile version for those of us with restricted space, and I specifically need an Nvidia card for some of the programs I use, so unfortunately it's looking like it's the best card that will be available for me for some time.

(And given that decent low profile cards can really hold their value on the second hand market, it would have been silly not to upgrade from my 1050 Ti. Although I'd normally like larger jumps in performance when upgrading, it cost basically nothing to do so).

 

[toooooot]

Coming from a 1080Ti @3440x1440p, buying a 2080Ti was the worst gpu purchase I have ever made; the tangible difference is nothing compared to going from 780Ti to 980Ti to 1080Ti.

TY for info, I will stay with my 1080ti on custom water then

 

[Enottingham]

I’d like to know why the AMD RX580 made the worst list.

 

[Julio Franco]

I’d like to know why the AMD RX580 made the worst list.

It didn't.