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So is the Ryzen 3900X as good as expected?

Associate
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So as the Ryzen 3900X has been released with new chipsets and with faster DDR4 support are all the up takers pleased with the performance or not quite as good as expected?

Long time since I ran an AMD cpu and board, would be interested to know what people think of the performance against intel, not just in gaming but other work loads as well.


So come on spill the beans on your purchase's
 
Soldato
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Tangible upgrade to my gaming rig on the tv, from a 5820k @4.4Ghz and 2080ti . Only did it because my wee one dropped her milk into my bedroom gaming rig with a 1080ti and i5 8500, the RAM, cpu and gpu miraculously survived. Decided to use the cpu in mums htpc with a cheapo board and transplant the 5820k minus the gpu, also changing the case to a non top ventilated one.

Minimum and avg frame rate is much better, but general usage feels fairly same. I do encode and stuff so it will be used occasional to its full pelt but i do agree its overkill.
 
Caporegime
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Yes im happy. Came from a 2500k, so it’s obviously like night and day. Seems to do everything very rapidly and with no fuss. Nice to be able to whizz around a packed Planet Coaster park without any stuttering and analysing hundreds of songs in the DJ rekordbox program took about 1/4 of the time it did on the 2500k.
 
Man of Honour
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Difficult to say really - from a gaming perspective it is perhaps slightly underwhelming given all the hype and the fact it doesn't come in any cheaper than the 9900k. In many cases for gaming an overclocked 3900x is probably matched by the much cheaper overclocked 9700k.
Judged on merit it is OK but not quite the all-conquering IPC monster we were led to believe in the early days.

From an overall workload perspective it is clearly a more attractive proposition.

Disclosure: I don't own one, probably going to see how the 4000 series performs and then either get one of them if it works on B350 or 3700x assuming they slash the price.
 
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Its a new platform with a new architecture, Intel has been using the same architecture for ages so it is a lot more mature in comparison. Zen 2 will improve over time.
 

TrM

TrM

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Difficult to say really - from a gaming perspective it is perhaps slightly underwhelming given all the hype and the fact it doesn't come in any cheaper than the 9900k. In many cases for gaming an overclocked 3900x is probably matched by the much cheaper overclocked 9700k.
Judged on merit it is OK but not quite the all-conquering IPC monster we were led to believe in the early days.

From an overall workload perspective it is clearly a more attractive proposition.

Disclosure: I don't own one, probably going to see how the 4000 series performs and then either get one of them if it works on B350 or 3700x assuming they slash the price.

Amd never made it out to be a i9 9900k killer though the ipc is better on 3900X it’s that pesky clock speed advantage that’s the killer 3900X at much lower clock speed will allwaya be at a disadvantage and whilst most i9 9900k will do 5.1ghz etc how many really take full advantage of that most the people I know don’t ov there i7 9900k or 9700k only use stock clocks.

the i7 9700k beats the 9900k in a fair few games also and the price is just as cheap vs that cpu then the A’s the 3700x vs 3900X:)

Intel are at a cross roads though with 10nm taking so long and with amd getting so fast can any one rembwr the last die shrink of intel cpu and lower clock speeds and much higher heat? Intel need to make sure there 10nm is perfect on release as they could give away there major advantage over amd :) such interesting times ahaead :)
 
Soldato
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It's not a gaming chip (doesn't mean it's not a good gamer). All those cores/threads will not benefit you in games presently. As seen by the fact the 3600/x pretty much matches it in gaming tasks.

It's a HEDT chip. The 3700x/3800x are for mixed workloads and the 3600/x is the pure gaming only chip.

The notion that it is future proof also doesn't fly as I've noticed we always want the latest and greatest anyway so those that bought the 3900x for gaming will probably stick it on the members market next year and upgrade again.
 
Soldato
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It's not a gaming chip (doesn't mean it's not a good gamer). All those cores/threads will not benefit you in games presently. As seen by the fact the 3600/x pretty much matches it in gaming tasks.

It's a HEDT chip. The 3700x/3800x are for mixed workloads and the 3600/x is the pure gaming only chip.

The notion that it is future proof also doesn't fly as I've noticed we always want the latest and greatest anyway so those that bought the 3900x for gaming will probably stick it on the members market next year and upgrade again.

Whilst I kinda agree with you there:

1. AMD said it's the first 12 core gaming CPU
2. It's in their desktop platform line-up, not HEDT. Threadripper is their HEDT.
 
Associate
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I'm happy, I went from a good CPU in the 2700X to a 3900X. That's 50% more cores on the same motherboard. I installed a better cooler and enabled PBO and that's it. Compared to others who will try and squeeze everything out of it, it's been hassle free :). I'm delighted with performance for multi-threaded work loads, it's better than many HEDT CPUs. If people thought 5ghz all core was what they were going to get, well of course you'll be disappointed.
 
