Currently I’m using an Intel based system, my choice of video cards was for both teams, NVidia and AMD but today its all AMD for me.
I have a Radeon Pro Wx7100, this card is perfectly for my CAD design work.
Then I moved from a Nvidia GTX1060 to the new RX 5700XT for playing games.
With this in mind, I’m not looking for Ultra Ultra Ultra gaming performance but decent gaming at 1440p that is okay for me so the new RX 5700XT is perfect for that.
I’m also not looking for a Ultra Ultra Ultra rendering machine and Thread ripper build, my i7-8700K did the job for what I needed for gaming and CAD more then enough, so the AMD CPU should be the same or better in performance.
But now with all the new AMD CPU goodies I want to know what is the best to choose?
Do I need to choose a x570 board so that my RX5700XT and the new Ryzen CPU can benefit from the PCIe 4.0 or is this change not noticeable?
I really just don’t now what to choose, I hope you can help me making the right choice.
And do I need to choose 2 sticks of ram because I saw on several different channels that more then 2 stick will kill your ram performance?
My current system :
Case : Thermaltake The Tower 900
MOBO : Z370 Gaming M5
CPU : i7-8700K ( runs stable at 5Ghz)
RAM : 32GB 2400Mhz ( runs stable at 2800Mhz)
Video 1 : Gygabyte Radeon RX5700XT
Video 2 : Radeon PRO WX7100
PSU : LC Power 1200W Platinum
CPU Cooler : Noctua D-15
Boot SSD : 512GB NVMe SSD
DATA SSD : 500GB SSD
DATA SSD : 256GB SSD
DATA HD : 1TB 7200RPM
DATA HD : 500GB 7200RPM
I need to change my MOBO. CPU, RAM ( AMD version of the Noctua D-15 I already have.)
Is a good x570 board, Ryzen 7 3700X or 3900X and 2 x 16GB 3200 RAM more then enough and /or what do you think I should shoose?.
Hey…
Here’s how you choose a motherboard: you look at the features list and you pick one.
Since you won’t Overclock it doesn’t really matter.
What I would seriously recommend is to buy a motherboard with at least some sort of troubleshooting hardware - be it 4 LEDs showing errors if not a post code screen.
The important part is to get the features you want.
In the VRM department all X570 boards are super powerful, which is good, and honestly if you are building a new system you may as well go for X570…
As for memory - just make sure it’s in your motherboard QVL. People spend way too much time and effort on picking ram and thinking about timings and what not. Get some decent 3200MHz ram and you are golden.
Depending on your budget 3700X, TaiChi and 16gigs of ram and you are in the 800$ bill…
The max budget I would like to spend is arround €1000 ($1300).
There is at this moment a very good deal for a Gigabyte Aurus X570 Master for just €300 ($335) overhere, the Ryzen 7 3700X €345 ($373) and then I have to choose the right ram out of the QVL list and I’m Golden?
you can maybe upgrade it for marginally better performance but i wouldn’t bother as Ryzen 3000 has big L3 cache (GAME CACHE!!11!). Ram speed is most likely not as important with Ryzen 3000 as it was with Ryzen 2000 due to the larger cache. Also, you probably won’t get much money for the 32 gb you have if you were to get rid of it so… i’d just keep and re-use it and see how you go first.
PCIe4.0 isn’t really needed yet.
So basically you just need a board and cpu (they ship with a usable box cooler) and you’re good to go.
The 5700XT isn’t that much faster than vega 64, and with my vega 64s i noticed basically almost no difference (well. i didn’t any, but maybe there might be some imperceptible difference) between PCIe3.0 x16 and PCIe3.0 x8.
I didn’t measure performance, but i also didn’t notice any difference in actually using them. And that’s going from 3.0 x8 to x16 - if pcie bandwidth was an issue it would show up far more with that, than the difference between pcie 3.0 and pcie 4.0 x16…
Basically video cards have local memory on them to store textures and geometry in. Once you overflow the video memory, performance tanks hard no matter what PCIe standard you’re running on. So the vast majority of the time the game/software tries to avoid doing that as much as possible.
To my knowledge the only card(s) that have shown to be limited by PCIe 3.0 x16 in any way are Nvidia Volta and maybe the 2080 ti in extremely niche situations…(souce: Gamers Nexus testing).
I think that I will go with the good deal at this moment, Gigabyte Aurus x570 Master, Ryzen 7 3700X, I try to use my RAM first, I can always upgrade the RAM if needed.
This MOBO is maybe overkill but still it gives me plenty of room for the future, I hope, and even overclocking.
My i-7-8700K runs stable at 5Ghz, for what I’m reading and pick up from several different channels they say that this 3700x out performs the i7-8700K.
But yet again these same channels alsways say, for Ryzen use the fasted RAM because Ryzen loves fast RAM.
But I will try first with my own RAM.
What you may get more benefit from PCIe 4.0 with - is (new, pcie 4.0) NVME SSDs.
