So now I have a dilemma

[DaveSimmons]

For stock speed and gaming as the only CPU-heavy task, you want an i7-7700K. It's faster than 1800X, especially the minimum framerates. That's just reality. AMD massively improved their CPUs and for some other applications they're a great value but they lose in gaming.

Or wait (a year?) for new Ryzen models and see how they perform against intel with late-2017 / early 2018 games.

 

[Ancalagon44]

Cancel your order, but don't order anything to replace it.

Just wait a month. In a month's time, there will be BIOS updates for all of the motherboards. The dust will have settled, and you will have time to analyse the benchmarks properly.

Also gives you time to think. Don't make a rush decision.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Also in a month AMD prices might drop -- Newegg has the plain 1700 for $330 vs. $350 for a 7700K. At that price I'd want the i7 even if I planned to try for a massive Ryzen overclock. Maybe the 1700 will make more sense at...$300?

 

[JimmiG]

Well the gaming results are nothing unexpected. With the high clockspeeds (even without OC) and the insane IPC of the 7700K in lightly threaded workloads, it's pretty much a given that it would outperform any 8-core chip, including those from Intel itself, in most games.

Just like with Intel's HEDT, it's a trade off between more cores or better lightly threaded performance. The only difference now is that you don't have to sell a kidney and your firstborn to be able to afford an 8-core CPU. If you still want better lightly threaded performance, then the 7700K remains the best choice.

 

[TemjinGold]

Cancel your order, but don't order anything to replace it.

Just wait a month. In a month's time, there will be BIOS updates for all of the motherboards. The dust will have settled, and you will have time to analyse the benchmarks properly.

Also gives you time to think. Don't make a rush decision.

That sounds sound actually. Though I checked on my Crosshair and the vendor doesn't even have an ETA, so maybe I don't need to cancel it haha.

 

[Hi-Fi Man]

I was in a similar situation as you OP. I canceled my preorder of a 1700x and asus prime board and instead ordered a i7 6800k and asrock Taichi board.

The chips aren't bad and AMD certainly is competitive once again but for gaming and a few other tasks price/performance is still in favor of Intel. I needed more cores than four but not quite eight, so once I found out the 6800k (which is the same price as the 1700x) was beating it pretty thoroughly in games the decision seemed pretty clear. In addition the chips don't seem to scale high frequency wise.

Performance is pretty solid in a lot of areas but it seems Zen doesn't have the memory performance needed to keep up in games and other things. I am however, looking forward to Zen+ as I think they might be able to remedy a lot of Zens current downfalls.

CPUs just got a lot more exciting which I think is great. Good work AMD.

 

[Lil Frier]

I wouldn't upgrade to Intel but that's honestly a brand problem. I would reconsider the 1800X because the 1700 is more than capable, or maybe go with the 1700X. The "slaughter" in gaming is probably not where you're actually gaming, and it's more in the super-high framerate realities where your perceived performance is unlikely to suffer. I expect you're doing things in a world where the GPU matters, 1440p and higher gaming, and that makes the CPU gap matter less. It really just seems Ryzen's gaming struggles don't show up unless you're at 1080p and over 60 FPS (in many of those, it seemed even at 100+ FPS).

I'd stick with Ryzen, especially with the hope to save money with a long-term socket from AMD.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I wouldn't upgrade to Intel but that's honestly a brand problem. I would reconsider the 1800X because the 1700 is more than capable, or maybe go with the 1700X. The "slaughter" in gaming is probably not where you're actually gaming, and it's more in the super-high framerate realities where your perceived performance is unlikely to suffer. I expect you're doing things in a world where the GPU matters, 1440p and higher gaming, and that makes the CPU gap matter less. It really just seems Ryzen's gaming struggles don't show up unless you're at 1080p and over 60 FPS (in many of those, it seemed even at 100+ FPS).

I'd stick with Ryzen, especially with the hope to save money with a long-term socket from AMD.

