News AMD Ryzen 7 5800X vs Intel Core i7-11700K: The Eight-Core Faceoff

[Admin]

We put Intel's Core i7-11700K up against AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X in a six-round battle of eight-core CPUs.

AMD Ryzen 7 5800X vs Intel Core i7-11700K: The Eight-Core Faceoff : Read more

 

[dalauder]

Nice article. It's VERY hard not to have AMD bias when you consider HOW MUCH their advantage areas are:

• Much cooler gaming/workstation room
• Definitely cheaper once you consider motherboard and CPU cooler
• Clear upgrade paths and likely one more CPU generation. Intel always changes the chipset each year or two. Seriously, I could upgrade this to a 16c/32t system for probably $300 in six years (with a Ryzen 6950X or something)! And then it would be awesome again!
• PCE-e 4.0 on Ryzen. If I had Intel, my current system would've already maxed out it's 4.0 access.

Then in every other area, they are the same...Unless you:

• Need integrated graphics
• Still have trouble getting RAM to work with Ryzen

 

[sizzling]

Nice article. It's VERY hard not to have AMD bias when you consider HOW MUCH their advantage areas are:

• Much cooler gaming/workstation room
• Definitely cheaper once you consider motherboard and CPU cooler
• Clear upgrade paths and likely one more CPU generation. Intel always changes the chipset each year or two. Seriously, I could upgrade this to a 16c/32t system for probably $300 in six years (with a Ryzen 6950X or something)! And then it would be awesome again!
• PCE-e 4.0 on Ryzen. If I had Intel, my current system would've already maxed out it's 4.0 access.

Then in every other area, they are the same...Unless you:

• Need integrated graphics
• Still have trouble getting RAM to work with Ryzen

I thought the 5000 series was the last to use AM4?

 

[Makaveli]

I thought the 5000 series was the last to use AM4?

The article touched on it.

We "May" see another chip with 3d cache technology but nothing has been confirmed from AMD yet.

 

[littlechipsbigchips]

Nice article. It's VERY hard not to have AMD bias when you consider HOW MUCH their advantage areas are:

• Much cooler gaming/workstation room
• Definitely cheaper once you consider motherboard and CPU cooler
• Clear upgrade paths and likely one more CPU generation. Intel always changes the chipset each year or two. Seriously, I could upgrade this to a 16c/32t system for probably $300 in six years (with a Ryzen 6950X or something)! And then it would be awesome again!
• PCE-e 4.0 on Ryzen. If I had Intel, my current system would've already maxed out it's 4.0 access.

Then in every other area, they are the same...Unless you:

• Need integrated graphics
• Still have trouble getting RAM to work with Ryzen

AMD is better for gaming , but they shot themselves in the foot when they did not release the same CPU with integrated Graphics . and I mean same CPU , with GEN 4 PCIe and 20 lanes.

their APU come only with 8 lanes Gen 3 PCIe . which is not good .

Many people who want more cores for productivity need the integrated GPU and more lanes for storage and cards ... and many people dint need fast GPU for productivity . but need all the cores they can get

 

[escksu]

• Clear upgrade paths and likely one more CPU generation. Intel always changes the chipset each year or two. Seriously, I could upgrade this to a 16c/32t system for probably $300 in six years (with a Ryzen 6950X or something)! And then it would be awesome again!
• PCE-e 4.0 on Ryzen. If I had Intel, my current system would've already maxed out it's 4.0 access.

AMD isnt any better than Intel....

AMD did the same for their chipsets....AMD originally refused to allow 400 series chipset to support 5000 series CPU and reverse their decision after pressure...

Both AMD and Intel has the same number of usable pcie 4.0 lanes. AMD has 24 (intel 20), but 4 are reserved for chipset. Intel uses dmi 3.0 (equivalent to 8x pcie 3.0)

If you think AMD has lots of PCIE 4.0, think again. All PCIE that is provided by the chipset goes through the same 4x link to CPU. So, if you plug a 16x gpu to the wrong slots, you are getting only 4x bandwidth and it shared by other devices.