Ryzen x570 boards can do faster NVME storage than x470 boards.
But still. that’s mostly going to be un-noticeable unless you’re doing some specific workflow with the SSD (because say copying to it from the network, optical drive, etc. will be limited by the other device). Because NVME on PCIe 3.0 is already pretty damn fast…
Don’t get me wrong. Fast ram will probably be “better”. But “better enough” to justify throwing out your existing 32 GB? I very much doubt it. You may be able to measure the difference in benchmarks, but i don’t think you’ll see any major noticeable difference outside of that.
Certainly not enough to go buying another 32-64 GB of RAM, in any case.
I’d use the existing sticks, and upgrade when you need more than 32 GB at some point in the future, when RAM is cheaper.
I will use my my RAM first, it is no fancy bling bling RAM, just standard Micron 2400Mhz (4x8) 32 GB.
I will check the QVL list of this mobo first to see if it is supported.
Even if it isn’t on the QVL (probably won’t be) i wouldn’t stress to much.
Ryzen 3000 is much better than 2000 for RAM compatibility, and even Ryzen 2000 is much better today than it was last year.
The RAM in my Ryzen 2700x is non-QVL, dual-rank DDR4-3000 (i.e., in theory slower than single rank) and performance is pretty great at 2866. And literally all i did was load XMP profile and drop the clock 1-2 steps until it ran properly. I haven’t bothered playing with sub-timings at all - and asrock stock timings are pretty crap
I’d just set the system up with it at 2133 or whatever the non-XMP speed is, make sure your system is stable, and then raise clocks/test XMP profile with it and see how you go.
Again, the L3 cache in Ryzen 3000 is huge… and that will help performance vs. previous ryzen significantly even if your RAM isn’t the fastest sticks available.
Last one thing, what about this statement of these so called “channels”".
Ryzen does not like 4 sticks of RAM better to use 2 sticks of RAM. With 4 sticks of RAM you would see slower RAM clock speeds.
I’m not sure this is exclusive to Ryzen, but yes - for maximum RAM speed, you want to use 2 sticks (1 per channel) and ideally “single rank”.
But that can limit capacity a bit.
I went for 2 dual-rank sticks and plan to go to 4 dual rank sticks (in theory the worst configuration for speed) because i want the capacity.
Is your current kit 4x8 or 2x16?
if it’s 4x8, it will likely be single rank, and i would guess that it will still run at 2400 rated speed (or maybe faster) on Ryzen 3000 as 3000 has a far better memory controller than previous ryzen, and ddr4-2400 really isn’t that fast these days.
if it is dual rank… well - even my ryzen 2700x can drive 32 gb of 2x16 dual rank, non-qvl, non-b-die at 2866… with virtually no tweaking.
Many thanks for your help, I know a lot more now. Ik will buy the x570 board and CPU and I take it from there.
If I run in any problems I will post it here.
I will keep the post open for now, I will order it today and I hope it will arrive in about two days.
I will put an update here.
Since you have 2 GPU cards and an NVMe, an X570 makes perfect sense.
The budget option would be to go with a B450 board like the MSI B450 Tomahawk MAX, but you will not be getting the full benefit from that card since that only has 20 available PCIe 3.0 lanes. Still, paired up with a 3700X it’s ~€500 compared to the €645, and you would have to run an 8x / 8x / 4x split between the 5700XT / Wx7100 / NVMe. While the gaming card will not saturate that, not so sure about the Pro card, and upgrade paths are, well, scarce.
So, I’d recommend the X570 card since you’ve already maxed out the lanes on the B450, but just think you should know about it. The X570 is a better deal for your current hardware though.
Also, the future of storage is spelled m.2 storage, so I’d start looking at that at some point. There are PCIe 16x m.2 extension boards available allowing you to have 6 NVMe in the same box, if you so choose - and you should be able to do 8x PCIe 4.0 for your two GPUs and rest of lanes for storage, add one 2TB drive at a time…
Well, honestly, if you don’t need the WIFI and the dual lan, you may as well get the X570 Elite from Gigabyte. Yeah, you lose the post code and the wifi, but it’s pretty much the same board. You may also be able to push to 3900X if you use your current ram and the cheaper Elite board…
First of all thank you for your response.
I will look in to that as soon I am home.
I’m planning to order this evening but will look in to this board.
Wifi is not needed and dual lan also not, and if the Elite is the same board without the WiFi and dual lan then why bother to buy the Master indeed.
And yes, the elite is much cheeper…
Many thanks for your response.
The B450 board is not an option for me I think.
The x570 would be the logical choice I think, and in a response after yours they recommended a Elite board, cheeper then the master but without the Wifi and dual lan but same board.
I will lok in to that this evening and I will order a board and CPu and I will try with my RAM first.
The master have wifi and dual lan, have extra M.2 slot, have post code, most likely have slightly better VRM but don’t quote me on that last one. Also the sound chip is better, but I downgraded from ALC1220 at my last board to ALC 886 on my current board and I can’t tell the difference…