The 7700K has 10 - 50% better minimum framerates at 1080p, mostly 10%, but the 48 fps (i7) vs 33 fps (1800X) for Ashes of the Singularity is troubling:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/03/amd-ryzen-review/2/#h4

Maybe BIOS and driver updates will fix that,

 

[Doom2pro]

If you plan on using your high end PC Master Race gaming rig to game at gimped XBOX 1080p resolutions then the 7700K is for you, otherwise Ryzen should be the treat.

Also if you are unable to figure out how XMP/AMP memory options are enabled in BIOS (do you have mouse clicking skills?) as many top reviewers were apparently unable to figure out, then again 7700K might be for you.

I don't plan on canceling my order.

 

[Absolute0]

That sounds sound actually. Though I checked on my Crosshair and the vendor doesn't even have an ETA, so maybe I don't need to cancel it haha.

Waiting is where it's at. From my perspective, the best bang for your buck isn't buying brand new systems; it's picking up last year's quality parts at discount rates from the wealthier techies who upgrade annually.

In other words even if prices don't drop in the next month (and Intel price drops certainly might), there should still be plenty of opportunities to pick up discounted CPUs or platform combos from other users

One man's "ewwww 2016 last year's hardware" is another man's "wow this is snappy!" lmao...

Ryzen for gaming makes financial sense if you go 1700, cheap board, OC to 3.8+, and intend to stay on the platform for a long time. But I think all the benchmarks show, in current games, even i5 7600K is far better gaming performance per dollar.

 

[AMDisTheBEST]

Are you gonna be gaming 100% of the time on your pc? if not, which i most certainly think you arent, get 1800x.

 

[Lil Frier]

The 7700K has 10 - 50% better minimum framerates at 1080p, mostly 10%, but the 48 fps (i7) vs 33 fps (1800X) for Ashes of the Singularity is troubling:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/03/amd-ryzen-review/2/#h4

Maybe BIOS and driver updates will fix that,

From the sound of it, those devs are one of the ones most rushing to make Ryzen better in their game, so I wouldn't worry on there. What I read pre-Ryzen was that their benchmarks were also a bit wonky at times in general. That the Ashes crew was at the 2/28 event tells me that things on that game shouldn't be a problem for long.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Are you gonna be gaming 100% of the time on your pc? if not, which i most certainly think you arent, get 1800x.

A $500 CPU instead of a faster-in-games $350 7700K? That seems unwise if your non-gaming uses are web browsing, MS Office, other normal apps. If you spend your days transcoding videos then maybe.

 

[imported_jjj]

Depends on res and GPU. 95% of users are playing at or above optimal res but reviewers are out of touch and need to create an imaginary reality that doesn't serve anyone.

That being said, Ryzen does have a gaming problem and it's unclear what it is so you could wait a bit and see if anything changes.
Skylake X is just a rebrand of the HEDT platform , since X sounds cooler than E. So if you wait for it, you'll need to pay quite a lot for it.
You can also wait and see the 6 and 4 cores Ryzen since it sounds like you care more about ST clocks than 8 cores and the 4GHz turbo 6 cores will be about half the price of a 1800X. Maybe by then we also gain some clarity on gaming. Right now we don't quite know what's going on.

 

[Mockingbird]

I cancelled my pre-order and am waiting to see if the issues can be fixed.

 

[AMDisTheBEST]

A $500 CPU instead of a faster-in-games $350 7700K? That seems unwise if your non-gaming uses are web browsing, MS Office, other normal apps. If you spend your days transcoding videos then maybe.

Chrome doesnt benefit from 4 more cores? I thought chrome is cpu resources hungry. it always drive my cpu usage to 100% when refreshing on my laptop so i figure extra cores help.
(my laptop has 6200u btw)

 

[DaveSimmons]

Chrome doesnt benefit from 4 more cores? I though chrome is cpu resources hungry. it always drive my cpu usage to 100% when refreshing on my laptop so i figure extra cores help.
(my laptop has 6200u btw)

Your laptop has 2 cores at 2.3 GHz with turbo to 2.8 GHz. 7700K has 4 cores at 4.2 GHz with turbo to 4.5 GHz. So no, it is not wise for most people to spend an extra $150 on 1800X just for Chrome use.

