AMD Ryzen 2 vs. Intel 9th Gen Core: Which CPU Deserves Your Money?

[nobspls]

The best value is an overclocked R5 1600 at effectively $100 (after the $30 mobo discount). See:
https://www.microcenter.com/product/478826/ryzen-5-1600-32ghz-6-core-am4-boxed-processor-with-wraith-spire-cooler

There is no way a 20-30% performance delta translates to a 2x-3x price jump.
https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-Ryzen-7-2700X-vs-AMD-Ryzen-5-1600/3958vs3919

 

[Math Geek]

the article does a pretty good job of trying to give the good and bad of each way to go. the only thing i don't like is the going back n forth to the intel i9 comparing it to a much cheaper ryzen 7. for the platform price difference i sure hope the i9 is more capable. though you do mention that once resolution goes up, most differences go away. kudos for bringing that up.

i would also like to see a comparison of what a specific budget gets you. set a budget and see what you can do with an i9 and a ryzen 5/7. once you get the i9's mobo, cooling and so on in place, you'd be lucky to get half the gpu you'll get with the ryzen system of same budget. this to me is true "value" and "bang for the buck" and not, "well for $500 intel has something that blows away what amd offers for $250" i sure hope they do!!!!

 

[SkyBill40]

It's cute that you're calling the "value" metric a push. While Intel may have closed the gap somewhat (and only because AMD's beaten them over the head with a stick), AMD is still the value leader by a fair margin.

 

[Baumy15]

for the same price of a 9900k you can get a 2700, 16gb ram, and an x470 motherboard with a 120gb M.2 SSD....

 

[2sidedpolygon]

Yikes those are some biased benchmarks

 

[Karadjgne]

@jimmysmitty
BF5 also lists the fx 8350 too and in BF1 the 8350 was second only to the 4770k/4790k even beating the 4690k by a good amount , so old games aren't really as relevant as they are. You could take something like skyrim or fallout and be totally off the mark since both are still popular and neither one does worth a damn on any amd cpu pre-ryzen, but will play just fine on an old 2nd Gen pentium. So games will vary the fps, some more than others, some less, but in general the Intels and Ryzens are close enough in clock speeds and IPC that there's not enough difference to make margins like there was before when fx/Haswell were your choices.

 

[paul prochnow]

I see my 2700 65x Ryzen will hit 4400Mhz+ on Max Clock in CPUZ HDMON regularly when I run Destiny 2 in 4K gaming. As there is such a variety of TURBO numbers i think the numbers are real. Generally from 3.57Ghz base clock there is a range averaging the advertised Turbo clock. Is it possible running the extra base clock bumps the Turbo the same ratio?
BTW under Power in HDWMON max watts shows upper 50s watts.
My G.F. still has my i7-3960X that turns 4.4Ghz i personally ran S.A.N.D.R.A on. The RyzeN beats all i7 numbers except memory bandwidth where the i7 is a quad & the Ryzen has 85% of the i7's raw bandwidth.
BTW I put about $500 more into the i7 rig.

 

[Gadhar]

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet, but in your first chart comparing the chips and core/thread count you have the Ryzen 2600X listed as having 8/16 and it should be 6/12. If someone already mentioned this then forgive me pc master race gods.

 

[toesis]

in first graph it says 9600k is not overclockable i dont believe this graph is right

 

[thealmightyeyeball]

Have to admit: I would not buy Intel right now.
I just built myself a reasonably good system with an Asus Crosshair VII, 2700x CPU, an MSI Air Boost Vega 64, some Corsair RGB Pro 3200 RAM, and a Samsung 970 Pro 500 Gb m.2 SSD. It wasn't the cheapest, but it wasn't the most expensive neither.
It runs great.
The only bench I can offer is it plays DooM (2016) on Ultra with Vulkan at 200 fps at 1080p. The Vulkan puts OpenGl to shame.
Go AMD!

 

[richardvday]

Thing's have really turned around for Amd
A year ago all.you wouod have heard is how great Intel is. Seems like the old Athlon 3200+ days again. Lets hope they stay relevant this time.

