8 core vs 12 core

[pc-guy]

That is kind of the advantage of 12~16 cores it gives you options if you are heavy user. This is why I wouldn't upgrade to a Ryzen 7 5800X from a Ryzen 7 3700X in this case,as its more of the same!!

Quite a bit of price jump tho.

 

[adrichardson81]

There's a single thread topic here, (where humbug wrongly bragged his Ryzen 3600 was faster than my 9700k in DXO - it was 35% slower) in it you will see the comparisons I did using DXO.
If you are doing single photos at a time then DXO will only use a max of 8 threads. This is why my 8/8 clocked 9700k is faster in DXO then my very well tuned 12/24 3900X.
For the 3900X to be faster I need to batch export at least 2 photos.

I use NikTools and Photoshop but these generally don't take advantage of multi-core and rely more on single thread speed.

I will be testing out both the 5800x and 5900x to see which one is better overall in our scenarios but I would probably opt for the 5900x if making a pre-review decision.

I do tend to batch process, so I'm leaning more towards 12c. I know it's only 100MHz, but the higher boosts won't hurt either.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Quite a bit of price jump tho.

For Zen3 as a whole,yes I agree especially compared to Zen2 street prices. However,within the Zen3 stack,the Ryzen 7 5800X is £160 more than the Ryzen 7 3700X. Until AMD tells us if there is a cheaper Ryzen 7 5700X and when we can get it,its the cheapest 8C Zen3 CPU we can find now.So the Ryzen 9 5900X is £100 more for 50% more cores,and looks "better" value.

 

[4K8KW10]

Hi everyone

I've decided to give my rig a mid-life upgrade and switch my 3700x for either a 5800x or 5900x. My 3700x is 1st gen silicon and a bit of a dog - it took an undervolt and a lot of PBO tuning just to hit 4.3GHz single core and it won't post if I go over 3200 on the ram.

My main uses are photo editing (42mp raws in DXO PL, and tiffs in Photoshop and Alien Skin/Nik collection) and gaming (targeting 4K 60fps).

Question is am I better off with 8 cores and a single ccx for better latency or upgrading to 12 cores? I know the next gen consoles are 8 core, but they are also more resource light so I'm wondering if having 4 cores free for Windows to faff around with in the background is preferable.

Any thoughts?

Hi,

12 cores is 50% more hardware, so 100% the 12-core.

 

[pc-guy]

For Zen3 as a whole,yes I agree especially compared to Zen2 street prices. However,within the Zen3 stack,the Ryzen 7 5800X is £160 more than the Ryzen 7 3700X. Until AMD tells us if there is a cheaper Ryzen 7 5700X and when we can get it,its the cheapest 8C Zen3 CPU we can find now.So the Ryzen 9 5900X is £100 more for 50% more cores,and looks "better" value.

I don’t think going from 3700x to 5900x is going to bring as much value for the OP as going to 3900x for instance based on current pricing.

the the argument why upgrade to the same gen CPU blah blah blah.

so best to wait for 6 months at least till rocket lake drops. You would imagine that is when cpu prices will take a bit of a drop then

 

[MartinPrince]

I do tend to batch process, so I'm leaning more towards 12c. I know it's only 100MHz, but the higher boosts won't hurt either.

I suspect you will be better off with the 12c, plus PS and Nik will benefit more from the higher Mhz. We are yet to see if the CCX advantage of the 5800x out weighs the Mhz advantage of the 5900X in any scenarios.

Though I prefer actual realworld software usage as trying to extrapolate from synthetic benchmarks can be quite misleading.

The difference between CBr20 single threaded between my 9700k and 3900x is about 5%, though when I use actual image software that is very lightly threaded like PIPP then the difference is 33%.

I'm hoping the 5900X will overcome that large gap but we will have to find out.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I don’t think going from 3700x to 5900x is going to bring as much value for the OP as going to 3900x for instance based on current pricing.

the the argument why upgrade to the same gen CPU blah blah blah.

so best to wait for 6 months at least till rocket lake drops. You would imagine that is when cpu prices will take a bit of a drop then

Its around £130 more for the Ryzen 9 5900X(the Ryzen 9 3900X is around £400),although the value model is the Ryzen 9 3900 non-X if you can get a bundle deal.

Waiting for Rocketlake S might be wise,but since its only 8 high power cores(and 8 lower power cores),I suspect it will have more of an effect on the Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 prices. OTH,we will need to see how exchange rates are too(will the USD appreciate or depreciate against the Pound?).

 

[MartinPrince]

I know DXO hammers the cores pretty hard, it will eat as many cores as you want to throw at it (there is a setting in there you can select how many cores to be utilised)l

Sorry but this is an error. DXO does not have a setting where you can select how many cores it will utillise. It only has a setting for how many images are processed in parallel. To max out a 12c/24t CPU you will need to set it to 3 images, though once you go above the recommended 2 images you can run into errors.

 

[pc-guy]

Sorry but this is an error. DXO does not have a setting where you can select how many cores it will utillise. It only has a setting for how many images are processed in parallel. To max out a 12c/24t CPU you will need to set it to 3 images, though once you go above the recommended 2 images you can run into errors.

You are right. That is the setting. How many parallel work processes it can do.

 

[pc-guy]

Waiting for Rocketlake S might be wise,but since its only 8 high power cores(and 8 lower power cores),I suspect it will have more of an effect on the Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 prices.

That’s a fair point. I think AMD will most likely keeping their 12c and 16c as high as possible as there is no competition.

 

[Vogon]

Also the problem with the Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 CPUs is the offset single chiplet. It means heat distribution over the IHS is uneven and certain coolers don't appear to play as well with this,ie,they don't make proper contact over the single chiplet.
So some of these issues you have with the Ryzen 7 might be down to the cooler design too.
The Ryzen 9 CPUs,due to dual chiplets have a much more even thermal distribution over the IHS in theory.

