[SOLVED] Ryzen 3900x vs Ryzen 5600x

Macif

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Hi.

I'm going to build a new rig soon for gaming + hobby sound design/audio editing and light video editing (mainly throwing audio and video together in premiere pro and render it to 1920x1080 at most). And I'm split on my CPU choice. As a side note I have been gaming in 1080p on my current rig since I built it.

The 5600x when it comes out will cost 373,49 USD where I live. While the Ryzen 3900x usually costs 552,39 USD, but after a discount and a cashback promo thing it would end up costing 414,75. About 46,64 USD cheaper than the 3700x, here.

The key issue here is the fact that on one hand the 5600x will have increased performance when it comes to single core, which I realise would be great for gaming. On the other hand the 3900x seems like a smart choice due to its multiple cores for creative tasks. I also thought about the 5800x before, but it will end up costing about 550 USD where I live. And I feel that the money saved would be better of being used for a GPU.

I also realise that things like "futureproofing" is debatable, but would a 3900x in theory function good for 4-5 years of gaming? Or would the 5600x perhaps be a wiser choice in that regard.

As a reference I currently have an I5 4690K (not overclocked) and it has worked great for my audio and video editing work. Though I'll admit that I am using my 970 GTX GPU for the rendering in premiere pro. But give or take the usual time to export big mixing projects from adobe auditon and rendering in premiere pro takes about 4-8 min.
 
Solution
Until the reviews are out, it's all heresay. Even AMD's 26% better should be taken with a grain of salt, granted they'll want to put on their best showing but not at the expense of destroying current sales or opinions.

Adobe used to be limited to 8 threads, not scaling well above that number, putting Intels higher IPC and clock speeds to much better use in a 8 vs 8 threads match up. That's changed in recent revisions, and most of Adobe products are seriously happy with Amd right now. AutoDesk products and similar are the opposite, relying heavily on single core thread speeds for limited thread amounts, so with the supposed gains in the 5600 IPC, they'll outperform the 3900x by a good margin.

Same can be said for games, because of...
Hi.

I'm going to build a new rig soon for gaming + hobby sound design/audio editing and light video editing (mainly throwing audio and video together in premiere pro and render it to 1920x1080 at most). And I'm split on my CPU choice. As a side note I have been gaming in 1080p on my current rig since I built it.

The 5600x when it comes out will cost 373,49 USD where I live. While the Ryzen 3900x usually costs 552,39 USD, but after a discount and a cashback promo thing it would end up costing 414,75. About 46,64 USD cheaper than the 3700x, here.

The key issue here is the fact that on one hand the 5600x will have increased performance when it comes to single core, which I realise would be great for gaming. On the other hand the 3900x seems like a smart choice due to its multiple cores for creative tasks. I also thought about the 5800x before, but it will end up costing about 550 USD where I live. And I feel that the money saved would be better of being used for a GPU.

I also realise that things like "futureproofing" is debatable, but would a 3900x in theory function good for 4-5 years of gaming? Or would the 5600x perhaps be a wiser choice in that regard.

As a reference I currently have an I5 4690K (not overclocked) and it has worked great for my audio and video editing work. Though I'll admit that I am using my 970 GTX GPU for the rendering in premiere pro. But give or take the usual time to export big mixing projects from adobe auditon and rendering in premiere pro takes about 4-8 min.
Nothing can beat cores...except maybe serious IPC. We really won't know just how good Zen3 is...or how well a 5600X might leverage better IPC to compete with a 3900X even in heavily threaded apps...until the reviewers let us in on the details. But one thing for sure: pick the motherboard and memory carefully so that you can upgrade with a minimum of fuss.
 

InvalidError

Titan
Moderator
Nothing can beat cores...except maybe serious IPC.
Where gaming is concerned, expect the 3900X to get destroyed by the 5600X in most cases due to the 5600X having a single 6-cores CCX and 32MB L3 cache instead of four CCXes with only 16MB of L3 each divided between two CCDs that have to talk to each other through the IOD. IIRC, AMD's own Zen 3 presentation gave Zen 3 a 26% average advantage for gaming over Zen 2 with 50+% in some cases.

More high latency cores don't help in latency-sensitive software.
 

Pitbull Tyson

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Oct 28, 2020
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Hi.

