Hi all,
I need to build a new PC.
I use it for gaming, programming and code compiling, occasional rendering with 3dstudio max and occasional encoding with handbrake.
What do you recommend for a modern build right now?
A 13900K or a 7950X3D?
I know that 14900K is near the corner but I doubt that it will change the answer…
If you’re not doing heavy productivity, I would say neither. Save some money and get the 7800X3D as a very strong gaming CPU that has the cores to do some production work from time to time.
If you really want the highest end, I would probably lean toward Intel between those two, because the 7950X3D is kind of an odd chip. The 3D V-Cache is only on a single CPU chiplet, so the two chiplets have different performance levels.
same thing applies to Intel with ecores and pcores…
Let your GPU do that:
It’s similar in the sense that there is an asymmetrical layout, but I disagree that it’s comparable.
E-Cores and P-Cores are not the same, but the arrangement is very simple. If you have something low priority, give it to the e-cores. If you want the best performance, give it to the p-cores.
The problem with 3D V-Cache is that it’s difficult to know what benefits from it. Even if you inform the OS about which cores are which, what criteria does it use to choose which ones to use? In the AMD CPUs, the cores with the cache run at a lower maximum boost clock than the cores without. You could have a workload that needs raw clock speed and doesn’t care about cache. But you might have the opposite. It’s hard to know without profiling specific workloads, so that makes scheduling on such a CPU somewhat tricky.
I’m not sure what work has been done in the various OS schedulers to account for this so far.
Looking at some benchmarks for code compilation, it looks like both CPUs are basically equal. So i think you would be fine either way.
However given that the 13900k is much harder to cool for maximum performance, and the z690/z790 is basically at the end of it’s life, personally i would lean toward AMD, unless you need the intel platform for some reasons (such as the IGPU).
Also, while CPU is important for code compilation speed, don’t forget about RAM and SSDs that can also be a bottleneck.
do you know if it’s hard to push 6000mt/s on a 4x16GB kit on AMD?
I have a 4x16GB of SK Hinyx 6200MHz from Corsair made for Intel and I would like to utilize that kit.
Will it be difficult to use it on AMD?
I agree with you but choosing the right core on AMD is way less important than on Intel.
On Intel the two types of cores has completely different performance from each other, on AMD the difference is not that big.
If the scheduler choose the wrong ccd, the performance impact is not big.
I´m not sure if it is still required to install additional software for the 7950X3D,
scheduler in regards to gaming.
And how important the absolute best gaming performance is to you?
Otherwise you might very well just grab a 7950X instead if you don´t mind leaving,
a little bit of gaming performance on the table.
Sorry, i am not famillair enough with AM5 to answer.
Also, the new core 14700k (new i7) will have more core and might be a good middle ground with the additional bonus to save some bucks.
What kind of programming/software dev do you do ?
Are you planning to have a GPU because that can do the rendering from 3ds max much faster that a cpu will.
I render in both Maya and 3DS max and using gpu is always much faster (I’m using Arnold renderer)
Lots of YMMV here. My preference for my next build is the 7950X (w/o the extra cache, seems to clock a bit higher). But then I am not a gamer.
If you’re going with a 7000 series x3d, make sure you update your bios. 6/8 months ago there was something of a “”““snafu””“” in which having EXPO [your memory XMP] on caused absurd voltages and fried chips in some cases. Latest bios versions cap said voltages.
I have 7950X without 3D and I’m quite happy. But I don’t care about competitive gaming so couple of frames here and there I can’t notice.
Programming is tricky as I do cloud/web services mostly and there’s not much compiling for me as today services are small we just have a lot of them - so having a lot of cache doesn’t make that much impact for me. But if you do things with bigger code base and compile a lot or such you might benefit from a bit more cache. Not sure what’s your targeted area here. I went with enough of “real” cores + 64GB ram to have docker/podman running smoothly those DBs and services.
As for productivity I don’t know I just assume Intel + Nvidia is better in most cases. I can say my wife didn’t complain much on 7950X + 7900XT but she doesn’t do long videos just high(er) quality images & high(er) quality short clips for social media marketing so there’s that.
Hope this helps in any way to lean towards one of those processors