 

[AMDisTheBEST]

Your laptop has 2 cores at 2.3 GHz with turbo to 2.8 GHz. 7700K has 4 cores at 4.2 GHz with turbo to 4.5 GHz. So no, it is not wise for most people to spend an extra $150 on 1800X just for Chrome use.

Well, besides chrome, he may need to run VMs, compiling codes, and run simulations for engineering classes so 4 extra cores can be handy too.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Well, besides chrome, he may need to run VMs, compiling codes, and run simulations for engineering classes so 4 extra cores can be handy too.

He said:

I work at home (and on this computer) but nothing more than basic office tasks / webcam streaming (for meetings). I also game.

So nope.

 

[AMDisTheBEST]

He said:


So nope.

Okay but how about two years from now, some code wizards at Microsoft manage to develop a new softwares/OS that is so efficient and optimized that it can run 25% faster per extra core?

 

[sttubs]

"AMD responded to the issues late last night with the following statement from John Taylor, CVP of Marketing:

“As we presented at Ryzen Tech Day, we are supporting 300+ developer kits with game development studios to optimize current and future game releases for the all-new Ryzen CPU. We are on track for 1000+ developer systems in 2017. For example, Bethesda at GDC yesterday announced its strategic relationship with AMD to optimize for Ryzen CPUs, primarily through Vulkan low-level API optimizations, for a new generation of games, DLC and VR experiences.

Oxide Games also provided a public statement today on the significant performance uplift observed when optimizing for the 8-core, 16-thread Ryzen 7 CPU design – optimizations not yet reflected in Ashes of the Singularity benchmarking. Creative Assembly, developers of the Total War series, made a similar statement today related to upcoming Ryzen optimizations.

CPU benchmarking deficits to the competition in certain games at 1080p resolution can be attributed to the development and optimization of the game uniquely to Intel platforms – until now. Even without optimizations in place, Ryzen delivers high, smooth frame rates on all “CPU-bound” games, as well as overall smooth frame rates and great experiences in GPU-bound gaming and VR. With developers taking advantage of Ryzen architecture and the extra cores and threads, we expect benchmarks to only get better, and enable Ryzen excel at next generation gaming experiences as well.

Game performance will be optimized for Ryzen and continue to improve from at-launch frame rate scores.” John Taylor, AMD"



https://www.pcper.com/news/Processors/AMD-responds-1080p-gaming-tests-Ryzen

 

[SlickR12345]

The Ryzen processors are a tad bit slower on some games at 1080p, but if you game on 1440p or higher you'd have no issues, while being much faster than anything else on the market when it comes to applications and office work. Its equal or even beats the 6900k while being $600 cheaper.

I'd personally get the 1700 and overclock it manually, but if you don't want to bother with that or want to overclock more later then the 1800x is the way to go! Though you got to know that the initial processors have limited OC headroom. 4.1GHz seems to be about the max they can go unless you are pushing it. This is for all 8 cores though, which is what Intel counterparts can do as well. So similar OC headroom as Intel in terms of 8 core processors.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Okay but how about two years from now, some code wizards at Microsoft manage to develop a new softwares/OS that is so efficient and optimized that it can run 25% faster per extra core?

Word spends 99% of its tine waiting for you to type something. Optimizing it 25% per core won't make a human write text faster.

You're arguing for future possible performance, and in areas that don't even apply to this person's use case.

Please step back and realize that you're posting in an "is Ryzen right for me" thread NOT "is Ryzen a good value for VIsual Studio developers or transcoding enthusiasts" thread.

You can be an AMD fan without needing to think that Ryzen is the best CPU for every user.

 

[imported_jjj]

I cancelled my pre-order and am waiting to see if the issues can be fixed.

You wouldn't see an impact with a GTX 970 but you could with your next GPU, depending on what GPU and res and ofc how games scale to more cores by then.

 

[Dribble]

Rizen has been reviewed and we now know the best cpu for gaming is still the 7700K so buy that. It's not complex really.