Question SMT vs No SMT for Editing

[BeN00bly101]

Hey Everyone!
I'm looking at saving up for a new PC that kills in editing video in Vegas Pro as well as does perfect in games.
I would like to stick with Intel as I think that they have better thermal safety and slightly more recommended for tougher jobs like editing and rendering.
I was looking at wither the i7-8700K or the i7-9700K. I am a little conflicted because the 8700K is only a 6 physical core CPU but it features Simultaneous Multithreading. Where as the 9700K has 8 physical cores but does not come with SMT.
I don't quite have the budget for an i9 of any sorts, I've also heard that i9's are difficult to cool and I don't live in a very cool environment.

Anyways I guess my main question is, is it more worth getting a CPU with SMT for better performance with editing? OR opt out for the 8-Core without SMT and call it a day??

Ultimately, I am still going to have better then what I have now but I would just like to know as I edit 60Fps 1080p video and still get performance drops with what I have. I also want to play modern AAA games at at least 60fps obviously. Occasionally I do gaming videos and edit them too.

Cheers!

 

[Darkbreeze]

The 9700k is better. Hyperthreads offer some benefit, but not enough to overcome two extra physical cores.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-i7-8700K-vs-Intel-i7-9700K/3098vs3335

Most things give a slight edge to the 9700k.

https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2127?vs=2258


Plus, performance comparisons using the 8700k generally don't incorporate the fact that there have been about five speculative execution side channel vulnerability patches (Spectre, Meltdown, variants) that affect SMT performance on all Intel CPUs for the most part, so the performance difference is likely bigger than you might think after the microcode AND Windows patches. Plus, more are being found and patched all the time, and like the most recent ones, usually offer an additional 1-3% knock on performance for each one that gets patched. I'd just avoid SMT altogether unless you plan to run a system that does not connect to the internet at all or disable SMT, which makes it pointless to even get one.

To be honest, the 3700x is cheaper and whups on the 9700k.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-i7-9700K-vs-AMD-Ryzen-7-3700X/3335vs3485

 

[BeN00bly101]

The 9700k is better. Hyperthreads offer some benefit, but not enough to overcome two extra physical cores.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-i7-8700K-vs-Intel-i7-9700K/3098vs3335

Most things give a slight edge to the 9700k.

https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2127?vs=2258


Plus, performance comparisons using the 8700k generally don't incorporate the fact that there have been about five speculative execution side channel vulnerability patches (Spectre, Meltdown, variants) that affect SMT performance on all Intel CPUs for the most part, so the performance difference is likely bigger than you might think after the microcode AND Windows patches. Plus, more are being found and patched all the time, and like the most recent ones, usually offer an additional 1-3% knock on performance for each one that gets patched. I'd just avoid SMT altogether unless you plan to run a system that does not connect to the internet at all or disable SMT, which makes it pointless to even get one.

To be honest, the 3700x is cheaper and whups on the 9700k.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-i7-9700K-vs-AMD-Ryzen-7-3700X/3335vs3485

Awesome! Thanks for the fast answer mate!
Based on the research I have done and what you said it seems like SMT is almost pointless lol.
Also I have spoken to some other techs and researched and I've heard that the Ryzens don't really have a fail safe if they get too hot like Intel does. I'm not an Intel Fan Boy or anything, I just worry that the AMD might not last as long due to the load I will be putting on it. Also I live and my PC lives in a little un-insulated unit in Queensland, Australia where our temps in Summer get up to around 41 Degrees Celsius on a bad day and 35 Degress most Summer days.
So, I know I might be a little bit of an idiot for not going Ryzen, but I'm happy to pay the extra bit towards that.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Yes they do. ALL CPU have thermal protections. Whoever told you that is a dumb ass.

The Ryzen/Zen architectures are very similar to those used by Intel in terms of thermal protections, unlike some older AMD platforms. Both have similar maximum recommended core temperatures and both AMD and Intel will throttle or shut down if the CPU reaches TJmax or Thermal trip temperature.

Either way though, it's up to you. I don't try to sway anybody one way or the other. Both have their merits and shortcomings. Thing is, I know how expensive hardware is in Australia. I help people from there all the time and we have many moderators from that area. So if you can save a bit of money with Ryzen while getting better performance, especially if you are using Vegas Pro, which will use all available cores and threads. The 3700x obviously can handle 8 additional threads above what the 9700k can handle, so that accounts for about a 38% increase in performance on any application that can make use of/optimized for those additional threads on the Ryzen part.

But honestly, either of these will do just fine.

 

[cryoburner]

Also I have spoken to some other techs and researched and I've heard that the Ryzens don't really have a fail safe if they get too hot like Intel does.