I'm going to build a new rig soon for gaming + hobby sound design/audio editing and light video editing (mainly throwing audio and video together in premiere pro and render it to 1920x1080 at most). And I'm split on my CPU choice. As a side note I have been gaming in 1080p on my current rig since I built it.

The 5600x when it comes out will cost 373,49 USD where I live. While the Ryzen 3900x usually costs 552,39 USD, but after a discount and a cashback promo thing it would end up costing 414,75. About 46,64 USD cheaper than the 3700x, here.

The key issue here is the fact that on one hand the 5600x will have increased performance when it comes to single core, which I realise would be great for gaming. On the other hand the 3900x seems like a smart choice due to its multiple cores for creative tasks. I also thought about the 5800x before, but it will end up costing about 550 USD where I live. And I feel that the money saved would be better of being used for a GPU.

I also realise that things like "futureproofing" is debatable, but would a 3900x in theory function good for 4-5 years of gaming? Or would the 5600x perhaps be a wiser choice in that regard.

As a reference I currently have an I5 4690K (not overclocked) and it has worked great for my audio and video editing work. Though I'll admit that I am using my 970 GTX GPU for the rendering in premiere pro. But give or take the usual time to export big mixing projects from adobe auditon and rendering in premiere pro takes about 4-8 min.
Go for more cores go for longevity and future proof. A 5600 is not future proof CPU at all. Not when one day games will need 8 cores and SMT or HTing and 6 core 5600 will flop along with fact if you live stream on top of that at high resolution for pro gaming purposes.
 
Oct 29, 2020
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Hi.

I'm going to build a new rig soon for gaming + hobby sound design/audio editing and light video editing (mainly throwing audio and video together in premiere pro and render it to 1920x1080 at most). And I'm split on my CPU choice. As a side note I have been gaming in 1080p on my current rig since I built it.

The 5600x when it comes out will cost 373,49 USD where I live. While the Ryzen 3900x usually costs 552,39 USD, but after a discount and a cashback promo thing it would end up costing 414,75. About 46,64 USD cheaper than the 3700x, here.

The key issue here is the fact that on one hand the 5600x will have increased performance when it comes to single core, which I realise would be great for gaming. On the other hand the 3900x seems like a smart choice due to its multiple cores for creative tasks. I also thought about the 5800x before, but it will end up costing about 550 USD where I live. And I feel that the money saved would be better of being used for a GPU.

I also realise that things like "futureproofing" is debatable, but would a 3900x in theory function good for 4-5 years of gaming? Or would the 5600x perhaps be a wiser choice in that regard.

As a reference I currently have an I5 4690K (not overclocked) and it has worked great for my audio and video editing work. Though I'll admit that I am using my 970 GTX GPU for the rendering in premiere pro. But give or take the usual time to export big mixing projects from adobe auditon and rendering in premiere pro takes about 4-8 min.

IMO, id wait for the 5600X to come out. But say you needed this build by the end of this year, i would say to go ahead with getting the 3900x. If you do get a 5800x i would say to get a GPU some where between Gtx1070 to a Rtx 2060S or 2070. IF you go with amd instead of nvidia, i would suggest the somewhere between 580 and 5600xt. its ok, but the 580 isnt that bad
 

Pitbull Tyson

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Oct 28, 2020
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Where gaming is concerned, expect the 3900X to get destroyed by the 5600X in most cases due to the 5600X having a single 6-cores CCX and 32MB L3 cache instead of four CCXes with only 16MB of L3 each divided between two CCDs that have to talk to each other through the IOD. IIRC, AMD's own Zen 3 presentation gave Zen 3 a 26% average advantage for gaming over Zen 2 with 50+% in some cases.

More high latency cores don't help in latency-sensitive software.
I must diagree. Only at 1080p. At 1440p and 4k gaming the results fall on the laps of which box has the faster video card. All this jabber and nonsense for 15fps more. I mean at that moment if I get 144fps and now I get 159, come on now. Honestly people who bought the 3900x and 3950x if they upgrade for frame rates they are waisting their times. Its a 12x 16x consumer CPU meant for heardcore HT apps which games don't know how to fully take advantage of yet. 3D , Art, Rendering using video card and now using cores for heavy tunderbolt 3.0 NAS systems with lots of data in real time happening or something.
 
Where gaming is concerned, expect the 3900X to get destroyed by the 5600X in most cases due to the 5600X having a single 6-cores CCX and 32MB L3 cache instead of four CCXes with only 16MB of L3 each divided between two CCDs that have to talk to each other through the IOD. IIRC, AMD's own Zen 3 presentation gave Zen 3 a 26% average advantage for gaming over Zen 2 with 50+% in some cases.

