Quad-core vs. 6-core vs. 8-core Performance Question

[mikeynavy1976]

Recent builder of a i7-7700K (z270 chipset and 2666 MHz DDR4) system. Obviously, all of the great Ryzen 1700/1700x press has me curious...and possibly concerned.

- Single-core benchmarks have Intel still leading while multi-core/threaded benchmarks have AMD leading. Gaming seems to be a toss-up at the moment...with slight lead to the i7

Aside from graphics design apps and doing a lot of productivity like encoding or something, what types of apps are anticipated to use 6 or 8-cores and their corresponding 12 or 16 threads? Seems great on paper but will you ever see the true possibilities in a normal desktop environment?

I guess my concern is how long my i7-7700K will remain seen as a powerful processor? It seems that the only thing holding Ryzen back is that most applications and games don't take advantage of multiple cores (which is why i3 and i5 are still very popular).

 

[rhysiam]

So most "normal" desktop workloads like MS Office, browsing the Internet and watching streamed content aren't CPU bound at all, so it doesn't really many.
Many (though not all) productivity applications and things like encoding/transcoding already leverage multiple threads and thus favour an 8/16 CPU over Intel's highly clocked 4/8 CPUs. I'd expect these apps to continue to gradually make better use of additional cores over time.

The last area then is gaming. CPU limited gaming actually favours the i7 by quite a bit. We have to introduce some slightly unusual use-cases to expose the extent of the difference, like using a 1080ti for 1080P gaming, but there is a consistent and often quite large difference in frame rates between Ryzen and a modern i7 under those situations, especially when the i7s are OC'd.
While I expect the gap to close over time, as games are better optimised for the Ryzen architecture and make better use of additional threads, I expect the 7700K to remain the better CPU for pure gaming.

i5s I think are a different story. 2 years ago for people considering pure gaming would be told to get an i5, as i7s were more expensive and didn't offer any better performance. Now we're seeing an i7 beating a similarly clocked i5 in a large percentage of new games, demonstrating that modern games are effectively using more than 4 threads. That's taken a long time though, and large percentages of games aren't just going to start utilising 12/16 threads any time soon IMHO.

 

[atljsf]

i7 already is not seen as a powerfull processor, epecialy talking about price vs performance

not much apps really need more than 2 cores, for example, compress or decompress a file will use many cores but how often do you use 7zip to do that task?

video encoding as you say uses as many cores as there are

image edition could use many cores too

excel, doesn't use more than 2 cores really

some web browsers will use 2 cores, under load ideally would use more but on most cases they just use a bunch of ram and dedicate into using one page and lots of ram for make it work with one or two cores

multitasking this days means more leave the pc use as many cores as there are while you use a bunch of apps trying to find time on the cpu to work fast

for most users 1 or 2 cores are really more than enough

 

[mikeynavy1976]

Thanks. Would you ever notice a difference in normal desktop apps... like web browsing...or booting of OS?

 

[atljsf]

i had a amd athlon 5350, that is a cpu for tablets and cheap laptops, on a desktop, with the ssd i got 17 seconds loading windows 10

i changed to a cpu which is double fast in terms of cache, bus, clock speed, i get 15 seconds booting windows

for web browsing is quite similar, a bit smoother but as fast as the slow one

sometimes is more important to have a fast ssd and lots of ram than a big cpu

i confirmed that two years ago with a atom tablet i bought, it had 2 gbs of ram, a slow atom and a cheap emmc, the slow cheap version of ssd, it was almost that fast loading windows, 20 seconds or less

that atom was used on some smartphones, that gives you a idea of how importatn is a fast ssd and fast ram, that thin had only 2 gbs of ram, shared with the gpu of course

so, if you want speed loading apps or loading windows, ssd is what you need

for web browsing i find slow chrome, for me is faster fitrefox, others will disagree

other tasks will depend on the ssd and ram

very few will dpeend really on cpu only as mentioned before

it all depends on what you do daily and what hardware you have now, the changes you can make and how expensive they are, if it is easier to buy a new machine or just add or change some parts

 

[synphul]

It really depends on the program and a users needs like anything else. Do you cook food and if so are you cooking for a large family or just 1 or 2 people? If only a couple of people then you don't need some massive cooking pot like they use in a cafeteria to boil water for pasta or you'll have 1/2" of water on the bottom. Likewise if you have a larger family of 6-10 people or more you're going to need something more than 1qt pot or pan.

Ryzen 1700 and 1800 are enthusiast type cpu's or workstation type hardware for folks who need them. People who do a lot of video encoding for instance. It's not designed to become the end all be all one size fits all so computing needs to use a ton of cores and threads now. If you have a need for the multitude of cores, great. If not there are other options. Just like the cpu's they compete against, the intel 6900k. Those are designed for the average gamer or person watching youtube and browsing the web either. That's like getting a dumptruck to go grocery shopping.

