i9-9900 or Ryzen 3900?
asdf123
Posts: 167
Just pulled the trigger on a monster prebuilt system and am now wondering if I should quickly make a change:
Went with i9-9900 (no overclock) + 64GB 4000mhz RAM + 2080 TI based on all forum recommendations to date
However, based on reviews from the last 24 hours, it sounds like the Ryzen 3900 may actually nearly match the i9 in single threaded performance and crush it in multithreaded.
Regarding DAZ, should I cancel this order and redo it using a Ryzen 3900 or stick with the i9?
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Comments
If you just use Daz stick to the i9. Daz seems to be almost exclusively single threaded. If you do pretty much any other non gaming get the 3900.
I would not recommend Intel for any reason in 2019. The 3900X is real close in single threaded performance, so apps that have not been updated to use more than 1 thread like Daz Studio will not suffer so much. You will not see any difference between the two using Daz.
Additionally, you could potentially use the 3900X to actually render things with the 2080ti or if by chance your scene exceeds the VRAM limit of the 2080ti. In this situation, all 12 cores will be used to render. Practically nobody benchmarks Iray, but for Vray those extra cores render faster than the 9900K.
Outside of Daz Studio, many other apps benefit greatly from the extra cores. I imagine you probably use programs besides Daz Studio that will see these benefits.
But performance aside, there is a major reason to use AMD here: They support their socket for multiple years. The odds are much better that the next generation of Ryzen will use the same socket, as AMD has outright stated that they will support the same socket until AT LEAST 2020. That is not the case with Intel. Historically, most Intel chips only get one, maybe two generations of support. The 9900K requires a different motherboard than the 8700K. And it almost certain that the next Intel chip will also require another new motherboard!
So next year, or maybe even beyond, you can upgrade your AMD computer without breaking the bank on yet another motherboard. My brother bought an older Ryzen, and he has the option today to upgrade to the new ones. If he had bought Intel that would not be the case. Do not fall into this trap with Intel. It is not worth it.
Even if you don't upgrade next year, the fact is you have the option to do so when you do. With Intel's dead socket, once you buy a 9900K, you will never have any upgrade path. But with Ryzen, in a few years you would still have options. You have a 16 core 3950 this year, and there will probably be new 12 and 16 core chips next year with more performance boosts.
I'm thinking about upgrading mainboard and CPU too. My current mainboard with a i4770k in it has been having issues for a few weeks now, probably the CMOS battery that is running low. I keep having to set the time manually in Windows. That's how long I had the damn board because nothing much happened in the CPU space. Never before have I had a board this long, I'm thinking probably 7 years or so.
Location of the battery is so inconvenient that I would probably have to take out everything and remove the CPU cooler. So I figure, why not just upgrade now? Definitely considering going Ryzen, but not 100% convinced yet. Don't really know what mainboard, memory and cooler to get either.
For single threaded performance it's sort of 50 - 50 with a slight edge to Intel but the next generation of AMD CPUs is liable to completely outclass intel in a major way. Also, nVidia is starting to feel the heat too.
I have a first gen Threadripper; I haven't noticed any issues on single threading, over the i7 I upgraded from; it does, however, render at an almost decent level if the scene wont fit on GPU, which happens often enough as I have still to upgrade my 980ti.
I don't agree that one should concentrate on graphics card only; it's about balance. If budget is very, very tight a just good enough processor with the bulk of your cash in the graphics card can be worthwhile. CPU and RAM matter, along with the rest of the system.
Thanks so much (and to everyone else)! This was tremendously helpful. Pulled the trigger on a 3900X system with 32GB RAM. Sadly, that's the ceiling the builder has, right now. I can always add more, myself, if necessary. They also only go up to 3000mhz, but I figured the tradeoff with the more powerful CPU would more than make up for it.
Some basic things on Ryzen and the platform.
All Ryzen desktop chips that don't end in X come with a very decent cooler in the box. Those are more than good enough for a system unless you overclock the CPU. My primary work desktop is a R7 2700 with the box cooler and it runs just fine.
The motherboards for Ryzen are pretten straight forward there are Bx50 and Xx70 chipsets. Ryzen 1000 cam out with the B350 and X370, Ryzen 2000 was with the 400 boards and the Ryzen 3000 came out with the X570, B550 is apparently not coming for a while. You can run any Ryzen 3000 CPU in a 400 or 500 board and some 300's as well, they all have the same socket, but 300 and 400 boards will require a bios update which can be tricky if you don't have an older gen Ryzen to get the board to post. If I was buying new I'd get an X570 on the lower end of the market, there are some stupidly expensive boards out there $700+ that really seem just epeen measuring IMO.
Whether you want Ryzen is pretty simple. If you do anything involving a multithreaded workload then Ryzen is a no brainer. The top tier Ryzen 3000, the 3900X, still trails the i9 9900k by a little in single threaded performance so if that really matters to you...
