Ryzen vs Coffee lake

[Tawda]

I know this may be controversial...

I recently started looking at builds on PC part picker and on these forums, it's good that people are supporting underdogs in the marketplace and encouraging competition. But am I the only one that has looked at the benchmarks and realised that even the coffee lake CPU's with expensive Z370 motherboards easy beat similarly priced Ryzen CPU's.

Although it can be argued that, CPU's (especially at high resolutions), have a small impact on fps. Trying to get the best bang for buck should be the first priority, am the only one that buys a components based off their performance or is there something I'm missing.

 

[Mark RM]

You buy what you need. If you game you buy a CPU with that in mind. For me it's the ability to soley dedicate cores to VM's and processes... Ryzen. For the kids gaming rigs, Intel at the high end, for the low to medium end I like a lot of AMD parts there.

I have no brand loyalty, I just buy what I need, AMD, Intel, NVidia , we owe them nothing but consideration of their products as consumers.. we certainly don't owe any of them loyalty.

 

[WildCard999]

Trying to get the OP the best price/performance should always be first priority however some ppl in there OP may prefer AMD/Intel or don't care to overclock which can change what will be recommended. Also once Intel releases the B360/H370 motherboards I can see a few more recommendations into the "budget" friendly builds paired with the i3-8100/i5-8400 but like I said it really depends on the OP needs/budget.

 

[InvalidError]

Trying to get the best bang for buck should be the first priority, am the only one that buys a components based off their performance or is there something I'm missing.

What gives the best "bang per buck" depends on what you use your computer for. While Ryzen may fall behind in many current games, it does take the lead in some heavily threaded games, most heavily threaded productivity, scientific and content creation software, and most multi-tasking scenarios.

Intel may have a ~10% lead on pure gaming on average, but that becomes irrelevant if you do a significant amount of anything else where Ryzen destroys Intel''s current chips on bang-per-buck.

Also, Intel having a 10% lead in gaming benchmarks at 90+FPS is kind of pointless if you're playing on a 60Hz display.

 

[carcharocles_theory]

There's also the fact that the current i5's can still be hard to find. While an i5 8400 will beat the snot out of an R5 1600 even when the latter is overclocked, if you can't find the i5 then the Ryzen will probably be "good enough" for most users.

Also, if you're like me and stuck with a 60Hz panel, then the difference between the i5 and Ryzen is mostly bragging rights. Both would easily get me the frame rates I would need to run my monitor, and honestly my R9 470 would be the bottleneck in either system anyway.

 

[clarkjd]

It depends on what you are trying to do. Software that heavily multitasks can benefit from more cores and threads. Most Games (at least currently) perform don't take advantage of more than two cores, so Intel performs petter as they have higher IPC(instructions per clock) than Ryzen chips. As CPUs with more cores and threads become more the standard, future games will begin to perform better on Ryzen than Intel, Until then, Intel for games and Ryzen for general computing.
As InvalidError said!

 

[Tawda]

Well I see what you guys mean but for gaming coffee lake usually outperforms ryzen, I'm just surprised at the amount of AMD based systems, when it doesn't seem warranted. Engines such as UE4 almost is solely optimised for Intel, it's not that I just dislike AMD because back when I built my system I bought an r9 290 because it was such good value.

 

[Major_Trouble]

A lot of hardware bias can come from previous experience. I have not had great experiences with AMD hardware in the past when it comes to driver support and I don't see it has changed that much either. I have had some very good hardware from AMD, Athlon64 and the Athlon 2500, but their GPUs have been badly supported and I have experienced some unreliability as well. I tend to stick to Intel & Nvidia, not out of loyalty, because they have given me less hassle.

I applaud AMD and their new Ryzen chips. They have not been without issues but I kind of expect it with a new architecture. They have given Intel a kick up the backside who have been just turning out small incremental changes. However as I use my PC more for gaming I'd still go Intel as gaming doesn't require so many cores as it does a good IPC which is where Intel CPUs still have the edge. That may change in the future as games developers get to grip with multi-threading their code but there is only so much they can do when threads are waiting on others to complete before they can start / complete.

 

[Tawda]

Trying to get the best bang for buck should be the first priority, am the only one that buys a components based off their performance or is there something I'm missing.

What gives the best "bang per buck" depends on what you use your computer for. While Ryzen may fall behind in many current games, it does take the lead in some heavily threaded games, most heavily threaded productivity, scientific and content creation software, and most multi-tasking scenarios.

Intel may have a ~10% lead on pure gaming on average, but that becomes irrelevant if you do a significant amount of anything else where Ryzen destroys Intel''s current chips on bang-per-buck.

Also, Intel having a 10% lead in gaming benchmarks at 90+FPS is kind of pointless if you're playing on a 60Hz display.

I'm not trying to start an argument...
but comparing the similarly priced r5 1600 vs i5 8400, ignoring the price of Motherboards:
i5 8400 ((25-30% faster than r5 1600(non OC))
i5 8400 ((20% faster than r5 1600(OC))
why not buy the fastest cpu to begin with, rather than buying a slower one.