Both amd and intel have had 6 and 8 core cpu's, intel has had 6c/12t and 8c/16t cpu's for years. If it were 'needed' for the vast majority of things then the athlon x4 cpu's, g series pentiums, i3's, i5's, fx 4xxx etc would all have been made obsolete by now. Not every program needs heavily threaded multicore cpu's. Many office programs don't. Photoshop and illustrator don't. Cad doesn't. Even some situations where multicore would be a benefit they're employing gpgpu processing, offloading the work to the gpu. Not because they had no other choice but because when it comes to some tasks like raytracing gpu's are multiple times faster than even 8c/16t cpu's at around 3-15 times faster.

Some games do benefit from higher core or thread counts. Not all games are the same though and plenty of games play just fine with a limited number of cores. Are they supposed to change everything they do simply to justify a hardware company's choice to pack a bunch of cores together? That's like shifting from 1lb packages of hamburger or gallon size bottles of detergent because the car companies have moved into bigger and bigger 4x4 pickup trucks. Should hamburger now be sold in 50lb packages and detergent be sold in 55gal drums as well as parking lots tore up and replaced with rocky dirt patches to justify using 4x4 pickup trucks in the city?

Honestly I don't see that happening and making hardware unnecessarily bloated or complex to justify the hardware is a bit of putting the cart before the horse. The hardware should support the software, not the other way around. Multitasking can be a good candidate for high core/thread counts but that's more geared toward a niche of users. Streaming live gameplay to the internet sites like twitch is becoming more popular but not every gamer streams.

Some folks want to jump on the pc for an hour or two and in that time they want to convert their music collection from raw format to mp3's while gaming, while streaming that gameplay to twitch while encoding their latest vacation video all at the same time. Others will be content to game or check their email or browse pinterest. It's good to have options and there's a place for dual core, quad core, hex and octo core cpu's but one shouldn't replace the other. If that were the case what are you going to tell middle aged people who use email and social media to keep in touch with family when they need a new pc? Sorry, no more quad cores. Now you have to spend $350-600+ on just a cpu for a billion cores because little timmy likes to twitch and that dictated the entire market.

You have to consider how you will be using your pc and what will benefit you. Overbuying in terms of performance for the purposes of future proofing rarely works out well. Much like platforms the past several years have supported 32-64gb of ram or more. How many people out of pc owners actually have 32gb or 64gb of ram? Out of those who do, how many of those people are actually benefiting from it over say 8 or 16gb of ram? Options are nice but don't necessarily dictate need as a minimum baseline.

My needs don't correspond with everyone else's needs but I know how I use my pc. I use a 'plain' quad core cpu. I guarantee other than the rare 1 or 2% of the time I might encode a video if I had an 8c/16t or 10c/20t cpu it would go largely unused the other 98% of the time. Not only that I'd be out $500-1000 instead of $200. Waiting on software to adopt the demands needed to validate high core/thread count cpu's could potentially be a roll of the dice. Large shifts generally take time, 64bit processors were around for quite some time before there was much in the way of 64bit programs to make use of it. It took browsers years before 64bit options were available.

Dx12 has been available for years and anticipated before win10 and dx12 support came to existence almost 2yrs ago. It's yet to take the gaming market by storm. There are even multiple articles from a couple months ago q1 of 2017 entitled "Where's all the Direct X 12 games?" and "The forgotten API: just what is going on with DX12?". Out of the handful of dx12 games only a few are pure dx12 from the ground up. The others have some dx12 patches that allow some of the features to work but not all.

TL;DR -
Just examples of large shifts in tech that illustrates the time it takes to actually become mainstream. In short ryzen has it's place. The 1700/1800 series weren't meant to be the new defacto desktop standard or minimum requirement, they're competition to existing intel enthusiast prosumer chips that also didn't set the minimum standard for many pc tasks including gaming. For other more general or basic needs there's ryzen 5 and eventually ryzen 3. I wouldn't be overly concerned about the 7700k being obsolete any time in the near future.

 

[The Original Ralph]

synphul said it with "It really depends on the program"

I do quite a bit of video rendering. One program (Handshake is a core hog). Rendering the same video on one of my computers (i7-4790 w/4 cores) takes 35-42 minutes. Rendering it on another computer running an i7-5960X w/ 8 cores takes 13-16 minutes. The 4790 cpu will be showing 98-100% load or usage, while the 5960X will be showing 92-96% load.

Another program isn't a core hog and the same file takes nearly identical times on either computer.

I'd check the benchmark tests - some here on tom's show the same CPUs being compared running different programs - depending on your software, you may get a hint of what to expect. Otherwise, you want to talk to your software supplier to see what they say, ie whether their software responds to multi-cores

fwiw

 

[mikeynavy1976]

All...thanks for the feedback. For "desktop" use, it looks like the 7700k will be solid for a while. That was my main concern.

 

[Bruno Vincent]

It really depends on the program and a users needs like anything else. Do you cook food and if so are you cooking for a large family or just 1 or 2 people? If only a couple of people then you don't need some massive cooking pot like they use in a cafeteria to boil water for pasta or you'll have 1/2" of water on the bottom. Likewise if you have a larger family of 6-10 people or more you're going to need something more than 1qt pot or pan.