Also, pcie 4.0 has nothing to do with chipset. The lanes come direct from CPU, but AMD has forbid manufacturers to release any bios to support 4.0 on 400 series chipset. Only 500 series can. Its not a technical decision, its a marketing one.

Btw, 500 series will be the last to support AM4 socket. 6000 series will not be on am4.

 

[Howardohyea]

these processors are so close it basically goes down to personal preference, whether you like Intel or AMD. The competition is excellent though.

 

[jgraham11]

Hey Toms decent article but I have issues with some of your conclusions:

Pricing and Value Proposition:. Your article does not articulate that this chip won't run properly on B560 MBs, they can't deliver enough power to get the performance that Tom's is showing in this review. This means you will need to purchase a much more expensive Z590 in order to get the performance specified here. This should be reflected in this part of the review but for whatever reason its not even mentioned. Meanwhile the AMD one will deliver full performance on even a B550 MB.

Features and Specifications:. Your logic doesn't really make any sense here. The AMD platform has better memory support, better PCI lanes and more of them. The only thing the Intel platform has better is the integrated graphics which consumers who purchase this for gaming would get a discreet graphics card making the one point for Intel irrelevant. So why didn't the 5800x win here?

Overclocking: The Intel platform saw a regression in performance overclocking by your own benchmarks. The AMD PBO was always better than without. Why did Intel platform get a point here?

I get it, AMDs chip are vastly superior and this is your way of making it seem like it's really alot closer than it actually is.

 

[Howardohyea]

Hey Toms decent article but I have issues with some of your conclusions:

Pricing and Value Proposition:. Your article does not articulate that this chip won't run properly on B560 MBs, they can't deliver enough power to get the performance that Tom's is showing in this review. This means you will need to purchase a much more expensive Z590 in order to get the performance specified here. This should be reflected in this part of the review but for whatever reason its not even mentioned. Meanwhile the AMD one will deliver full performance on even a B550 MB.

Features and Specifications:. Your logic doesn't really make any sense here. The AMD platform has better memory support, better PCI lanes and more of them. The only thing the Intel platform has better is the integrated graphics which consumers who purchase this for gaming would get a discreet graphics card making the one point for Intel irrelevant. So why didn't the 5800x win here?

Overclocking: The Intel platform saw a regression in performance overclocking by your own benchmarks. The AMD PBO was always better than without. Why did Intel platform get a point here?

I get it, AMDs chip are vastly superior and this is your way of making it seem like it's really alot closer than it actually is.

I don't exactly agree, at normal prices the 11700K is cheaper than the 5800X which offsets the more expensive motherboard.

Secondly, what do you mean by "better PCIe lanes"? PCIe 4 is all the same no matter AMD or Intel, also if you chose a B550 motherboard the chipset is limited to PCIe 3 just like Intel. Unless you have the cash for a X570 motherboard and every PCIe lanes count, but then that's an edge case. As to memory, you can always change it to Gear 1 to get lower latency, I don't see how hard that is.

Finally, overclocking. You'll definitely have to spend time tweaking the 11700K, or just do something like lifting the boost duration of the CPU, and it's just as easy as enabling PBO.

 

[King_V]

AMD did the same for their chipsets....AMD originally refused to allow 400 series chipset to support 5000 series CPU and reverse their decision after pressure...

This is disingenuous. This wasn't a refusal. This was, as I recall, an issue with BIOS space, and, I think there was some similar issue with 4000 series CPUs as well.

BIOS upgrades were offered, but they then give you a point of no return, where then board then can't go back to earlier chips.

But even if we did take you at face value... the AM4 socket supported Bristol, as well as the 1000, 2000, and 3000 series. When has Intel allowed anything even close to that? No, all they did was 2. The tick, then the tock. And that was IF the board allowed an update to support both. There are boards out there that will, say, support the earlier but not the later in a tick/tock cycle.

So, yeah, compare THAT to what we now have, Bristol, 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, and 5000 for AM4.