That does not seem accurate at all. Maybe processors from a decade ago. : P Any modern CPU should throttle back performance as it nears its operating limits to keep temperatures within a relatively safe range, whether from AMD or Intel.

Plus, the Ryzen 3000 processors are actually more efficient than Intel's, drawing less power and in turn putting out less heat for a given level of performance, since they are made on a new 7nm manufacturing process, whereas Intel's are still built on more or less the same 14nm process that they have been using for desktop processors for the last several years.

 

[TerryLaze]

Plus, performance comparisons using the 8700k generally don't incorporate the fact that there have been about five speculative execution side channel vulnerability patches (Spectre, Meltdown, variants) that affect SMT performance on all Intel CPUs for the most part, so the performance difference is likely bigger than you might think after the microcode AND Windows patches. Plus, more are being found and patched all the time, and like the most recent ones, usually offer an additional 1-3% knock on performance for each one that gets patched. I'd just avoid SMT altogether unless you plan to run a system that does not connect to the internet at all or disable SMT, which makes it pointless to even get one.

Spectre, Meltdown and all the variants need physical access to the system to run, there is no chance of getting it over the internet.

 

[BeN00bly101]

Yes they do. ALL CPU have thermal protections. Whoever told you that is a dumb ass.

The Ryzen/Zen architectures are very similar to those used by Intel in terms of thermal protections, unlike some older AMD platforms. Both have similar maximum recommended core temperatures and both AMD and Intel will throttle or shut down if the CPU reaches TJmax or Thermal trip temperature.

Either way though, it's up to you. I don't try to sway anybody one way or the other. Both have their merits and shortcomings. Thing is, I know how expensive hardware is in Australia. I help people from there all the time and we have many moderators from that area. So if you can save a bit of money with Ryzen while getting better performance, especially if you are using Vegas Pro, which will use all available cores and threads. The 3700x obviously can handle 8 additional threads above what the 9700k can handle, so that accounts for about a 38% increase in performance on any application that can make use of/optimized for those additional threads on the Ryzen part.

But honestly, either of these will do just fine.

I actually AM using Vegas Pro lol. Ok I will admit, maybe I am a bit of an Intel fan. But I'm honestly surrounded by people at the workplace who are middle aged, don't like AMD CPUS based on previous chips and they don't have any knowledge on the Ryzen/Zen series. And neither do I.
So it's really difficult for me to make a decision
Anyways, I will give it some further thought over the next month. My sister and her BF both got new PCs with Ryzens and say that they are perfect so I will also have a talk to them as well.
You've been super informative, thanks!

 

[InvalidError]

Based on the research I have done and what you said it seems like SMT is almost pointless lol.

SMT has its uses as it gives 30-40% extra total throughput at little cost in silicon and power for workloads that can make good use of it, albeit at reduced individual thread performance due to shared resources between threads. When the choice for a given price is between SMT or 33% more cores, more cores gives you about the same extra throughput without the per-thread performance compromise, making it the clear winner in most cases.

If the choice was between two similarly priced CPUs with the same core count and comparable IPC (ex.: Ryzen 3600 vs i5-9600 or 3700X vs 9700k), then I'd much prefer having SMT. Intel sees this writing on the wall, which is why Comet Lake is going to have SMT enabled pretty much across the board next year.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Spectre, Meltdown and all the variants need physical access to the system to run, there is no chance of getting it over the internet.

READ things. Nobody said anything about GETTING caught with your pants down by one of these vulnerabilities. We're talking about PERFORMANCE and the performance hits aren't something you can do ANYTHING about unless you have a pristine board from the early Kaby lake days that you never updated the bios OR Windows on since then. Otherwise, you get no choice whether or not these are a consideration or not. If you want a BIOS version that is newer than December of 2017, then you WILL be getting a patched BIOS and will be using newer microcode. As far as the Windows side of things, nothing much you can do there either. Cumulatively, it cannot be argued that there is no hit to performance. Test after test shows that there is. So it is NO matter of whether somebody needs access to your system, the ones that matter WILL have access. Your motherboard manufacturer and Microsoft.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Manufacturers do a LOT of things that aren't in the consumers best interests and creatively make it look as if it is. Or as if what they have to do to make those changes viable isn't going to later be a problem.

Just look at ethanol. Sure, we reduce our reliance on pure gasoline a little bit, and maybe reduce emissions slightly. For the consumer though, it results in much higher rates of decay for fuel system components, even using materials supposedly designed to withstand up to 10% ethanol mixtures (And in places they are exceeding those mixture rates despite recommendations by industry experts against it based on expected damage to engines and fuel system components). That's one example, certainly there are many, many more.

