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> When Intel’s own i5-9600K is under half the cost with only two fewer cores, > or AMD’s R7 2700X is very competitive in almost every test, while they might no

> When Intel’s own i5-9600K is under half the cost with only two fewer cores, > or AMD’s R7 2700X is very competitive in almost every test, while they might not be the best, they’re more cost-effective.

noir_lord 8y ago
In the UK the 2700X is half the price of the i9-9900K and trades blows with it on the stuff I mostly care about. I'm truly loving the 2700X I built last week, it's a nice bump over the 1700 at work.
- eikenberry 8y ago
  Is the 2700X that noticeable of a bump over the 1700? On paper it doesn't look _that_ much better.
  - dragontamer 8y ago
    The L2 cache dropped from 17-clocks to 12-clocks of latency. Its not a big improvement, but there's just better power-management, better caches, better memory compatibility (!!!), etc. etc. But enough that you get a real boost in practical benchmarks (FPS in games or Handbrake rendering). The compatibility problem was probably most annoying. The 1700 didn't work with a lot of RAM when it launched, requiring BIOS settings to change. You'll still see AMD builders praising the "Samsung B-Die" (the most compatible RAM with AMD Ryzen). The 2700x just works overall better. I'd personally consider it due to all of the little changes and little improvements.
  - blihp 8y ago
    You're probably better off waiting for 3rd gen Ryzen which sounds like it will be a nice all-around performance bump. Should be arriving in ~6 mo.
    - tracker1 8y ago
      That's what I'm waiting for, around that time my 4790k will be 6yo, and the bump should be worth it... more ram and threads will be nice. May wait for the TR refresh as a consideration too... longest I've ever held on to a desktop PC.
      - bpye 8y ago
        Yep, I'm coming from a 4690 and my plan is similar. Hopefully Zen 2 provides a substantive enough improvement but even if not I would still be quite happy.
      - blihp 8y ago
        I'm in the same boat. Been running my SB for ~2x longer than I've ever stuck with a primary system before. No complaints, it's been a great system. But I'm really looking forward to getting more threads. Probably won't go with TR though, I think the mainstream Ryzen will do what I need and won't have to deal with the latency idiosyncrasies.
paulmd 8y ago
It all depends on what you're doing with it. For gaming alone, current games are barely using 6 threads, so a 2700X is complete overkill with 16 threads. It's always a bit revealing that people leap to recommending AMD's flagship processor as some sort of a value king for gaming. You really should save $100 and go with the 2600X instead, there's virtually no difference in gaming benchmarks. The 9600K, 9700K or 2600X are really what gamers should be looking at. The only thing that's going to make use of a 2700X or a 9900K right now is productivity tasks (video encoding, 3D modelling, etc). Intel still has a lead in high-refresh gaming (which is a coded way of saying they have better gaming performance that is currently bottlenecked by GPU performance), so if you're primarily a gamer it's still worth leaning to the 9600K/9700K. And the 9900K, while expensive, combines that gaming performance with a ~20-25% lead in productivity tasks. Expensive, but hands-down the fastest thing on the market for at least a year. Threadripper is great for productivity stuff, but since it's NUMA it really doesn't perform any different than a 2700X for gaming. Also, the 2990WX has an even weirder configuration where half the dies don't have access to RAM, so it's hard to recommend except as a specialty product. 2950X is the generalist recommendation there. Next year the Zen2 upgrade will hopefully bring AMD up to parity with Intel in gaming, and probably beat them in productivity. But it's hard to recommend planning on buying two different processors to "save money", so if that's your cup of tea, just wait until next year. So, the recommendations look like: 60 Hz gaming => buy a 2600X high-refresh gaming => buy a 9700K 60 Hz gaming+productivity or productivity only => buy a 2700X high refresh gaming and productivity => 9900K really heavy productivity stuff => 1950X/2950X/wait for 3800X/3950X next year
- babypuncher 8y ago
  There are some games, like the new Assassin's Creed, that benefit from having 8 physical cores. The 2700 is probably not the best value proposition to play games that are out right now, but it probably is a good value if you want a chip that will handle new games for the next 4 years without needing an upgrade. Games today may be using 4 or 6 threads but it wasn't that long ago when games ran on only 1 or 2.
- individualcell 8y ago
  Are you saying that when you start a game, you are closing all the programs you have opened and disable all the services/background processes? If a game uses 6 cores, you can have 2 more for your office, browser and god knows what else running without slowing you down.