Ryzen 1700 and 1800 are enthusiast type cpu's or workstation type hardware for folks who need them. People who do a lot of video encoding for instance. It's not designed to become the end all be all one size fits all so computing needs to use a ton of cores and threads now. If you have a need for the multitude of cores, great. If not there are other options. Just like the cpu's they compete against, the intel 6900k. Those are designed for the average gamer or person watching youtube and browsing the web either. That's like getting a dumptruck to go grocery shopping.

Both amd and intel have had 6 and 8 core cpu's, intel has had 6c/12t and 8c/16t cpu's for years. If it were 'needed' for the vast majority of things then the athlon x4 cpu's, g series pentiums, i3's, i5's, fx 4xxx etc would all have been made obsolete by now. Not every program needs heavily threaded multicore cpu's. Many office programs don't. Photoshop and illustrator don't. Cad doesn't. Even some situations where multicore would be a benefit they're employing gpgpu processing, offloading the work to the gpu. Not because they had no other choice but because when it comes to some tasks like raytracing gpu's are multiple times faster than even 8c/16t cpu's at around 3-15 times faster.

Some games do benefit from higher core or thread counts. Not all games are the same though and plenty of games play just fine with a limited number of cores. Are they supposed to change everything they do simply to justify a hardware company's choice to pack a bunch of cores together? That's like shifting from 1lb packages of hamburger or gallon size bottles of detergent because the car companies have moved into bigger and bigger 4x4 pickup trucks. Should hamburger now be sold in 50lb packages and detergent be sold in 55gal drums as well as parking lots tore up and replaced with rocky dirt patches to justify using 4x4 pickup trucks in the city?

Honestly I don't see that happening and making hardware unnecessarily bloated or complex to justify the hardware is a bit of putting the cart before the horse. The hardware should support the software, not the other way around. Multitasking can be a good candidate for high core/thread counts but that's more geared toward a niche of users. Streaming live gameplay to the internet sites like twitch is becoming more popular but not every gamer streams.

Some folks want to jump on the pc for an hour or two and in that time they want to convert their music collection from raw format to mp3's while gaming, while streaming that gameplay to twitch while encoding their latest vacation video all at the same time. Others will be content to game or check their email or browse pinterest. It's good to have options and there's a place for dual core, quad core, hex and octo core cpu's but one shouldn't replace the other. If that were the case what are you going to tell middle aged people who use email and social media to keep in touch with family when they need a new pc? Sorry, no more quad cores. Now you have to spend $350-600+ on just a cpu for a billion cores because little timmy likes to twitch and that dictated the entire market.

You have to consider how you will be using your pc and what will benefit you. Overbuying in terms of performance for the purposes of future proofing rarely works out well. Much like platforms the past several years have supported 32-64gb of ram or more. How many people out of pc owners actually have 32gb or 64gb of ram? Out of those who do, how many of those people are actually benefiting from it over say 8 or 16gb of ram? Options are nice but don't necessarily dictate need as a minimum baseline.

My needs don't correspond with everyone else's needs but I know how I use my pc. I use a 'plain' quad core cpu. I guarantee other than the rare 1 or 2% of the time I might encode a video if I had an 8c/16t or 10c/20t cpu it would go largely unused the other 98% of the time. Not only that I'd be out $500-1000 instead of $200. Waiting on software to adopt the demands needed to validate high core/thread count cpu's could potentially be a roll of the dice. Large shifts generally take time, 64bit processors were around for quite some time before there was much in the way of 64bit programs to make use of it. It took browsers years before 64bit options were available.

Dx12 has been available for years and anticipated before win10 and dx12 support came to existence almost 2yrs ago. It's yet to take the gaming market by storm. There are even multiple articles from a couple months ago q1 of 2017 entitled "Where's all the Direct X 12 games?" and "The forgotten API: just what is going on with DX12?". Out of the handful of dx12 games only a few are pure dx12 from the ground up. The others have some dx12 patches that allow some of the features to work but not all.

TL;DR -
Just examples of large shifts in tech that illustrates the time it takes to actually become mainstream. In short ryzen has it's place. The 1700/1800 series weren't meant to be the new defacto desktop standard or minimum requirement, they're competition to existing intel enthusiast prosumer chips that also didn't set the minimum standard for many pc tasks including gaming. For other more general or basic needs there's ryzen 5 and eventually ryzen 3. I wouldn't be overly concerned about the 7700k being obsolete any time in the near future.

Wow , this is pretty much the best explanation I have ever heard about the computing industry...your explanations are crystal clear, it eliminates all confusion and shows how the industry just confuses the hell out of consumers!

I have been agonizing with choices for a month now, it's annoying actually, I have OCD and finding the right machine is an absolute nightmare...

Can you take me out of my misery Snyphul?

This is what I want to do:

+ Use Adobe Illustrator on very large files
+ Run multiple programs at once (browser, adobe photoshop AI, office program, others)
+ Occasionally run Virtual Box
+ Net Beans IDE and others
+ Open tons of tabs on Chrome, maybe 50+ and navigate between them with CTRL+ TAB
- No games ever
- No music or hifi
- No movie collections or entertainment

I want speed, something fast for productivity, I use this machine for work, professionally.

What system recommendations do you have? By looking at the way you wrote this comment, I really feel I can trust your judgment and purchase a system according to what you think is best for my case😉