 

[toesis]

honestly the 2600 from AMD is great and worth upgrading to me but i have a 4700k and it still does every thing i need.
so pc upgrade in 3-5 years. i normally upgrade with i can get 3x performance increase for a reasonable amount. by the time pcie4 is mainstream in 2021 it will be time for a upgrade.

 

[omischon]

"If gaming is what you do with your computer, and you aren't gaming at 4K, Intel offers the superior platform."

Engineering truth in journo prose. But thats exactly what it is. Intels consumer chips look good in benchmark and bog down in real world that is now 4k and soon 8k. I can do FEA, 3d Cad, video enc, mail, write, watch video aaannd game on my 1800x and I hardly ever reach more than 20% cpu. More cores are just better.

 

[uanbutitoy]

ERROR

 

[Puiucs]

kids, crappy biased articles like this happen when you don't do your research properly or are in bed with Intel.

 

[davor.jagec]

AMD Ryzen 5 2600X is 6/12, not 8/16...

 

[giovanni86]

AMD did us all a favor. Now they need to knock nvidia down. Nvidia as much as fan boy i am. They need to get knocked down. ASAP.

 

[rantoc]

It all boils down to what type of consumer you are really.

If you want the absolute best performance and are willing to pay quite obscene money for it - Intel is the choice.

If you want a good strong performer that does the jobb well enough - AMD by far.

Both sides have their strong sides and that's the reason i have mixed brands in my rigs depending on their usage scenario.

Generally:
Gaming at 4K even with strongest gpu? Wont make any noticeable diff due to gpu bottle-necking - AMD win

Gaming at 1440p is where it starts to become a tie but considering how much cheaper AMD is that additional save can be spent on GPU so overall better system perf due to cost diff between the cpu's.

Gaming at 1080p with strong gpu - Intel but the big question... is the little perf increase worth the 75% premium? Only the gamer can answer that.

 

[megaheart65]

Posted yesterday but i added links so i guess they were not allowed but here goes second time no links to prices, in Netherlands i9 9900k is €649 + 50 +/- for cooler is over €700, the 2700x is €326. Intel is more than twice the price so those MSRP prices here on this page are total bogus and not realistic .

 

[Soda-88]

> manually overclocking ryzen instead of PBO

 

[Kaz_2_]

this article is biased toward intel flavor. Intel msrp isnt real now selling for over 600 dollars... intel chip has security flaws another big down....i can list many reasons not to choose intel.

 

[G_IV]

Yeah yeah - let's totally ignore the thermal problems, price (Cpu+Massive expensive cooler + expensive mobo for Intel).

Let's ignore all that and give Intel a win. Cause that's the only way it can win. By ignoring the elephants in the room....by cheating!


And Toms is no better..

 

[barryv88]

The scoring system can't be taken seriously. Because at the moment, it's Ryzen that is stomping Intel hard when it comes to value in mind. That in itself should score Ryzen many points! A $400+ saving when going with a 2700X over a 9900K. And that doesn't even include the fact that some folks might need beefier PSU's as the 9900K spikes at 430W..... Ouch.

I'd gladly go the AMD route and spoil myself with those savings and get a rather solid 32" 144Hz 1440p screen. That already right there will lift my gaming experience another notch. Yea, suddenly now, AMD makes more sense for gaming.

 

[jgraham11]

Love the previous Comment: Why not just get a Ryzen 2700X, and use the $200-300 that you will save NOT buying a 9900k, and then you can maybe afford that 4k monitor, plus higher-end GPU, and then get to do 4k gaming!

Despite this fact, Toms still indicates Intel is a good value, smells like the Turing review "just buy it because why would you want to live a life without it"

Another example of Toms hardware losing credibility.

 

[KidHorn]

Intel only makes sense for high end servers that host multiple VMs. You may be able to squeeze a few more active VMs out of it. I've been a programmer my whole life and increasing cores is rarely useful. There are rare times when I can run tasks in parallel and can use more than one CPU, like maybe a bunch of asynchronous ajax calls. But 99% of my code has to be single threaded. Everything is dependent on the prior step. I guess if you have 10 things processing at the same time it helps, but that's rarely done on a desktop. Most running apps are just waiting for input doing nothing.