noir_lord 8y ago

In the UK the 2700X is half the price of the i9-9900K and trades blows with it on the stuff I mostly care about. I'm truly loving the 2700X I built last week, it's a nice bump over the 1700 at work.

eikenberry 8y ago
Is the 2700X that noticeable of a bump over the 1700? On paper it doesn't look _that_ much better.
- dragontamer 8y ago
  The L2 cache dropped from 17-clocks to 12-clocks of latency. Its not a big improvement, but there's just better power-management, better caches, better memory compatibility (!!!), etc. etc. But enough that you get a real boost in practical benchmarks (FPS in games or Handbrake rendering). The compatibility problem was probably most annoying. The 1700 didn't work with a lot of RAM when it launched, requiring BIOS settings to change. You'll still see AMD builders praising the "Samsung B-Die" (the most compatible RAM with AMD Ryzen). The 2700x just works overall better. I'd personally consider it due to all of the little changes and little improvements.
- blihp 8y ago
  You're probably better off waiting for 3rd gen Ryzen which sounds like it will be a nice all-around performance bump. Should be arriving in ~6 mo.
  - tracker1 8y ago
    That's what I'm waiting for, around that time my 4790k will be 6yo, and the bump should be worth it... more ram and threads will be nice. May wait for the TR refresh as a consideration too... longest I've ever held on to a desktop PC.
    - bpye 8y ago
      Yep, I'm coming from a 4690 and my plan is similar. Hopefully Zen 2 provides a substantive enough improvement but even if not I would still be quite happy.
    - blihp 8y ago
      I'm in the same boat. Been running my SB for ~2x longer than I've ever stuck with a primary system before. No complaints, it's been a great system. But I'm really looking forward to getting more threads. Probably won't go with TR though, I think the mainstream Ryzen will do what I need and won't have to deal with the latency idiosyncrasies.

paulmd 8y ago

It all depends on what you're doing with it. For gaming alone, current games are barely using 6 threads, so a 2700X is complete overkill with 16 threads. It's always a bit revealing that people leap to recommending AMD's flagship processor as some sort of a value king for gaming. You really should save $100 and go with the 2600X instead, there's virtually no difference in gaming benchmarks. The 9600K, 9700K or 2600X are really what gamers should be looking at. The only thing that's going to make use of a 2700X or a 9900K right now is productivity tasks (video encoding, 3D modelling, etc). Intel still has a lead in high-refresh gaming (which is a coded way of saying they have better gaming performance that is currently bottlenecked by GPU performance), so if you're primarily a gamer it's still worth leaning to the 9600K/9700K. And the 9900K, while expensive, combines that gaming performance with a ~20-25% lead in productivity tasks. Expensive, but hands-down the fastest thing on the market for at least a year. Threadripper is great for productivity stuff, but since it's NUMA it really doesn't perform any different than a 2700X for gaming. Also, the 2990WX has an even weirder configuration where half the dies don't have access to RAM, so it's hard to recommend except as a specialty product. 2950X is the generalist recommendation there. Next year the Zen2 upgrade will hopefully bring AMD up to parity with Intel in gaming, and probably beat them in productivity. But it's hard to recommend planning on buying two different processors to "save money", so if that's your cup of tea, just wait until next year. So, the recommendations look like: 60 Hz gaming => buy a 2600X high-refresh gaming => buy a 9700K 60 Hz gaming+productivity or productivity only => buy a 2700X high refresh gaming and productivity => 9900K really heavy productivity stuff => 1950X/2950X/wait for 3800X/3950X next year

babypuncher 8y ago
There are some games, like the new Assassin's Creed, that benefit from having 8 physical cores. The 2700 is probably not the best value proposition to play games that are out right now, but it probably is a good value if you want a chip that will handle new games for the next 4 years without needing an upgrade. Games today may be using 4 or 6 threads but it wasn't that long ago when games ran on only 1 or 2.
individualcell 8y ago
Are you saying that when you start a game, you are closing all the programs you have opened and disable all the services/background processes? If a game uses 6 cores, you can have 2 more for your office, browser and god knows what else running without slowing you down.