[SOLVED] Need Help! Ryzen 3600 or Intel i7-9700k (Have both on hand)

[Christof1617]

Building a new Gaming PC. I have an Nvidia GTX 1070 Founders Edition and will be pairing it with one of the two combinations listed below:

1. Ryzen 5 3600 paired with MSI B550 Gaming Plus Motherboard

2. Intel i7-9700k paired with Asus B360M-A motherboard

Thoughts? Opinions?

 

[Dunlop0078]

The 9700k is superior in most tasks, especially gaming if that what this build is for.

The 3600 may slightly edge out the 9700k in some workstation/productivity tasks and it is a bit more power efficient. But in terms of performance the 9700k bests the 3600 in almost all benchmarks I have seen.

 

[Loadedaxe]

Building a new Gaming PC. I have an Nvidia GTX 1070 Founders Edition and will be pairing it with one of the two combinations listed below:

1. Ryzen 5 3600 paired with MSI B550 Gaming Plus Motherboard

2. Intel i7-9700k paired with Asus B360M-A motherboard

Thoughts? Opinions?

The 9700k is a better gaming cpu, but frankly you wont notice that much of a difference between the two in gaming, the 9700 also has 2 more cores and is a little better at some apps. You would get more performance out of a Z390 board for overclocking though.

 

[dorsai]

Building a new Gaming PC. I have an Nvidia GTX 1070 Founders Edition and will be pairing it with one of the two combinations listed below:

1. Ryzen 5 3600 paired with MSI B550 Gaming Plus Motherboard

2. Intel i7-9700k paired with Asus B360M-A motherboard

Thoughts? Opinions?

3600 will be faster in most tasks outside gaming. While gaming with a 1070 any advantage the 9700k enjoys is gone since both are more than capable of feeding that GPU...if you were running a 3080 or 6800xt then the 9700k might offer some advantage. Plus the upgrade path is arguably better with AM4.

 

[Loadedaxe]

3600 will be faster in most tasks outside gaming. While gaming with a 1070 any advantage the 9700k enjoys is gone since both are more than capable of feeding that GPU...if you were running a 3080 or 6800xt then the 9700k might offer some advantage. Plus the upgrade path is arguably better with AM4.

No disrespect intended. this is not true. While the 3600 is a decent cpu for the cost, it still does not "outdo" the 9700k. It does compete in some areas, but it is not superior unless you factoring cost, and even then ...
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-5-3600-review,6287.html

 

[dorsai]

No disrespect intended. this is not true. While the 3600 is a decent cpu for the cost, it still does not "outdo" the 9700k. It does compete in some areas, but it is not superior unless you factoring cost, and even then ...
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-5-3600-review,6287.html

No disrespect taken. We are merely discussing the pros and cons of CPUs here. The 3600 has from the start been equal to the i7-9700k in application workloads...below is a link from 2019 showing workstation performance on real world applications were the 3600 and i7-9700k trade blows. It's generally understood that as time goes by real world applications are making better use of multi-threaded cpus so the 3600 should only continue to improve in the future vs the 9700k. Also as indicated earlier the OP will be gaming on a 1070 so will see no discernible difference between the two chips. Paired with a higher end GPU yes the i7-9700k is faster no question about it. I still feel the upgrade path of the AM4 platform is a big factor here since dropping in a 5800x or 5900x would be a great future move.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...deo-Editing-1522/#PremiereProBenchmarkResults

 

[mdd1963]

The 9700k is superior in most tasks, especially gaming if that what this build is for.

The 3600 may slightly edge out the 9700k in some workstation/productivity tasks and it is a bit more power efficient. But in terms of performance the 9700k bests the 3600 in almost all benchmarks I have seen.

+1!

 

[TerryLaze]

It's generally understood that as time goes by real world applications are making better use of multi-threaded cpus so the 3600 should only continue to improve in the future vs the 9700k.

You are already showing the differences of workstation level software...real world applications have the same limitations as workstation apps only that they often have much lower requirements.
There will always be some things that ryzen is more optimized for and other things that intel will be more optimized for, these things do not change over time.

We already reached the peak of multithreading years ago for whatever normal users are concerned.