So the fact that Intel chooses to continue using SMT despite having no clear path to resolving the problems with it, to me, suggests they just don't really care. I don't think anybody can deny that any SMT desktop CPU from Skylake through CL refresh does not, by virtue of the mitigations imposed to combat the vulnerabilities, have the capability to perform as well as they did out of the gate. It's not a question of whether you'll ever actually be a victim of one of these vulnerabilities. It's the fact that they don't really give you the option to NOT patch them, if you want the benefits offered through updates to the BIOS and Windows for OTHER things. You want Windows and motherboard updates, you get those updates too. No way to separate them out. Therefore, you are not going to get the performance you originally paid for AND we keep seeing new patches every time they find a new variant so the problem is going to get worse, not better, as time goes on, until they fix this at the hardware level and you yourself told me not long ago you saw no way they were going to be able to do this without a complete redesign of the architecture, in the Intel thread.

 

[InvalidError]

Just look at ethanol. Sure, we reduce our reliance on pure gasoline a little bit, and maybe reduce emissions slightly. For the consumer though, it results in much higher rates of decay for fuel system components, even using materials supposedly designed to withstand up to 10% ethanol mixtures (And in places they are exceeding those mixture rates despite recommendations by industry experts against it based on expected damage to engines and fuel system components). That's one example, certainly there are many, many more.

That's a very bad example though as there are millions of cars that will run fine for well over a hundred thousand miles on OEM fuel injection parts and 10% ethanol mix, which is a clear sign that properly design systems are perfectly fine with ethanol. If you live anywhere where freezing conditions exist, countless pure-gasoline fuel systems got damaged or ruined by moisture freezing in the fuel system, which meant anti-freeze (typically methanol or propanol) needed to be added to mitigate potential damage until such additives became standard in "winter gasoline" so you were already paying for "cut gasoline" before E10 either way.

Aside from lower emissions, being renewable and replacing anti-freeze, it also acts as an octane-booster (anti-knock) additive which allows engine manufacturers to design for higher compression (more power out of a given engine size) and makes engines easier to start at low temperatures.

 

[Darkbreeze]

I was actually not clear enough on that, since I was mostly referring to small engines such as lawnmowers and weed eaters, leaf blowers and chainsaws, which take a pounding from ethanol containing gasoline. Very few people pay the extra money for cans of ethanol free gas and there are very few places anymore that sell it at the pump unless you happen to have a marina near you, which by the way is another thing. Boats are rarely hardened against ethanol fuel either. Anyhow, yes, maybe not THE best example, but AN example nonetheless.

 

[InvalidError]

I was actually not clear enough on that, since I was mostly referring to small engines such as lawnmowers and weed eaters, leaf blowers and chainsaws, which take a pounding from ethanol containing gasoline.

Maybe in areas where winter usually isn't a thing. For the rest of the world where E10 is mandated by law, even small engines have to be designed to tolerate ethanol if manufacturers don't want class-action lawsuits for refunds, repairs and replacements due to marketing and selling equipment unfit for the intended market.

 

[TerryLaze]

READ things. Nobody said anything about GETTING caught with your pants down by one of these vulnerabilities. We're talking about PERFORMANCE and the performance hits aren't something you can do ANYTHING about unless you have a pristine board from the early Kaby lake days that you never updated the bios OR Windows on since then. Otherwise, you get no choice whether or not these are a consideration or not. If you want a BIOS version that is newer than December of 2017, then you WILL be getting a patched BIOS and will be using newer microcode. As far as the Windows side of things, nothing much you can do there either. Cumulatively, it cannot be argued that there is no hit to performance. Test after test shows that there is. So it is NO matter of whether somebody needs access to your system, the ones that matter WILL have access. Your motherboard manufacturer and Microsoft.

I do read things,you commented...
"I'd just avoid SMT altogether unless you plan to run a system that does not connect to the internet at all or disable SMT, which makes it pointless to even get one. "
...So yes you did claim that you would GET caught with your pants down by one of these vulnerabilities.

I didn't say that PERFORMANCE won't take a hit, I said that normal folks do not have to fear connecting to the internet or running SMT.

 

[TerryLaze]

So the fact that Intel chooses to continue using SMT despite having no clear path to resolving the problems with it, to me, suggests they just don't really care. I don't think anybody can deny that any SMT desktop CPU from Skylake through CL refresh does not, by virtue of the mitigations imposed to combat the vulnerabilities, have the capability to perform as well as they did out of the gate. It's not a question of whether you'll ever actually be a victim of one of these vulnerabilities. It's the fact that they don't really give you the option to NOT patch them, if you want the benefits offered through updates to the BIOS and Windows for OTHER things. You want Windows and motherboard updates, you get those updates too. No way to separate them out. Therefore, you are not going to get the performance you originally paid for AND we keep seeing new patches every time they find a new variant so the problem is going to get worse, not better, as time goes on, until they fix this at the hardware level and you yourself told me not long ago you saw no way they were going to be able to do this without a complete redesign of the architecture, in the Intel thread.

