[SOLVED] Does 3900x Even Make Sense?

DefinitelyNotTom

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Jul 20, 2017
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I had to decide betweem 3700x, 3800x, and 3900x. I ordered a 3900x, set to ship soon, but now am questioning my decision.

I don't game much. My thinking was my occasional video editing or future productivity work I may do (and I am a programmer, so who knows what programs I may use down the road) AND the fact that I like to keep a pc for many years before updating again means I should get the 3900x.

Well, now the more I think about it... even for productivity work there is no guarantee that the 3900x will do much better than the 3700x. Some programs are more gpu-driven, for instance.

And did you notice in the gamersnexus video review that in blender the 3900x uses freakin 140+ watts, while most other cpus were down under 100?

And in one game, the 2700x actually did better than the 3900x... so a previous generation cpu beating it.

Has anyone viewed benchmarks enough to be able to list me out some applications that will even do much better in the 3900x? I know 7zip will, but not sure what else.

Oh and one other thing... Someone made a good point that video editing with too many cores involved can negatively affect that quality of the video, so maybe 12 cores shouldn't be used, anyway! I could save $170 or could get the in-between 3800x and save $100. i don't like to OC, so even if 3800x is only an OCed 3700x, at least it's them standing by the work to get it there.
 
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Buyers remorse so soon? Haha.

You're already smack middle inside the pool, just try to swim a bit before calling it quits because the water is cold, mate.

While I don't disagree with your overall statement and wariness, I do not believe you bought a bad CPU by any means. You could make do with a 3600(X) or a 3700X/3800X, but you went with the 3900X because you wanted to have the best AMD could offer. Will you be using 100% of the CPU right off the bat? Probably not, but as a developer/programmer, you can easily saturate the CPU with a couple projects. If you'll be using Linux, head over to Phoronix for their full review. The 3900X is a friggen monster for the price. The announced 3950X won't be a good enough value to displace the...

DefinitelyNotTom

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Jul 20, 2017
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So you're a programmer, use VM's? more cores will be better. The wattage compared to a 9900k is much lower, be aware that the X570 boards are skewing results on power consumption as some of them are pulling a lot more power than others, and a lot more than the 470's, some of which i suspect will be fixed in a bios/firmware update.

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-ryzen-9-3900x/18.html
Nah, haven't used VMs at this point and in fact even for editing files I have been using a simple text editor instead of something more robust there. But I have no idea what I will progress into with it. Honestly, my gut instinct is I am going overboard getting the 3900x, but I waited so long to get a new cpu (selling my 2700x unopened) I hate to then just get the 3700x, which is abrely noticeably better than the 2700x.
 
Buyers remorse so soon? Haha.

You're already smack middle inside the pool, just try to swim a bit before calling it quits because the water is cold, mate.

While I don't disagree with your overall statement and wariness, I do not believe you bought a bad CPU by any means. You could make do with a 3600(X) or a 3700X/3800X, but you went with the 3900X because you wanted to have the best AMD could offer. Will you be using 100% of the CPU right off the bat? Probably not, but as a developer/programmer, you can easily saturate the CPU with a couple projects. If you'll be using Linux, head over to Phoronix for their full review. The 3900X is a friggen monster for the price. The announced 3950X won't be a good enough value to displace the 3900X, so if you're on the fence, you landed on the right side of it IMO.

Also, the CPU is not performing as well in most reviews, because of BIOS'es having issues with the tuning speeds. There's several reviews being updated with the new BIOS'es. One of them being Anandtech's. Not sure if Tom's will update theirs.

Cheers!
 
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