...the Ryaen 3900x would have been the better choice since you are not overclocking as it has a slightly faster base clock speed (3.8 vs 3.6 for the i9 9900K) and 8 more threads for about the same price.
If you plan on multitasking, more threads are better.
I'd change to the Ryzen 3900. As you mentioned single core it is pretty close to performance, and crushes it with multithreaded applications. Much better value, and the new Ryzen systems also have the PCIe 4.0 for better storage performance. So far it seems AMD is delivering on the 3rd gen Ryzen promises - I promise you'll see Intel price drops soon.
There is one thing that no one seems to be touching on... PCI-e 4.0. The Ryzen 3000 series CPUs with the X570 motherboards are the only way to get it.
For video card use there is no performance boost since all of the current Nvidia cards are PCI-e 3.
Storage on the other hand is where it imediately shines with the new PCI-e 4.0 NVME SSDs coming out that are bragging 5000MBs read speeds out of a single drive.
Apart from being new and shiny, I'm not sure it makes much practical difference to most users.
The RTX super cards are/will be PCIE gen 4 not that it matters. No card out there can presently saturate 16 lanes of PCIE gen 3.
There is no Ryzen 3900 only the 3900X. The highest sku with both a X and non X is the 3700.
But it does mean that the motherboard will be able to keep up with modern GPUs for many years to come.
I'm thinking Ryzen 3900 to, I have one of the i9 processors and it over heats terribly I have to back off the overclocking from 42 to 36% or it would just keep shutting down ! plus DS doesn't use the cores to render anyway, it only uses the CUDA cores on the graphics card.
Ryzen run pretty hot with stock cooling, I received an expensive noctua cooler today, hopefully that $100 will keep me under 90 from now on lol. The X have some pretty serious auto overclock features, it's pretty nice. Going from i5 7500 to ryzen 2600x, noticing a lot of nice differences. Large PNG save out a lot faster, and the whole thing that studio goes through before it renders (calculating lights, textures etc)happens a lot faster now too.
If you're comfortable overclocking CPU's you can overclock the non X CPU's as high as the x versions. I'm running a 2700 and getting better than 2700X numbers.
If I remember correctly there whas an issue with the way temperature monitoring software was handling the data. (it had something to do with how the junction temp was being read)
This was causing it to look like your Ryzen CPU was 20c hotter than it actualy was.
I agree about balancing your system. Ryzen seems to be the way to go. Intel only has a tiny advantage in single core performance and gets trounced in multicore. And it's cheaper. Intel is in trouble. I was going to wait until September for the 3950x but the 64GB RAM limit will probably dissuade me. I'll just have to wait for the Threadripper3.
What 64GB limit? Every X570 motherboard that I just looked at goes up to 128GB or RAM.
Thank you for this thread!
I will have to buy a new system this year (Windows 7) ... and I am using not only DazStudio, but Poser and Vue and Bryce. So I do need a nice CPU too, the GPU isn't the answer to all of my needs.
Do you plan not to connect this system to the internet? Otherwise, you're running into two issues: 1) most premanufactured computer vendors will not now sell computers with Windows 7, and (2) Microsoft will stop supplying security updates for Windows 7 in early January 2020, which means it will become a malware vector fairly quickly. (Apologies if you already knew all that. I've run into a lot of people lately who didn't.)
That aside, this has been a weirdly fascinating thread. I will probably need to replace this system by the end of the year, and I didn't know all that about the different CPUs.
Sorry - rereading my message I can see how you think that I am going to buy a new system with Windows 7 - LOL!
No, my current system is Windows 7 and I have to replace it because of the end to security updates.
I didn't know that! That's great to know. I will probably pick up a 3950x then because the Threadrippers will probably be clocked lower.
Ryzen master should be reading it's own processor correctly lol. If you go with stock cooler, you can undervolt it to keep it cooler, but that kinda defeats the purpose of getting a powerful processor lol. So far the hottest I have seen is 81, that was after like 45 mins of cinebench running. Noctua coolers do seem to help with the temps.
Which boards support 128GB? After you wrote this, I rechecked my sources: All of these boards only support 64GB https://wccftech.com/amd-x570-flagship-motherboards-msi-asus-aorus-asrock/ and every board I have seen only has dual-channel memory slots, so I don't see how it could handle 32GB sticks. Please show me an exception because I would love to get one, but I have only seen 32GB support on server-class boards.
How many memory channels a CPU's memory controller has is immaterial to how much RAM can be on each DIMM.
The memory controller on Ryzen 3000 may not support 32Gb RAM sticks but I do not see how that is terribly relevant. 32Gb sticks are extremely expensive and only available at fairly low speeds. What possible need could you have for 128Gb of RAM anyway? do you run virtual machines or something?