Dude you are drifting into tin foil hat territory here.
Every windows/drivers/browser/app-you-use update impacts the performance for any CPU either negative or even positive ,you never get the performance you originally paid for,that's why benchmarks painfully state all the versions of OS and drivers and apps they use(or at least they should) because the results are only valid for that exact combo.

/s You never know if the next task scheduler patch will kill performance for the ryzen lay out again either. /s

 

[Darkbreeze]

Maybe in areas where winter usually isn't a thing. For the rest of the world where E10 is mandated by law, even small engines have to be designed to tolerate ethanol if manufacturers don't want class-action lawsuits for refunds, repairs and replacements due to marketing and selling equipment unfit for the intended market.

Those mandates have been in effect for YEARS, and it is STILL a problem, today. But it's getting too far off topic, so I'll just post this and then leave it alone. It was only supposed to be an analogy, not a discussion on the plus or minus of ethanol, which is an entirely different discussion, anyhow.

Ethanol proven to kill small engines

Advertisement Clark has a 50cc scooter he likes to putt around on. It’s maximum speed is 38mph–but right now it’s “zero” mpg–ever since he put gas with Ethanol in it. And now it’s been scientifically proven: Ethanol kills small engines. The gas industry now wants to produce gas containing up to...

clark.com

How to Fight Ethanol Problems in Small Engines - AMSOIL Blog

Small-engine manufacturers warn that ethanol can dissolve plastic and create harmful deposits, leading to costly repairs. Here's what you can do about it.

blog.amsoil.com

 

[InvalidError]

Those mandates have been in effect for YEARS, and it is STILL a problem, today.

Meanwhile, my mother's lawnmower, edge trimmer, generator and snow blower are 20+ years old with nothing more than oil changes, air filters and spark plugs.

 

[Darkbreeze]

I hear you.

 

[theonerm2]

Awesome! Thanks for the fast answer mate!
Based on the research I have done and what you said it seems like SMT is almost pointless lol.
Also I have spoken to some other techs and researched and I've heard that the Ryzens don't really have a fail safe if they get too hot like Intel does. I'm not an Intel Fan Boy or anything, I just worry that the AMD might not last as long due to the load I will be putting on it. Also I live and my PC lives in a little un-insulated unit in Queensland, Australia where our temps in Summer get up to around 41 Degrees Celsius oni a bad day and 35 Degress most Summer days.
So, I know I might be a little bit of an idiot for not going Ryzen, but I'm happy to pay the extra bit towards that.

SMT isn't almost pointless. It gives you a good 30% boost when applications can take advantage of it.

 

[Darkbreeze]

And if you subtract at LEAST 16% from that, not counting the BRAND NEW BIOS and Windows patches OR any future ones, that further subtract from performance, it becomes clear that it is not WORTH paying an extra 120 dollars to get an extra 16% OR LESS of performance than you would on the non SMT model, assuming 9700k vs 9900k.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/291649-intel-performance-amd-spectre-meltdown-mds-patches

The collective impact of enabling all patches is not a positive for Intel. While the impacts vary tremendously from virtually nothing too significant on an application-by-application level, the collective whack is ~15-16 percent on all Intel CPUs without Hyper-Threading disabled.

At some point, when there is enough cumulative effect from the various patches and BIOS/Microcode updates, there might not be ANY benefit from hyperthreading on Intel platforms, at all. At least, not until they eliminate some of the need for known mitigations through hardware changes. No, I don't know how or if that will happen, or if it's in the works for future architectures currently on the drawing board, but I do know that currently I get about 18% worse performance than I did before any of these mitigations and patches were introduced, on my 6700k. Even with a bare bones windows installation with all recommended driver versions for all hardware.

 

[BeN00bly101]

what

 

[Darkbreeze]

what

LOL

 

[joeblowsmynose]

Vegas Pro loves AMD hardware ... and a 9700k will put out just as much if not more heat than a 3700x and costs more ... plus you then don't have to worry about the HT question ... makes your life simpler.

Here you see a 3700x exceeding the 8700k by 20% ... and even the 9700k by also a large margin.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Pretty sure I already said it had better performance, much earlier.

 

[joeblowsmynose]

Pretty sure I already said it had better performance, much earlier.

Yes, but failed to provide any vegas pro specific benchmarks - the specific application sometimes does make a difference, in case there was any doubt on that.