More high latency cores don't help in latency-sensitive software.
In gaming I'd like to expect a 5600x to destroy everything on the planet...aside from higher clocked 4th gen variants perhaps. But I don't have inside performance data like some do, and I also take marketing data with a seriously big dose of salt grains.

I also don't know whether it will be enough to offset a 2x core advantage for heavily threaded apps like video editing can be, which was something OP seems interested in. Maybe those with inside AMD info do.

All I'm saying is hang loose, don't get sucked in by the lure of cores or the lure of glossy charts delivered in the midst of awe inspired, socially distant virtual applause.
 
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As you see, the internet is divided. lol. No benchmarks out make it harder, as well as your usage. Depending on what software for sound/video editing you use, that may determine what route is better. I like to do 3D rendering, which is mostly GPU based, but for calculations it likes a mix of more cores and faster single cores, so I really can't win, or loose in what I would choose. lol.
 
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Macif

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As you see, the internet is divided. lol. No benchmarks out make it harder, as well as your usage. Depending on what software for sound/video editing you use, that may determine what route is better. I like to do 3D rendering, which is mostly GPU based, but for calculations it likes a mix of more cores and faster single cores, so I really can't win, or loose in what I would choose. lol.

My usual workflow is Adobe Audition and Premiere Pro. Sometimes I use Reaper as well but for more pretty basic audio things and some basic MIDI instrument stuff. Though I am currently testing a project with sound effects and such in it. Just to see how it works in comparison. I dont do any 3D rendering like blender etc, would be a higher chance for me trying to use graphic programs to draw if I was ever going for anything else creative as a hobby. Sometimes I might use programs like GIMP and Krita. But it is pretty basic stuff again.

The only complaint I have at the moment with Audition and Reaper on my current pc is that the reference footage I sometimes use can freeze at random points. Unless I lower it to 480P or 360P. Might be my memory messing up, but I recall not struggeling with that before in Audition when I built this pc back in 2014. Other than that I find the rendering time and performance acceptable on all other accounts.

As for Premiere I mostly take the audio I work on in Audition and throw it together with whatever footage I'm using and render it to max 1920x1080 with H.264, though as stated I use my GPU for the rendering. All of this is of course hobby related again. Never touched any 4K or 8K footage and never will in the foreseeable future.

I dont know how it works now since I havent paid that much attention on it, but I recall that Adobe is more optimized for Intel? Which of course makes me wonder if the improved single core performance on the 5xxxX Ryzen holds up that this might even them out more for Adobe. On the other hand I have heard people suggest that DaVinci Resolve 16 is better for the Ryzen since it uses the additional cores.

And when I play video games, both some modern (latest modern game I played was the Mafia remake) and older games I always play in 1080, on a 60hz monitor for reference. And this puts more presure on the CPU from my understanding, but again I am not the most tech informed person. All I know is that my current pc struggeled with Mafia when it came to playing it over extended periods of time. The game would freeze in the end and I needed to exit it through the task manager. Suspect the CPU or my RAM on that part though. Just to throw in another reference regarding my last gameplay experience on a bigger title.

In gaming I'd like to expect a 5600x to destroy everything on the planet...aside from higher clocked 4th gen variants perhaps. But I don't have inside performance data like some do, and I also take marketing data with a seriously big dose of salt grains.

I also don't know whether it will be enough to offset a 2x core advantage for heavily threaded apps like video editing can be, which was something OP seems interested in. Maybe those with inside AMD info do.

All I'm saying is hang loose, don't get sucked in by the lure of cores or the lure of glossy charts delivered in the midst of awe inspired, socially distant virtual applause.

You bring up a valid point. Only downside is that the current discount offer I mentioned about the 3900x lasts until the 31st of this month. So I'll admit that is a challenge for me.

