Have a R7 1700 system and looking at build a new system.
My PC is Lenovo prebuilt, so proprietary parts and no upgrade path.
Didn’t really think it through and regret going prebuilt.
Not making that mistake again.
Not looking to go over $450,so ignore $600+ bundles.
I more or less narrowed it down to 2 bundles
Looking at either the R7 9700x bundle or the R5 7600X3D bundle, both $450.
I will be gaming, but not over 60fps.
Mostly interested in emulation and maybe running some VMs, not all in on gaming.
Most people seem to say 9700x isn’t great and to get 7600X3D instead, but want opinions from those who don’t only game. 9700x has 2 extra cores, but no 3D cache.
Which of these is the better buy?
Not too sure on the other bundles, but if one looks better, let me know.
As someone who returned the 9700X combo… The 9700X combo.
Unfortunate to hear your Lenovo setup can’t support a CPU swap; Newegg has the 5800X with a 32gb kit of RAM (albeit definitely not the best DDR4 ever made, but good enough) for $190 currently. I threw it in a friend’s system, and aside from insane temperatures at default settings (142W PPT is /a lot/ for 8 cores) it works excellently.
The 9700X however is kind of nuts in its capabilities away from gaming. It’s 75% of a 5950X running ~200W once tuned just a bit, and ~70% at stone default. That’s at 88W PPT.
The one other thing to kind of consider is that the 7600X3D combo does have a different board. I did not enjoy the Gigabyte experience, but I’ve been dealing with mostly Asus products for most of my life so maybe I’m just biased.
Don’t really need 9700x, but with bundle, comes out to about $170 for the cpu.
Issue with bundles is like you said, you can’t pick your motherboard/ram.
I did want a Asus motherboard, since my brother has one and works great.
9700x might be overkill, even on an R7 1700 games run okay.
To be fair, if your AM4 setup supported a CPU upgrade, I’d go that route every time. However, the 9700X genuinely outruns the 7700X at the same power as the 7600 non-X; to my relative surprise the 7600X3D is listed as 65W TDP as well, and the difference will be… Weird. Any game that can’t load 8+ cores successfully will run considerably better on the 3DV chip, but those that /can/ will run the same or better on the 9700X, and those that benefit mostly from pure clock speed will go toward the 9700X as well.
Board choice is mostly whatever, but I think the “real” boat got missed in that regard anyway; up until last month or so, MC was running the basic 7600X3D combo but with the 7800X3D at $499, with the ROG Strix board available for another $40. That went up by like $40 on both sides, then $100, and now it’s gone. I /think/ I’d rather have the TUF than the Gigabyte Gaming AX, but the Gigabyte board didn’t seem to have all that much to complain about beyond how extremely used to Asus BIOS I am.