CAD and gaming workstation - Ryzen or Core ?

[ankmanu]

Hello,

I planning to build a new Workstation PC for CAD use (mainly Autodesk Inventor, CATIA and PTC Creo), but I also want to game on the rig (modest gaming is fine).
Budget is 1000 to max. 1500€.

But even after reading through dozens of threads, I cant decide whether I want to go with AMD Ryzen or an Intel Core. On the AMD side, I'd go with an R7 1700, on the Intel side probably an i7 7700k.
The CAD programs don't use the multithreaded performance from AMD that well (as of now), but that's probably going to change if the software manufacturers adapt to RYZEN in the future.
The Intel Core series is pretty much a solid config, I think. Intel Xeon would be another option, but because I'm only going to use one CPU I think the i7 would outperform the Xeon E3 at a lower cost.

Another thing would be ECC memory, which is supported by the Xeons and the new Ryzens, not by the Cores. But after a lot of reading I think I don't need ECC support, because the build is only for private usage, not for business critical use.

The system should be as future-proof as possible (yeah I know, nobody knows whats going to happen in the processor-market...)

What would you choose - AMD Ryzen or Intel Core?

I created two parts lists as a sample:
Ryzen: https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/pTdnJV (GPU is missing here)
Intel Core: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/mWR4vV

Thanks for your help!

 

[Supernova1138]

As you've said, currently CAD runs better on Intel, and it's the same situation with games right now too, they aren't scaling fully across 8 cores and AMD's slower per core performance due to slightly slower IPC and lower clockspeed hurts performance for those applications. Unlike the old FX chips, Ryzen is at least close to Intel's per core performance, so going with AMD isn't necessarily a bad move if you're hoping for multicore scaling to improve in the long term. If you want the best performance for your applications right now, then go with Intel.

 

[ankmanu]

Alright, thanks!
Do you think the software developers will be taking use of the multithreading more in the near future? It may be a safer bet to go with the Intel Cores, right?

And what do you think about the parts I chose? (https://pcpartpicker.com/list/mWR4vV)
I may only take the actual i5 instead of the i7, but that's not gonna change much.
In case of the graphics cards I'm still deciding which Geforce card I wanna use (what is the best price/performance ratio? 1060? 1070? 1050Ti? --> I just need something for modest gaming), because maybe I'm adding a workstation card like a Quadro later on...

Thanks!

 

[Supernova1138]

Developers are improving multithreading, but it's happening at a very slow pace. People were arguing about games scaling beyond 4 cores way back in 2011 when Bulldozer launched and faceplanted due to abysmal per core performance. Now six years later, we've only started to see meaningful scaling beyond 4 cores and 4 threads in the past year or so for games. The Bulldozer chips are now completely obsolete so they don't really benefit from this, AMD decided to abandon per core performance at least five years too early.

Things might speed up soon as Ryzen offers more cores with adequate per core performance and is likely to force Intel to finally start offering hexacore chips in their mainstream segment after almost a decade of 6+ cores being locked to their expensive enthusiast platforms. That will increase the market share that would benefit from more multithreading, but it's still going to take a while for that market share to grow, particularly as there's still people going along fine with their i5 2500k from 2011 and the only reason they'd have to upgrade would be for newer I/O options or because their motherboard failed and sourcing a replacement is too difficult or too costly now.

It's probably going to be at least a couple of more years for multithreading to improve to the point that having more than 4 cores becomes massively beneficial outside of workloads like video encoding that already use as many cores as you can throw at it, and by then there will probably be better options on the market eg. higher core count mainstream Intel chips, and a more refined Ryzen hopefully without all these early release problems they have been suffering from.

 

[synphul]

There are several different cad programs but if referring to autocad I'm not sure if/when they will update to become heavily multithreaded or require additional cores. Autocad's been around a long while, the multicore i7 enthusiast cpu's and amd's fx have been around for 5-6yrs or better and not much has changed. Given how long they've had the option to take advantage of higher core counts and not done so I don't see them suddenly changing because ryzen was released.

Intel is currently given an edge in both gaming and autocad. Unless you're saving a ton going with ryzen, intel appears to be the better option. Programs would suddenly have to make a huge dynamic shift to make intel a poor performer. You're right, most people don't need ecc. People have been running without ecc memory for years and running a variety of demanding programs without being plagued by crashes or poor performance.

A bit of humor injected in this article but it covers a few aspects of ecc ram in cad workstations.
http://blog.grabcad.com/blog/2015/08/13/why-ecc-ram-matters/