That's not even in the same ball park as "AMD isn't any better than Intel."

 

[jgraham11]

I don't exactly agree, at normal prices the 11700K is cheaper than the 5800X which offsets the more expensive motherboard.

Secondly, what do you mean by "better PCIe lanes"? PCIe 4 is all the same no matter AMD or Intel, also if you chose a B550 motherboard the chipset is limited to PCIe 3 just like Intel. Unless you have the cash for a X570 motherboard and every PCIe lanes count, but then that's an edge case. As to memory, you can always change it to Gear 1 to get lower latency, I don't see how hard that is.

Finally, overclocking. You'll definitely have to spend time tweaking the 11700K, or just do something like lifting the boost duration of the CPU, and it's just as easy as enabling PBO.

It would appear that you are taking two separate ideas in two separate paragraphs and trying to put them together. The comment about better PCI-E lanes refers to the X570 MBs having PCI-E 4.0 verses Intel's PCI-E of only version 3.0 from the chipset.
My comment regarding price:. Yeah I can't believe it, the Motherboard does offset the more expensive 5800x and they are about equal.
Your comment about overclocking was supposed to be making a point about the fact that performance is actually worse when Intel's 11700k is overclocked compared to stock. I'm really not sure what you are talking about as it does not relate to my comment.

 

[raycrayz]

Ugh, not a good review.

Case in point:
Author sees that the specs between these two CPU's are a tie, even though PCIe 4.0 on the Intel is utter crap, there's a latency penalty issue on intel due to RAM, Intel uses FAR more power, requires much better cooling. What are you basing the tie on, the PoS integrated video that Intel threw in? After this comment from the author "In fact, a quick look at the renders-per-day charts reveals that AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X is in another league in terms of power efficiency — you get far more performance per watt consumed, resulting in lower power consumption and heat generation." How the ^&$! is this a tie?????? Did you even read what you wrote?

AND WTF! You didn't put a little star next to the Ryzen for Application performance???? WHERE THE ^$&# have you been over the last 4 years? Intel has never performed better on applications than Ryzen.. ever! That didn't suddenly change. And there's ZERO commentary to support the figure.

 

[Howardohyea]

It would appear that you are taking two separate ideas in two separate paragraphs and trying to put them together. The comment about better PCI-E lanes refers to the X570 MBs having PCI-E 4.0 verses Intel's PCI-E of only version 3.0 from the chipset.
My comment regarding price:. Yeah I can't believe it, the Motherboard does offset the more expensive 5800x and they are about equal.
Your comment about overclocking was supposed to be making a point about the fact that performance is actually worse when Intel's 11700k is overclocked compared to stock. I'm really not sure what you are talking about as it does not relate to my comment.

I mean, the chipset uses PCIe 4. So? You need extra cash to use the X570 motherboard which puts the 5800X and motherboard much more than the 11700K and a Z590 in terms of cost. If you're a normal user who just have one PCIe 4 drive and GPU, then the B550's PCIe configuration is basically the same with the i7.

About overclocking, I have no idea where you got "overclocking results in lower performance". If you mean single threaded and single threaded only, you are correct. For multi threaded and gaming, overclocking the i7 gains more performance.

 

[raycrayz]

these processors are so close it basically goes down to personal preference, whether you like Intel or AMD. The competition is excellent though.

They're only close if you ignore the heat, the more expensive PSU, the more expensive fan, the higher price of electricity (over time which will be much more than the $$$ difference between CPU's), Intel's <Mod Edit> glue, and the thing that Intel had rammed UP the gaming industry to the point that they almost killed Windows gaming, Oh and the repetitive need to upgrade EVERYTHING to accommodate an Intel upgrade.

Oh and Performance. Intel has horrible performance vs the same Ryzen processor. Did you miss the handbrake benchmarks where Ryzen was rendering more than twice as fast as any Intl CPU, using half the power. I guess the reviewer didn't consider handbrake to be an application. or any of the other benchmarks that were used, which all showed the Intel CPU to be completely outclasses in efficiency and performance.

