Question Will Zen 4 be the real deal and a worthy upgrade from Zen 3

[Wolverine2349]

Your thoughts. I have heard mixed reviews. No one will know for sure until it is out. Its set for September 15 barely under 3 months away. But what is your estimate?

How much performance improvement do you see for gaming and future high end video cards installed in a Zen 3 vs Zen 4 system with same core count CPU. Do you think Zen 4 will make a big difference?

Will Zen 4 age much better than Zen 3 for handling future high end video cards and future games while still having good performance compared to Zen 3??

Does the fact Zen 4 will be on a new platform going to make it age better if you do not care about more USB ports nor PCIE Gen 5 other than video cards that may use it but not at all for SSDs or other things??

 

[John Chesterfield]

No one will know for sure until it is out.

You answered your own question.

 

[John Chesterfield]

To answer what I think you're asking, I don't think it'll be worth upgrading to from what I currently have.

 

[Wolverine2349]

To answer what I think you're asking, I don't think it'll be worth upgrading to from what I currently have.

What kind of video card do you have? Do you think it will not make much of a difference in games from 5900X to 7900X unless you go above 165Hz refresh and FPS and even then still not.

 

[John Chesterfield]

What kind of video card do you have? Do you think it will not make much of a difference in games from 5900Z to 7900X unless you go above 150 FPS?

3080FE @ 1440p.

No.

 

[geofelt]

Over the years, I have watched many product launches.
They tend to be incremental.
Think some 15% better from a price performance point of view.
New product will not sell unless a buyer gets more than whatever the current price/performance level is currently.

 

[sonofjesse]

In my experience for the average person upgrading when the big thing thing comes out, don't help the average person.

What is your PC NOT doing that YOU NEED it to do?

Now if your in a certain business situation, pro gamer, scientific community this does not apply.

 

[hotaru.hino]

My initial assessment will be no, not really. At least not compared to say Zen 2 to Zen 3.

Taking AMD's press release slide:

8-10% IPC increase is actually the average across processor generations. This is unlike in Zen 3 when AMD claimed there was a 19% IPC uplift from Zen 2. And this only came with a measly 5% turbo boost uplift. For comparison, the uplift between the Zen 3's fastest turbo booster and what AMD promised, 5.5GHz, is about 12%. I'm also willing to believe this will come with a large power consumption cost as well.

However there are claims that Zen 4 with 3D cache is coming out next year. If it helps with games as it did on Zen 3, then that should be a worthy upgrade if you're not on the 5800X3D.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

What is the system you’ve got now? If it’s relatively modern then you may wait until zen 5 or 6 and give them a chance to let the platform mature. If you remember the launch of zen 1, they got it working but had a period where they had some issues. Once they got it working well, it was a good platform.

If you are sitting on a ryzen 1000 or 2000 series cpu, and you’ve got a good gpu, say like a 3060 level or higher, you may update the cpu and call it good. My system is running a ryzen 5 3600 on an old AsRock b350 board. I upgraded to that from a 1700 iirc. But they’ve got a new bios update that should allow me to go to ryzen 5000 series, so I may at some point pick up a 5700x to toss in there and then wait a little while to let them work any kinks out of their platform and let prices settle down.

 

[hotaru.hino]

What is the system you’ve got now? If it’s relatively modern then you may wait until zen 5 or 6 and give them a chance to let the platform mature. If you remember the launch of zen 1, they got it working but had a period where they had some issues. Once they got it working well, it was a good platform.

I would argue the only reason why Ryzen needed time to "mature" is because it was a radical shift from Bulldozer. Zen 4 is basically an evolution. Outside of the chiplet style chipset (which is only a concern if you're getting the top tier motherboards), there really isn't anything major that would cause a hiccup here.

