AMD Ryzen 7 3700X vs Intel i9 9900K

[EpiGenetik]

Hi folks,

I’m about to change PC, as my i7 is feeling a bit long in the tooth now (3770K) and I was just hoping some of you kind folk could impart your collective wisdom.

I’m looking at the above 2 processors, both of which have excellent benchmarks for my requirements, in terms of both single thread and overall ratings.

I’ve owned CPU’s from both companies in the past and been satisfied with processing performance of both; I’m really just wanting to get opinions from anyone who has experience with both, or more likely experiences with recent but comparable products.

Thanks in advance

[aeox]

[EpiGenetik]

Hi,

Thanks for the response. I also wasn’t aware that this service was available on that site. I’ll investigate further.

Many thanks

[EpiGenetik]

Oh well,

Found the original article the graphic comes from; I had hoped it would be a comparison tool, but not so. Unfortunately this guy insists on overclocking, which as a rule I wouldn’t ever do.

It does however give me the idea of looking around for articles which have done comparisons.

I’m still hoping to get individual user feedback if possible, though.

Thanks

[EpiGenetik]

Ok,

This looks to be quite revealing

https://www.techspot.com/article/1876-4 ... s-core-i9/

[EnochLight]

The Ryzen 3900X looks like it might be my next build. My aging 3770K has long felt a bit sluggish, and now that AMD looks like it fixed its performance for lower sample buffer settings, I can't stop looking at the Ryzen 3900X. Never thought I'd build an AMD machine again, but here I am.

[EpiGenetik]

The Ryzen 3900X looks like it might be my next build. My aging 3770K has long felt a bit sluggish, and now that AMD looks like it fixed its performance for lower sample buffer settings, I can't stop looking at the Ryzen 3900X. Never thought I'd build an AMD machine again, but here I am.

Really?

IMHO, I took that article I posted to point it in the other direction entirely. It basically showed that a 3900X can beat an 9900K, when OC'd to the same speed on specifically set complex tasks; in other words the clock speed but with some depth. But as soon as real-world tests are thrown at it, the i9 miraculously gets itself in the lead again. Once you get to the bottom of it you see that the problem is that the write bandwidth output is choked to 16-bit on the 3900X, as opposed to 32 with the i9. AMD admitted that this was a compromise on their part. I surely can't be the only one feeling bemused that this isn't 64 on both chips, but I digress.

This suggests to me that things such as audio bounces will be affected relatively heavily, as a minimum. In an "audio only" world, and in particular, one which is so reliant on single thread processing power (in my case not just Reason but my IDE and compiler stuff too) I can't see this being the only thing that would be hit by this, although it's difficult to predict without performing extensive bench testing myself, which I have neither the time, resources and will-power not to mention a lack of skill to be able to pull off.

Just a hunch really, I guess.

The important thing not to ignore here though, is that AMD have pretty much caught up with Intel again in terms of 'power / price', but it says a lot that the AMD needs 12 cores to match what the i9 does with 8.

We've had the same specs more or less for a good few years now, so I recommend that we meet back here in about 5 years time to compare notes

Peace - and I do hope Santa was good to you,
B

[EnochLight]

The Ryzen 3900X looks like it might be my next build. My aging 3770K has long felt a bit sluggish, and now that AMD looks like it fixed its performance for lower sample buffer settings, I can't stop looking at the Ryzen 3900X. Never thought I'd build an AMD machine again, but here I am.

Really?

IMHO, I took that article I posted to point it in the other direction entirely. It basically showed that a 3900X can beat an 9900K, when OC'd to the same speed on specifically set complex tasks; in other words the clock speed but with some depth. But as soon as real-world tests are thrown at it, the i9 miraculously gets itself in the lead again. Once you get to the bottom of it you see that the problem is that the write bandwidth output is choked to 16-bit on the 3900X, as opposed to 32 with the i9. AMD admitted that this was a compromise on their part. I surely can't be the only one feeling bemused that this isn't 64 on both chips, but I digress.

This suggests to me that things such as audio bounces will be affected relatively heavily, as a minimum. In an "audio only" world, and in particular, one which is so reliant on single thread processing power (in my case not just Reason but my IDE and compiler stuff too) I can't see this being the only thing that would be hit by this, although it's difficult to predict without performing extensive bench testing myself, which I have neither the time, resources and will-power not to mention a lack of skill to be able to pull off.

Just a hunch really, I guess.

The important thing not to ignore here though, is that AMD have pretty much caught up with Intel again in terms of 'power / price', but it says a lot that the AMD needs 12 cores to match what the i9 does with 8.