 

[Tawda]

A lot of hardware bias can come from previous experience. I have not had great experiences with AMD hardware in the past when it comes to driver support and I don't see it has changed that much either. I have had some very good hardware from AMD, Athlon64 and the Athlon 2500, but their GPUs have been badly supported and I have experienced some unreliability as well. I tend to stick to Intel & Nvidia, not out of loyalty, because they have given me less hassle.

I applaud AMD and their new Ryzen chips. They have not been without issues but I kind of expect it with a new architecture. They have given Intel a kick up the backside who have been just turning out small incremental changes. However as I use my PC more for gaming I'd still go Intel as gaming doesn't require so many cores as it does a good IPC which is where Intel CPUs still have the edge. That may change in the future as games developers get to grip with multi-threading their code but there is only so much they can do when threads are waiting on others to complete before they can start / complete.

Maybe in the future but still many game devs use older engines which don't translate with newer hardware such as Bethesda's Creation engine.

 

[Tawda]

There's also the fact that the current i5's can still be hard to find. While an i5 8400 will beat the snot out of an R5 1600 even when the latter is overclocked, if you can't find the i5 then the Ryzen will probably be "good enough" for most users.

Also, if you're like me and stuck with a 60Hz panel, then the difference between the i5 and Ryzen is mostly bragging rights. Both would easily get me the frame rates I would need to run my monitor, and honestly my R9 470 would be the bottleneck in either system anyway.

I also have a 60hz monitor, but think of it this way if you lived in an urban area and you had the choice between a sports car and a everyday car. And hypothetically they both cost the same to run, had the same number of seats, had the same mpg...etc. I would go with the sports car not just for bragging rights but, the fact you could if you found an opportunity maybe in the future, you could fully use its speed.

 

[InvalidError]

I'm not trying to start an argument...
but comparing the similarly priced r5 1600 vs i5 8400, ignoring the price of Motherboards:
i5 8400 ((25-30% faster than r5 1600(non OC))
i5 8400 ((20% faster than r5 1600(OC))
why not buy the fastest cpu to begin with, rather than buying a slower one.

That blanket statement is patently false. Depends on what you do. In scientific and other heavily threaded tasks or heavy multi-tasking, the 1600 is often 20-30% ahead of the 8400 largely due to having SMT.

Intel may still be leading most of the time in games but Ryzen can be the better pick for people who need their PC to do other stuff than gaming or other stuff while gaming.

 

[Tawda]

I'm not trying to start an argument...
but comparing the similarly priced r5 1600 vs i5 8400, ignoring the price of Motherboards:
i5 8400 ((25-30% faster than r5 1600(non OC))
i5 8400 ((20% faster than r5 1600(OC))
why not buy the fastest cpu to begin with, rather than buying a slower one.

That blanket statement is patently false. Depends on what you do. In scientific and other heavily threaded tasks or heavy multi-tasking, the 1600 is often 20-30% ahead of the 8400 largely due to having SMT.

Intel may still be leading most of the time in games but Ryzen can be the better pick for people who need their PC to do other stuff than gaming or other stuff while gaming.

Fair enough that is probably true, I should have more clear that I was frustrated at the fact people chose Ryzen for gaming systems in early 2018

 

[carcharocles_theory]

I also have a 60hz monitor, but think of it this way if you lived in an urban area and you had the choice between a sports car and a everyday car. And hypothetically they both cost the same to run, had the same number of seats, had the same mpg...etc. I would go with the sports car not just for bragging rights but, the fact you could if you found an opportunity maybe in the future, you could fully use its speed.

As I said, availability is an issue right now. The i5 8400 is either currently way overpriced or out of stock in most places, and people who are looking into the R5 and i5 series don't have unlimited budgets. Combining a minimum 130 dollar motherboard with a processor that costs about 200 dollars--that can't overclock mind you--if you can find it at MSRP (which you likely won't right now) isn't as cost effective as buying a slightly slower processor for the same price that is actually available and that can overclock perfectly fine on a stock cooler and 80 - 100 dollar motherboard is, for some people, too much to pass up. Because when your budget has an absolute ceiling, you have to cut your price somewhere, and it might as well be the part of your system you'll take the least hit with.

You also have to remember that many Ryzen builds came out with Kaby Lake was the newest Intel series. These processors weren't nearly as effective as fighting off Ryzen as Coffee Lake is, and people flocked to the R5 1600 specifically because it could do battle with the i5's. Then there are the people who do not only game--for them, an i5 8400 may very well be a worse investment than an R5 1600, because they'll get more use out of the 6 extra threads than a pure gamer will.

Back to your sports car analogy: if the sport's car's only benefit is speed, I would absolutely not buy it over an everyday car, especially not if the every day car has a feature I'll definitely use more than top speed.