After that, sure they seem even.

They're not. The Intel CPU looks to be a FEW generations behind, they're not even on the same level or ballpark.

Really, there isn't a single benchmark there that shows the Intel CPU coming close to the performance of the Ryzen, yet somehow they're a tie?
NO, absolute BS.

It's like there were two authors to this story.

 

[Howardohyea]

They're only close if you ignore the heat, the more expensive PSU, the more expensive fan, the higher price of electricity (over time which will be much more than the $$$ difference between CPU's), Intel's <Mod Edit> glue, and the thing that Intel had rammed UP the gaming industry to the point that they almost killed Windows gaming, Oh and the repetitive need to upgrade EVERYTHING to accommodate an Intel upgrade.

Oh and Performance. Intel has horrible performance vs the same Ryzen processor. Did you miss the handbrake benchmarks where Ryzen was rendering more than twice as fast as any Intl CPU, using half the power. I guess the reviewer didn't consider handbrake to be an application. or any of the other benchmarks that were used, which all showed the Intel CPU to be completely outclasses in efficiency and performance.

After that, sure they seem even.

They're not. The Intel CPU looks to be a FEW generations behind, they're not even on the same level or ballpark.

Really, there isn't a single benchmark there that shows the Intel CPU coming close to the performance of the Ryzen, yet somehow they're a tie?
NO, absolute BS.

It's like there were two authors to this story.

Power you say? power-multithread.png (500×770) (tpucdn.com) 129 watts isn't that much of a difference, plus who ever runs Cinebench renders for 24/7? That's literally asking for the money to go down the drain.
As to PSU, any quality 750 watt unit would handle both CPUs just fine, even with a 3090.

Also what handbrake? The only thing I see is performance is on par with both chips. If you don't like Tom's Hardware, here's another review relative-performance-cpu.png (500×1090) (tpucdn.com) . If by "few generations", I'd like to hear you explain how the 11700K is 15% faster than the R7 3800X, almost 25% if you count overclocked performance.

 

[TerryLaze]

Power you say? power-multithread.png (500×770) (tpucdn.com) 129 watts isn't that much of a difference, plus who ever runs Cinebench renders for 24/7? That's literally asking for the money to go down the drain.

That pic is peak draw and of the whole system, pl2 for the 11700k is 250W, that's why stock and overclocked to 4.9Ghz are basically the same because they only measured the single highest point it ever got to.
In reality anything running more then two minutes on stock will drop very close to 125W average(cpu only) . 250 for one min +125 for one min, divided by two (minutes) would be 187W already.

Also what handbrake? The only thing I see is performance is on par with both chips. If you don't like Tom's Hardware, here's another review relative-performance-cpu.png (500×1090) (tpucdn.com) . If by "few generations", I'd like to hear you explain how the 11700K is 15% faster than the R7 3800X, almost 25% if you count overclocked performance.

No the thing here would be "if your highest concern is efficiency then you would run handbrake with QSV which would run circles around any ryzen at a small fraction of the power"

 

[jgraham11]

I mean, the chipset uses PCIe 4. So? You need extra cash to use the X570 motherboard which puts the 5800X and motherboard much more than the 11700K and a Z590 in terms of cost. If you're a normal user who just have one PCIe 4 drive and GPU, then the B550's PCIe configuration is basically the same with the i7.

About overclocking, I have no idea where you got "overclocking results in lower performance". If you mean single threaded and single threaded only, you are correct. For multi threaded and gaming, overclocking the i7 gains more performance.

Well no, x470 works just as well and generally costs similar to a B550 MB, I guess that's just another advantage AMD has over Intel where you can choose a different chipset and get virtually the same experience. Meanwhile for Intel's B560 MB, many border on false marketing considering how poorly they handle these 125watt processor that draw up to 250watt. In boost conditions.