IMO, id wait for the 5600X to come out. But say you needed this build by the end of this year, i would say to go ahead with getting the 3900x. If you do get a 5800x i would say to get a GPU some where between Gtx1070 to a Rtx 2060S or 2070. IF you go with amd instead of nvidia, i would suggest the somewhere between 580 and 5600xt. its ok, but the 580 isnt that bad

The ideal would be to have a build by the end of the year yes. I was in fact planning to buy the other parts for my new build in November. If I went for a GPU such as the 2060 and up then my budget would certainly have room for the 5800X. Question of course is how long those cards would last for gaming at 1080 for the next 4-5 years at least. And of course I have thought about moving away from 60hz to a higher refresh rate if I find a good deal for a monitor. The RTX 3070 is certainly a pipe dream at this point. In my country it was sold out in 8 min. Though that particular GPU might be overkill for my gaming use. But I'm moving away from the forum topic.

Of course after current trends I am worried about the supply of the new ryzen CPU's as well. All I can say is that you all bring up many interesting points for me to consider.
 
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You bring up a valid point. Only downside is that the current discount offer I mentioned about the 3900x lasts until the 31st of this month. So I'll admit that is a challenge for me.
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Two things to consider....almost certainly this will not be the last sale of 3900X CPU's. Once 5000 series processors hit the shelves they'll will want to move out older stock even faster and we've also got 'black Friday' sales events in front of us. It may be a gamble to wait for reviews to see just where performance of a 5600X sits for running the kind of work load you do, but I have to think it's stacked in your favor.

Lastly: a 3900X is no slouch. Even for gaming, it's far more likely to be your GPU that limits you. If I were in your situation I'd only be concerned about getting the king of gaming CPU's if I were an e-sports gamer with serious skills, a high refresh monitor that needed the FPS and an inside line to scoring a 3080. In any triple-A game it will absolutely be the GPU that bottlenecks, even a 3080, unless gaming at ridiculous low resolutions.
 
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InvalidError

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Two things to consider....almost certainly this will not be the last sale of 3900X CPU's. Once 5000 series processors hit the shelves they'll will want to move out older stock even faster and we've also got 'black Friday' sales events in front of us.
I wouldn't pin too much hope on significant price drops on 3000-series CPU. In all likelihood, AMD has been in the process of phasing out Zen 2 production to re-allocate wafers for new products for a while already. Instead of seeing price drops on Zen 2, may see SKUs go out-of-stock instead.
 

Karadjgne

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Until the reviews are out, it's all heresay. Even AMD's 26% better should be taken with a grain of salt, granted they'll want to put on their best showing but not at the expense of destroying current sales or opinions.

Adobe used to be limited to 8 threads, not scaling well above that number, putting Intels higher IPC and clock speeds to much better use in a 8 vs 8 threads match up. That's changed in recent revisions, and most of Adobe products are seriously happy with Amd right now. AutoDesk products and similar are the opposite, relying heavily on single core thread speeds for limited thread amounts, so with the supposed gains in the 5600 IPC, they'll outperform the 3900x by a good margin.

Same can be said for games, because of Intel popularity, and lack of threads in mainstream cpus, many engines are clinging to 8 or less optimization, just to get the widest possible sales base. Which benefits the 5600 over the higher thread 3900x. In some games, especially online mmorpg, the AI in some situations has become massive, seriously cpu taxing, and here is where thread count excels, benefiting the 3900x over the 5600.

You won't loose out, going with either cpu as an upgrade to that old Haswell, but don't 'second guess' about if you'd gone with the other either, since gains or weaknesses in one area will be offset by gains or weaknesses in another for either cpu.

There's always a new generation gadget coming out tomorrow, that's almost always slightly better than yesterday's gadget. Neither one being out-moded until sometime next week. The 3900x is far enough ahead of the field, it's not going to be obsolete for a while and by then the 5600 may or may not be in the same boat.
 
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beorn

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Where gaming is concerned, expect the 3900X to get destroyed by the 5600X in most cases due to the 5600X having a single 6-cores CCX and 32MB L3 cache instead of four CCXes with only 16MB of L3 each divided between two CCDs that have to talk to each other through the IOD. IIRC, AMD's own Zen 3 presentation gave Zen 3 a 26% average advantage for gaming over Zen 2 with 50+% in some cases.

More high latency cores don't help in latency-sensitive software.
"Destroyed" might be a bit of a stretch......
 

Macif

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Until the reviews are out, it's all heresay. Even AMD's 26% better should be taken with a grain of salt, granted they'll want to put on their best showing but not at the expense of destroying current sales or opinions.