We've had the same specs more or less for a good few years now, so I recommend that we meet back here in about 5 years time to compare notes

Peace - and I do hope Santa was good to you,
B

Yeah, I'm still leaning towards the Ryzen 3900X, as it blows the 9900K multithread out of the water at stock speeds according to its PassMark score, and single-thread seems to be about the same (just slightly faster, but I'm willing to wager a margin of error):

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/In ... 4vs3493vs2

And I need a machine that can transcode video on-the-fly without issue, as I run a media-server 24/7 from my studio machine. Also, the DAWbench score seems to have the 3900X, the i9 9900X and 9960X pretty close as far as lower buffer performance - at least close enough to where I don't feel like I'd be making much of a sacrifice.

But that multithread performance on the 3900X is just rockstar.

[EpiGenetik]

And I need a machine that can transcode video on-the-fly without issue, as I run a media-server 24/7 from my studio machine.

Yeah, I don't really have anything which needs crazy multi-thread power right now; A luxury I hope will continue at least until the next machine after this one is in the offing. I'm sure someone will come up with a great reason that I should need it though

[Kategra]

The problem is we don't know if there are any issues with Reason and Ryzen 3000.
Also, what is the highest number of real cores on same CPU that Reason can handle? Is it 16, 32, 64, 512K?
I have the i7 6800k - 6 core, 32GB CL15 3000Mhz Quad Channel, which was a tremendous improvement over my previous i5 3570k and the Ryzen 1700X (which I've returned), but still can't finish a song with vocals in one go, but not something that I can't work around with bouncing a lot.

I'm also tempted to go with 3900X... I also suspect that Reason likes to have the CPU at a stable fixed frequency and would benefit more to have 1-3 cores running at 4.4 Ghz and the rest at 3.8 Ghz, than all cores at 4.1 Ghz if the OS can make those 1-3 most demanding threads stick on the highest clocked cores and not have them jump around. That is what I fear the most, that Reason and Win10 and Ryzen will work smooth only with turbo disabled. Like trading speed for stability. Hope I am very wrong on this.

Also, Intel is not looking good at all with security patching impacting performance. I had a Windows security patch that disabled the Turbo on my i7. I had it overclocked at 4Ghz and because of the patch, it only ran at 3.4 Ghz. I had to delete a .dll to have turbo back on...but security flaw exposed...

[EnochLight]

The problem is we don't know if there are any issues with Reason and Ryzen 3000.

There are no problems with previous Ryzen and Reason to my knowledge. Everything works as it does on an Intel cpu, albeit with variances in performance depending on the cpu you compare them to...

I also suspect that Reason likes to have the CPU at a stable fixed frequency and would benefit more to have 1-3 cores running at 4.4 Ghz and the rest at 3.8 Ghz, then all cores at 4.1 Ghz if the OS can make those 1-3 most demanding threads stick on the highest clocked cores and not have them jump around.

Core throttling for any cpu-intensive task is generally not preferred, not just Reason.

[RealReasonHead]

The problem is we don't know if there are any issues with Reason and Ryzen 3000.

It works great. Running a 3900X since December.

Also, what is the highest number of real cores on same CPU that Reason can handle? Is it 16, 32, 64, 512K?

One core per track, if I'm not mistaken. So having a lot of effects in series is putting all the effort on one core.

I have the i7 6800k - 6 core, 32GB CL15 3000Mhz Quad Channel, which was a tremendous improvement over my previous i5 3570k and the Ryzen 1700X (which I've returned), but still can't finish a song with vocals in one go, but not something that I can't work around with bouncing a lot.

I'm running 64 samples @44.1 with lots of tracks and effects with no issues on my 3900X.
By the way, the 6800K and supported motherboards can only handle dual channel. 4 sticks of RAM will still be dual channel. Only HEDT CPUs support quad channel memory.

I'm also tempted to go with 3900X... I also suspect that Reason likes to have the CPU at a stable fixed frequency and would benefit more to have 1-3 cores running at 4.4 Ghz and the rest at 3.8 Ghz, than all cores at 4.1 Ghz if the OS can make those 1-3 most demanding threads stick on the highest clocked cores and not have them jump around. That is what I fear the most, that Reason and Win10 and Ryzen will work smooth only with turbo disabled. Like trading speed for stability. Hope I am very wrong on this.

I think you're overthinking this. We're talking about maybe a 5% performance difference here. And if you're running more than 3 tracks you can take advantage of all the cores.

