Ryzen 1600x vs Ryzen 7 chip in gaming

Hey guys, I can't seem to find any reputable benchmarks comparing the Ryzen 1600x vs a Ryzen 7 chip in gaming. I had heard that they perform similar, but I just wanted to be sure how they perform, preferably at 1440p.

Thanks

1 Like

They will be pretty equal in most games.
Since there arent manny games that really benefit from 8 cores.
Especialy if you talk about 1440p, on which games are getting more gpu demending.

2 Likes

On stock speeds there will be no difference. 1600X is 3.6 just like 1800X... I mean in some games 1600X may even outperform the R7 that aren't 1800X, since it will have higher clock speed...
But the R7 are not ment for pure gaming. If you need extra productivity stuff - get the R7. If not - R5 will be just fine.
If you are going to overclock anyway you may even want to go with 1600 non X and save a few bucks for cooling or board or ram or whatever...

2 Likes

Will the 1600x still be able to handle gaming while having discord running in the back as well as watching twitch?

Yes, playing while having discord and twitch is not even demanding. It shouldn't be any problem for the 1600x.

A quick google search showed me a lot though.

Watching twitch is GPU accelerated (because video) and discord doesn't need CPU cycles.

2 Likes

you can start here:

then look at the other tests steve has done.

1 Like

Personally I think the Ryzen 1600 is the sweet spot for most people who just want to game and are on a budget. To echo what others are saying, I also don't really think 8-cores will be relevant for another couple years, most games still limit themselves to 4 cores. Ryzen 7 will have much better use for work environments, but will become more relevant later for gaming.

2 Likes

I'm not exactly on a tight budget, but since 90% of what I'm doing is gaming, I don't see the point in getting an 8 core chip. I was thinking about KabyLake but 4 cores is starting to becoming limiting in some games, not to mention Ryzen has been improving quite a bit these past few months with various games receiving optimization updates. I was thinking about waiting for coffeelake, but, I was literally planning and saving for this build for 2 years now and I can't wait any longer lol.

The R7 might actually be a better long term investment. I know, generally speaking, there is no such thing as "future proofing" a system, but if you don;t plan to upgrade your system frequently, those 8 cores may come in handy a little down the road. But at this point the 1600x is not going to be a bad choice. Even with games using 4 cores, the extra cores in the 1600X will still benefit the OS and other processes that you could run in the background. If you are into streaming, I think it is ideal.

Most modern streaming is done, at the lower end, using the native encoder present on video cards that has a negligible effect on performance, or at the high end, with a secondary dedicated system. With any recent GPU, streaming should no longer be a determining factor when buying a CPU.

edit: So that means the 1600 or 1600x should be a better value.

If streaming comes into play, the eight core would be the obvious choice. TeamPGP have done a Doom stream, playing at 4k and rendering out 1080p using OBS (software encoding) at pretty much max bitrate on twitch and youtube. That was on six cores. So if you want to make sure you can do that for a few years, get the eight core and you're golden.

What I was saying is that most streaming can be done using hardware encoding instead so relying on only software to do it is no longer necessary.

Just switch OBS to Quick Sync for intel or Nvidia NVENC. ATI also has their own application that does this using their cards.

I know that. And that certainly does work. Quick sync is only available on Intel CPUs of course, so that isn't an option. But I just wanted to show that the higher end streaming (which is software based for quality reasons) is also possible without a second system.