 

[dorsai]

We already reached the peak of multithreading years ago for whatever normal users are concerned.

Multi-threading is always improving, especially in games, where more of them are now using all of the cores you offer them...it wasn't very long ago that most games barely used a quad core cpu and now we see games hitting all the cores a 5900x offers.

 

[TerryLaze]

Multi-threading is always improving, especially in games, where more of them are now using all of the cores you offer them...it wasn't very long ago that most games barely used a quad core cpu and now we see games hitting all the cores a 5900x offers.

Yes they hit all the cores..but no additional performance compared to less cores.

 

[boju]

Quads were done long ago. Far Cry4, Gta5, Doom 2016, Ghost Recon to name few I've tested ran much better with hyperthreading on my 2600k at 4.5 with 1080Ti in 1440p. Work load in these games were maxing the cpu with HT off. It caused fps drops and stutters.

9700k is ok but it's usage is already maxed out in high end games now, much like 8600k/9600k was already since release.

I would not go a hyperthreadedless cpu today going into the future in gaming. 6/12 thread cpu minimum, 9700k despite being 8 cores falls short of that. Intel went HT for a reason, that's to complete with Amd since they offered SMT on majority of their processor's which is becoming more and more beneficial in games.

Imo, 10th/11th i5 model will do you more favours now and later compared to 9700k would. If go to compare, don't look at maximum fps margins, that won't say much when you're actually gaming. Ya need to look for 1% lows, but even then, cpu usage isn't really gauged in percentages. For that, searching 9700k high cpu usage would give you user feedback results. A tapped out cpu isn't good for performance. Of course, this depends on game, which accounts most triple A titles of recent and I'd imagine upcoming as well.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

I’d go 3600 for multithreaded capability. As said earlier you’ll have an easier time dropping a newer cpu in there in a year or two. As far as gaming, I have a 1070 myself and it pairs up nicely with the 3600, which I also happen to have.

Only suggestion would be get a slightly better cooler for the 3600 as opposed to the wraith stealth they ship with. Even something like a wraith prism, wraith max, or hyper 212 would help it out at stock settings. I think in cinebench mine tops out around 73-74 with a wraith prism. If overclocking, then a higher end cooler is warranted.

 

[Christof1617]

I’d go 3600 for multithreaded capability. As said earlier you’ll have an easier time dropping a newer cpu in there in a year or two. As far as gaming, I have a 1070 myself and it pairs up nicely with the 3600, which I also happen to have.

Only suggestion would be get a slightly better cooler for the 3600 as opposed to the wraith stealth they ship with. Even something like a wraith prism, wraith max, or hyper 212 would help it out at stock settings. I think in cinebench mine tops out around 73-74 with a wraith prism. If overclocking, then a higher end cooler is warranted.

I actually paired it with a Cooler Master Shadow. It's a big cooler just barely fits my case.

 

[Christof1617]

Thank you everyone for all the replies. It sounds like the Ryzen 5 3600 will be my CPU. You are right, upgrading to the 5800 would be much easier and something I should look into withing the next few years.

 

[dorsai]

Yes they hit all the cores..but no additional performance compared to less cores.

That goes against every recent gaming benchmark I've seen...almost all of them show more cores equals more FPS unless you're talking about a mid to low end GPU so the game is GPU limited. High end GPUs show a dramatic increase in FPS as core count increases.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrnvVOiZ6N0

 

[TerryLaze]

That goes against every recent gaming benchmark I've seen...almost all of them show more cores equals more FPS unless you're talking about a mid to low end GPU so the game is GPU limited. High end GPUs show a dramatic increase in FPS as core count increases.

Your own video shows anything above 4 cores has at most like 20% difference in frames and that's at well above 100FPS for above 4 cores...

Also I have no idea how cache sharing works on ryzen and if disabling cores also disables the cache of those cores or not, because then the additional frames could just be because of the higher amount of cache and would have nothing to do with having more cores.

But even as is, the amount of FPS you gain is a joke compared to how much more computing power an additional core has.

 

[punkncat]

9700K

You need to budget a FAR better motherboard. Z series, and good power delivery.