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I'd say it's a disappointment, at one stage many people here were predicting that it might do 5Ghz with decent cooling.
If some one about a year ago would tell me you'll going to get 8 core 4.4GHz approx 5GHz 9900k performance for 320£ or 6 core with performance aprox. 8600k for 180£, my answer would be: Take My Money and I did open my wallet as soon as i realized it (day after release). Still haven't seen any one here with 3800x, nvm 3950x (which will be like 2 x 9900k with less powerdraw ).
 
Soldato
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I'm happy, I went from a good CPU in the 2700X to a 3900X. That's 50% more cores on the same motherboard. I installed a better cooler and enabled PBO and that's it. Compared to others who will try and squeeze everything out of it, it's been hassle free :). I'm delighted with performance for multi-threaded work loads, it's better than many HEDT CPUs. If people thought 5ghz all core was what they were going to get, well of course you'll be disappointed.
Which is precisely what the 3900X is really aimed at and in that context it can never really be viewed as a disappointment. ;)
 
Associate
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So far from what I have read online the 3900x is not as good as the 9900k at gaming but has an advantage in multicore processing which it should have with more cores. I am not convinced the 3900X is an upgrade over the 9900k and although PCIE 4 offers greater through put speed its not really evident
at the moment unless using M2 pcie 4 drives when they become readily available.

Maybe next year with greater clock speeds and when the new thread ripper makes an appearance I might consider a swap from my 9900K to AMD based hardware. after all the hype I expected the new ryzen chips to be spanking the 9900K in all departments but so far I have to say the hype got the better of it.
Its a great start for the new ryzen chips and I hope they progress in the coming months.

thanks for all the responses so far.
 
Associate
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I think the hype spoiled it slightly. To many people are obsessed with high clock speeds and the hype of 5Ghz was a big let down to them. Personally i remember the days when my 2.4Ghz was hammering the old Pentium P4's clocked at about 3.6Ghz so personally i dont give a monkeys about clock speed as long as performance is there and the 3900x seems to match a 5Ghz 9900K. Hor me High clock speedss is Intels way of saying "we dont know what to do next"

Personally i have been loving mine and the motherboards are a real step up from previous generations which is welcome also. My encoding bombs along now (not that it was slow on my 1700x) and gaming its obviously faster to.
All in all with the exception of a few release day bugs i think its turned out good. Bios and drivers will mature giving a more performance and i should imagine teh 4000 series been another big step in the right direction also.
 
Associate
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The hype and speculation was 5.0ghz + much better ipc for £250.
Myself, I just care about gaming performance. The higher prices don't bother me, it was always expensive when I first got into pc's, I'm an early adopter. Vr, physx cards etc. This is my main hobby and I feel it to be very good value for the hrs I get out of it.
Sadly I won't be picking up a new Ryzen. For my use and current setup it would be a downgrade. I see 5ghz ahead of 3900x in most games, I run 5.2.
1080p with 2080ti shows me what I may be getting a couple of gpus down the line at 1440p.
By the time 3900x pulls ahead in a majority of games due to cores, I feel will be towards the end of my cpu life or already moved on.

However, I'm a small minority. I would recommend the ryzen to 90+% of friends, although outside of gaming not many need cores and so I'd recommend a lower ryzen chip.

Now we have a real competition + consoles coming with higher core count. Fingers crossed. I'm interested to see what effect this will have in future games :)
 
Soldato
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6 Feb 2019
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17,466
It's a dissapointment, however it's still faster than the previous generation and THAT IS OK

The hype and speculation was 5.0ghz + much better ipc for £250.
Myself, I just care about gaming performance. The higher prices don't bother me, it was always expensive when I first got into pc's, I'm an early adopter. Vr, physx cards etc. This is my main hobby and I feel it to be very good value for the hrs I get out of it.
Sadly I won't be picking up a new Ryzen. For my use and current setup it would be a downgrade. I see 5ghz ahead of 3900x in most games, I run 5.2.
1080p with 2080ti shows me what I may be getting a couple of gpus down the line at 1440p.
By the time 3900x pulls ahead in a majority of games due to cores, I feel will be towards the end of my cpu life or already moved on.

However, I'm a small minority. I would recommend the ryzen to 90+% of friends, although outside of gaming not many need cores and so I'd recommend a lower ryzen chip.

Now we have a real competition + consoles coming with higher core count. Fingers crossed. I'm interested to see what effect this will have in future games :)

GPU bottlenecks at 1440p and 4k will become cpu bottlenecks in the next year or two. First at the high end and then it will start filtering down to the mid range. So while Intel and AMD are neck and neck at 1440p and 4k, it will turn into the same gap as 1080p in a year or two due to GPU performance advancements.

That being said - the only thing that could offset this is if games used more cores, then perhaps the AMD chip won't become so much of a bottleneck.

It's a really difficult time to decide which chip to buy. If we assume the current trajectory is accurate - the gap between Intel and AMD at 1440p and 4k will continue to widen (in Intels favour) unless games start to use more than 8 cores within the same time frame.
 
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