So which is it? Do you know or not? You claim you don't know what I am talking about when talking about the performance regression with Intel's 11700k but in the next sentence you know exactly what I am talking about. Performance regression is not a good thing but that's what Intel is giving us.

Virtually every single threaded result is better when stock verses overclocked. It's just now with Intel's platform you have you have to switch to get the best performance, with AMDs chip, you don't, it's always better.

 

[Krugnok]

It's about time for an upgrade to my CPU / Motherboard. I have a 3090 and a NVME that are both PCIe 4 components. You mentioned the Intel chipset only allows one device such as an M.2 to use PCIe 4. If I upgrade to the Intel CPU will I only be able to connect one of them to PCIe 4 locking the other to PCIe 3?

 

[spongiemaster]

It's about time for an upgrade to my CPU / Motherboard. I have a 3090 and a NVME that are both PCIe 4 components. You mentioned the Intel chipset only allows one device such as an M.2 to use PCIe 4. If I upgrade to the Intel CPU will I only be able to connect one of them to PCIe 4 locking the other to PCIe 3?

It would depend on the motherboard, and how the PCIE 4.0 lanes are assigned. The overwhelming majority of boards will have 16 lanes available for PCIE slots, and 4 dedicated to one (usually top if board has multiple slots) NVME slot, so you would have all 16 4.0 PCIE lanes for your video card, assuming you have no other PCIE cards, and then 4 4.0 lanes for your NVME drive.

 

[Ratfish]

Then in every other area, they are the same...Unless you:

• Need integrated graphics
• Still have trouble getting RAM to work with Ryzen

I hadn't heard about a RAM issue with Ryzens. What are people experiencing? It was completely normal with a 5600x and Crucial Ballistix for me.

Thanks.

 

[TerryLaze]

Virtually every single threaded result is better when stock verses overclocked. It's just now with Intel's platform you have you have to switch to get the best performance, with AMDs chip, you don't, it's always better.

PBO for AMD is like the power limits off settings for intel, it's auto overclock that gets you the best single core clock possible, they didn't show any actual overclocking on ryzen, if they did it would have regression on single core speeds as well.
This bench shows the PBO equivalent and overclock for intel but stock and PBO for ryzen.

 

[husker]

Intel values their integrated graphics at $25 based on the CPU price with the graphics disabled. Sounds a bit underwhelming. Perhaps intel put this in just so that they could one-up AMD with some "feature" that nobody wants. Is graphics processing even something that is normally considered as part of CPU benchmarking? Maybe they could add a floppy drive controller with an I/O port and really teach AMD a thing or two.

 

[TerryLaze]

Intel values their integrated graphics at $25 based on the CPU price with the graphics disabled. Sounds a bit underwhelming. Perhaps intel put this in just so that they could one-up AMD with some "feature" that nobody wants. Is graphics processing even something that is normally considered as part of CPU benchmarking? Maybe they could add a floppy drive controller with an I/O port and really teach AMD a thing or two.

Intel has had an iGPU in every CPU they make since clarkdale in 2010, people don't care if the transcoding of a movie, or now face recognition/tracking or whatever other AI, is being done fast because of the CPU or the GPU or because aquarius is in the second house, they only care about what their system can do.
AMD almost ruined themselves in 2006 buying up ATI at an ridiculous price trying to be the first that would have an iGPU...they are still trying to get one into every CPU.

 

[Eximo]

Intel's <Mod Edit> glue

All the i5 and up for 11th gen are soldered. They all use the same 8-core die with 32EUs, just cut down and binned for non-functional GPUs and cores that didn't make the cut.

Unless you are referring the goop that holds the heatspreader on making the gap larger than it needs to be?

 

[spongiemaster]

Intel values their integrated graphics at $25 based on the CPU price with the graphics disabled. Sounds a bit underwhelming. Perhaps intel put this in just so that they could one-up AMD with some "feature" that nobody wants.

Dell probably generates more revenue selling PC's to businesses without a dGPU than AMD's total revenue. AMD is not even an option at the company I work for because we're not interested in office desktops that need an add in GPU.