If anything, Ryzen still has some growing pains, such as stuttering issue that got fixed recently (which people claim the latest AGESA still causes problems with high frequency stability, so whack one mole, 10 more seem to pop up)

 

[Wolverine2349]

What is the system you’ve got now? If it’s relatively modern then you may wait until zen 5 or 6 and give them a chance to let the platform mature. If you remember the launch of zen 1, they got it working but had a period where they had some issues. Once they got it working well, it was a good platform.

If you are sitting on a ryzen 1000 or 2000 series cpu, and you’ve got a good gpu, say like a 3060 level or higher, you may update the cpu and call it good. My system is running a ryzen 5 3600 on an old AsRock b350 board. I upgraded to that from a 1700 iirc. But they’ve got a new bios update that should allow me to go to ryzen 5000 series, so I may at some point pick up a 5700x to toss in there and then wait a little while to let them work any kinks out of their platform and let prices settle down.

I have a Ryzen 5900X with SMT disabled and CCD0 clocked to 4.7GHz and CCD1 clocked at 4.525GHz able to pass all stability tests. And 32GB DDR4 3600MHz CL14 RAM. RTX 3090 Ti. Very good system, but wonder how much of an upgrade Zen 4 will be? Like could you see the difference being enough that in a few years high end games with high end video card stutter a lot on my Zen 3 with latest video card, but get playable and smooth enough frames on 7900X?? Or is it most likely if my 5900X bottlenecks latest video cards and games in a few years, a 7900X will as well but only milder extent and only upgrade will be next 1-2 years for high FPS chasers with little to no real world difference? Meaning by then is it likely Zen 4 will be cutoff for acceptable performance even though Zen 5or 6 obviously would give the best performance.

 

[hotaru.hino]

Like could you see the difference being enough that in a few years high end games with high end video card stutter a lot on my Zen 3 with latest video card, but get playable and smooth enough frames on 7900X?? Or is it most likely if my 5900X bottlenecks latest video cards and games in a few years, a 7900X will as well but only milder extent and only upgrade will be next 1-2 years for high FPS chasers with little to no real world difference? Meaning by then is it likely Zen 4 will be cutoff for acceptable performance even though Zen 5or 6 obviously would give the best performance.

No. Software requirements takes years before the latest and greatest becomes "obsolete." Zen 3 isn't going to have stuttering just like that. I would put money down that it would take a decade before Zen 3's performance in games really get that bad on average, assuming game design even starts requiring that much performance

Heck, the i7-2600K still delivers above 30 FPS in modern titles, with a lot of them still hovering around 60.

 

[Wolverine2349]

No. Software requirements takes years before the latest and greatest becomes "obsolete." Zen 3 isn't going to have stuttering just like that. I would put money down that it would take a decade before Zen 3's performance in games really get that bad on average, assuming game design even starts requiring that much performance

Heck, the i7-2600K still delivers above 30 FPS in modern titles, with a lot of them still hovering around 60.

Yeah true. Though some have said because Intel had no competition for a long time CPU progress got stagnant. Though IPC gains did not up until Skylake. Sandy Bridge was massive leap in IPC over Bloomfield/Nehlem almost as big as Conroe over Netburst. Then Haswell was a strong 20-25% leap over Ivy Bridge. And Skylake was a strong 15-20% leap over Haswell/Broadwell. But core counts on mainstream consumer platforms were stuck at 4 until AMD came out with original 8 core Zen threat. Well AMD had Bulldozer variants with 8 cores, but IPC was so beyond bad it was like less than half at same clock speed as Sandy Bridge and the like that it did not matter.


Because there is now competition between Intel and AMD could you see game dev speeding up and rendering systems obsolete faster. Though even so would you say it is unlikely Zen 4 will be some magical cutoff and age much better than Zen 3 that by the time Zen 3 is obsolete, Zen 4 will only be marginally better anyways and as such also nearly as obsolete except of course potential CPU upgradeability with AM5 and Zen 5 and 6 down the road. SO basically if you are willing to go with a system without swapping the mobo nor CPU, Zen 3 or Zen 4 will not be a significant difference in terms of when each one becomes obsolete whenever that is in the future??