I don't follow this logic. If your cooling solution has a perfectly flat surface (as it should) and the thermal paste does its job of smoothing any minor imperfections, it shouldn't make a lot of difference as the ihs and cooler base should help spread the heat.
I maybe can see some with direct heat pipe to ihs contact not doing quite so well on that front, but regardless cooling more cores is always going to put more heat into any cooler to deal with.
With an AIO or custom w/c loop, I would imagine any imbalance of cpu heat location would be largely negated?

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I don't follow this logic. If your cooling solution has a perfectly flat surface (as it should) and the thermal paste does its job of smoothing any minor imperfections, it shouldn't make a lot of difference as the ihs and cooler base should help spread the heat.
I maybe can see some with direct heat pipe to ihs contact not doing quite so well on that front, but regardless cooling more cores is always going to put more heat into any cooler to deal with.
With an AIO or custom w/c loop, I would imagine any imbalance of cpu heat location would be largely negated?

Because many air coolers were made with the assumption the die was in the centre of the IHS(and have naked heatpipes),and you hear a lot of people complaining about CPUs such as the Ryzen 7 3700X running hot. You didn't hear this so much with the earlier Zen/Zen+ CPUs despite them consuming more power per tier. It's about thermal density on one side of the CPU. If you also look at the Ryzen 9 CPUs,a Ryzen 9 3950X is consuming nowhere near twice the power of a Ryzen 7 3700X under most conditions. This means each chiplet is producing less heat and also the overall heat distribution over the IHS is also more even as it's evenly split across the die. Basically the Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5 chiplets are the worse quality chiplets and you saw this with them generally also boosting worse. Also of you look at the base of the Wraith Prism/Max stock coolers for the Ryzen 7 3700X the bass contact area is very large, which is probably why it almost matches the Hyper 212.

 

[1Dustin]

If you only care about gaming, it's really not worth paying for more than a 3/5700x. Unless you specifically wanna game at 300fps 1080p. Otherwise, don't waste your money for a literal few % uplift for 50% more cost.

 

[welshrat]

As others have mentioned it doesn't make much point switching from a 3700X to another 8 core unless you really are aiming for max frames at say 1080p (maybe 1440p). Personally I would snap up a 5900X and sell the 3700X whilst it still holds a good value. hopefully you wont have to spend much over £300 for a tasty 12 core chip. The ability to have 4 spare cores whilst gaming would be very beneficial for various other software in the background may not be your use case now but who knows how it will evolve over the next 2 - 3years. Certainly where I will be heading anyway.

 

[1Dustin]

As others have mentioned it doesn't make much point switching from a 3700X to another 8 core unless you really are aiming for max frames at say 1080p (maybe 1440p). Personally I would snap up a 5900X and sell the 3700X whilst it still holds a good value. hopefully you wont have to spend much over £300 for a tasty 12 core chip. The ability to have 4 spare cores whilst gaming would be very beneficial for various other software in the background may not be your use case now but who knows how it will evolve over the next 2 - 3years. Certainly where I will be heading anyway.

If it's not his use case for 3 years? Why spend extra on functionality now, you're not gonna use? Buy what you need now, and in 3 years if games are going to 8+ core then ebay it when it's redundant for you, and buy the current 8 core in the future for peanuts...

 

[adrichardson81]

As others have mentioned it doesn't make much point switching from a 3700X to another 8 core unless you really are aiming for max frames at say 1080p (maybe 1440p). Personally I would snap up a 5900X and sell the 3700X whilst it still holds a good value. hopefully you wont have to spend much over £300 for a tasty 12 core chip. The ability to have 4 spare cores whilst gaming would be very beneficial for various other software in the background may not be your use case now but who knows how it will evolve over the next 2 - 3years. Certainly where I will be heading anyway.

Thanks! Given that gaming is going to be 8 cores for the foreseeable and 4k gaming will be cpu bottlenecked anyway, I'm likely to get better mileage out of a 5900x for my photo editing workflow.

I did think about holding off for ddr5 and pcie 5.0, but I can't see either tech being groundbreaking in the 1st iteration.

 

[welshrat]

Thanks! Given that gaming is going to be 8 cores for the foreseeable and 4k gaming will be cpu bottlenecked anyway, I'm likely to get better mileage out of a 5900x for my photo editing workflow.

I did think about holding off for ddr5 and pcie 5.0, but I can't see either tech being groundbreaking in the 1st iteration.

Thats exactly my feeling, I will be getting a 5900X to replace my 3700X and then move on when DDR5 matures. either way a good time to be into PC's given the stagnation over the last 10 years

 

[adrichardson81]

Thats exactly my feeling, I will be getting a 5900X to replace my 3700X and then move on when DDR5 matures. either way a good time to be into PC's given the stagnation over the last 10 years

Yeah since going 4k (too soon, just like I did with 1440p!) it's the first time I've felt it really flies.

 

[Jacky60]

I'd go 5900X you'll be keeping the CPU for 5 years in all likelihood and 12 cores are bound to get used more in future. For the price difference I don't see the point in compromising especially as productivity tasks
will be so much faster on 12 cores.

 

[adrichardson81]

I'd go 5900X you'll be keeping the CPU for 5 years in all likelihood and 12 cores are bound to get used more in future. For the price difference I don't see the point in compromising especially as productivity tasks
will be so much faster on 12 cores.

Yeah 4-5 years would be nice. Nvidia has more than had their early adopter tax out of me for going 4k, so I'll probably limit myself to gpu upgrades when there's a compelling reason.