Adobe used to be limited to 8 threads, not scaling well above that number, putting Intels higher IPC and clock speeds to much better use in a 8 vs 8 threads match up. That's changed in recent revisions, and most of Adobe products are seriously happy with Amd right now. AutoDesk products and similar are the opposite, relying heavily on single core thread speeds for limited thread amounts, so with the supposed gains in the 5600 IPC, they'll outperform the 3900x by a good margin.

Same can be said for games, because of Intel popularity, and lack of threads in mainstream cpus, many engines are clinging to 8 or less optimization, just to get the widest possible sales base. Which benefits the 5600 over the higher thread 3900x. In some games, especially online mmorpg, the AI in some situations has become massive, seriously cpu taxing, and here is where thread count excels, benefiting the 3900x over the 5600.

You won't loose out, going with either cpu as an upgrade to that old Haswell, but don't 'second guess' about if you'd gone with the other either, since gains or weaknesses in one area will be offset by gains or weaknesses in another for either cpu.

There's always a new generation gadget coming out tomorrow, that's almost always slightly better than yesterday's gadget. Neither one being out-moded until sometime next week. The 3900x is far enough ahead of the field, it's not going to be obsolete for a while and by then the 5600 may or may not be in the same boat.

You bring up a valid point. I suppose that the worry of always "having the latest" stuff also has an effect on second guessing hardware decisions, at least in my case. The 4690K has been used for 6 years together with my 970 GTX, so a concern of course for me is how well the 3900x would be in lets say 4 years time for gaming, since I still play video games on a 1080 monitor. After all the 3900x was released last year. On the other hand I hear all the time about people who use older I7's and I9's who are happy with their computers performance for gaming.
 

InvalidError

Titan
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On the other hand I hear all the time about people who use older I7's and I9's who are happy with their computers performance for gaming.
Still being happy with whatever you have is ultimately the only thing that should really matter - if you are still happy with an i5-4690k, then there is no real reason to stress over an unnecessary upgrade. I'm still mostly happy with my i5-3470, so I'm still not in much of a hurry to upgrade it.
 

beorn

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Well...I suppose for those who consider a 20% increase to be an obliteration...Most of us ordinary folk who play games won't notice a difference between the two. And for any higher end multicore programs, the 3900X will win easily
 
Trust me, its hard to wait. And decide. I'm in the same position. I can stretch my budget and get the 3900x and 32gb of RAM right now, get the 3600 right now and 64gb of RAM, or wait, get the 5600x and 64gb of RAM. This build is for rendering, so single core, multi core and lots of RAM come into play, so I need it all but budget.

The 3900x is on sale here in Canada too until Nov 5th, 5000 series launch date. I'm going to assume they will be on sale again, and there is still stock to sell. AMD wouldn't cut off a supply until the 5000 is fully fleshed out. Thousands of stores have them on shelves still and warehouses are full of them.

Look at this way, newegg is still selling brand new 2700x on sale right now, how long ago were they ceased in production.
 

InvalidError

Titan
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Look at this way, newegg is still selling brand new 2700x on sale right now, how long ago were they ceased in production.
There is one huge difference between the 2000-series and 3000-series: the 2000-series was made on 12nm which AMD had no other worthwhile uses for so it was stuck using 12nm wafers to make 2000-series CPUs regardless of how well or poorly they were selling until its wafer commitments expired. The 3000-series is on the same 7nm process as all of AMD's new stuff, so AMD likely shifted a most of its 7nm wafer starts previously allocated to Zen 2 to new products already.

If I'm right, 3000-series are going to vanish from stores pretty quickly. The first hint that I may be right is that most 3000-series CPUs hit their lowest prices ever in July-August instead of the weeks leading to the 5000-series' launch.
 

Macif

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After some more thinking and great advice here I think I'd rather wait and look at the benchmarks for the 5000x series when they are available. Just to avoid second guessing my decision later down the road.

When I started to think about building a new PC in late summer/early autumn. my choice would have been the 3700x or an I7 if I hadn't found any info regarding a new line being around the corner. After all if my 4 core I5 does what I want in the editing and audio work department, an 8 core would probably work just as well. Considering I do that stuff as a hobby and not on a professional basis. So if things look good I'll probably go for the 5800X.

A little more waiting after all also means I can add some more money to my budget and xmas is right around the corner as well. And while a possible discount might not be as big, I suppose there could be a chance that the store of my choice has some deal on the 3000 series around black friday or through november in general.

The main reason for wanting to build a new pc would be to play modern games and I personally feel that my old one struggles with some of the stuff.