[EnochLight]

Also, what is the highest number of real cores on same CPU that Reason can handle? Is it 16, 32, 64, 512K?

One core per track, if I'm not mistaken. So having a lot of effects in series is putting all the effort on one core.

Reason actually spreads the workload out evenly over all cores minus one (reserved for GUI/UX and other processes).

@Kategra: Reason will handle as many cores as you throw at it.

[dannyF]

I've never strayed from intel

[RealReasonHead]

Reason actually spreads the workload out evenly over all cores minus one (reserved for GUI/UX and other processes).

Are you sure about that? I am sceptical because if you have serial processing you HAVE to do one after the other, you can't parallelize the workload. If you have different tracks (audio or midi), that's a different story but that's what I said in my post.

[Kategra]

I'm running 64 samples @44.1 with lots of tracks and effects with no issues on my 3900X.

That is amazing! 1700X wasn't capable at going sub 256 samples.
Are you manualy OC-ing or run at default confing with turbo on or all off, what do you cool it with?

By the way, the 6800K and supported motherboards can only handle dual channel. 4 sticks of RAM will still be dual channel. Only HEDT CPUs support quad channel memory.

I think you are confusing i7 6800k with i7 6700k.
i7 6800k can handle 4 of Memory Channels, its the cheapest Ivy Bridge-E CPU.
My motherboard is ASUS X99 A II, has quad channel suport.
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en ... 0-ghz.html

I think you're overthinking this. We're talking about maybe a 5% performance difference here. And if you're running more than 3 tracks you can take advantage of all the cores.

Most probably

[RealReasonHead]

That is amazing! 1700X wasn't capable at going sub 256 samples.
Are you manualy OC-ing or run at default confing with turbo on or all off, what do you cool it with?

I've done a SFF build and wanted to keep it as quiet as possible for recording so I didn't do any OCing and left everything at default. I assume this means PBO and Auto OC should be enabled but the performance difference is negligible anways.

I think you are confusing i7 6800k with i7 6700k.
i7 6800k can handle 4 of Memory Channels, its the cheapest Ivy Bridge-E CPU.
My motherboard is ASUS X99 A II, has quad channel suport.
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en ... 0-ghz.html

You're right, I was. Thanks for correcting me on this.

[Emian]

Hi all !

i just ordered my Ryzen 9 3900X with 32gb of Gskill C16D RAM @ 3600 mhz and Gigabyte Aorus elite motherboard and a 1tb Aorus ssd (PCI-express 4.0).

I'm comming from an intel i74790K with 16bg of ddr3 ram.

I'll come back with my Reason-experiences after some torough testing

I've been an intel boy for years, but just couldn't pass on this 12-core monster

[EnochLight]

Hi all !

i just ordered my Ryzen 9 3900X with 32gb of Gskill C16D RAM @ 3600 mhz and Gigabyte Aorus elite motherboard and a 1tb Aorus ssd (PCI-express 4.0).

I'm comming from an intel i74790K with 16bg of ddr3 ram.

I'll come back with my Reason-experiences after some torough testing

I've been an intel boy for years, but just couldn't pass on this 12-core monster

Audio interface?

[2chris]

I had to make a similar decision last year. I went with a water cooled Intel 9700pro, and I have no regrets. I wanted micro atx and there were no compatible amd motherboards available at the time, and I liked the extra features the premium intel mobos had.

For how much of a premium in price there is, I couldn’t see springing for the i9 for my needs as a workstation for music and my day job. The performance difference isn’t material to me but the price was. You can look at all the specs in the world, but at the end of the day I want reliability and compatibility more than raw performance. Ram compatibility is more plentiful which also means cheaper ram on Intel, it has boards I liked, and the platform had the right mix of features for me.

I have built many custom PCs over the last 20 years, and while I like amd for value, I’ve regretted a few builds with AMD for numerous reasons like heat, noise, and most notionally poor support/drivers. Those things have improved, my last build was the 1700x and it’s great. I’ve never regretted an Intel build yet for any reason other than amd sticks with sockets longer for better upgrades down the road. Intel as a company is kind of anti consumer IMO which bothers me, but developers skew Intel on testing, and I always find reliability and quality control better in my own experience.

I think this time around AMD is winning in performance for value. If all you want is raw performance, even if Intel is winning in some areas still, the raw computational power of Ryzen with so many cores with low comparative heat and power usage due to nm size makes this the toughest comparison it’s ever been.

[Emian]

Audio interface?

Focusrite Scarlett 2i2

[EnochLight]

Focusrite Scarlett 2i2