1. This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Learn More.

CPU Ryzen 7 3700X or Ryzen 5 5600X? For content creation & gaming...

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by Byron C, 13 Jan 2021.

  1. Byron C

    Byron C Multimodder

    Joined:
    12 Apr 2002
    Posts:
    9,880
    Likes Received:
    4,493
    So I'm looking at an upgrade in the next couple of weeks and both of these CPUs are available for roughly the same price. So. Other than improved power efficiency, a slightly higher base & boost clock, Smart Access Memory, etc, am I really going to lose anything by going for the 3700X?

    The motherboard it's going into is an X470 which hasn't officially had the 5000-series firmware update yet (but from what I understand, that's on the way soon).

    Besides gaming, which I suspect that either of these CPUs will excel at, my other main use case will be content creation: live streaming and video rendering. I suspect that the extra two cores in the 3700X will make a difference here. I only have a GTX 1060 6GB and with the way the GPU market is right now I will not be upgrading that any time soon; any rendering/encoding I do for the forseeable future will be pure software.

    TBH I think I've pretty much decided on the 3700X, but I very much welcome other opinions. Either way this will represent a significant upgrade for me: I currently have an i5-3470 with a single 8GB stick!
     
  2. David

    David μoʍ ɼouმ qᴉq λon ƨbԍuq ϝʁλᴉuმ ϝo ʁԍɑq ϝμᴉƨ

    Joined:
    7 Apr 2009
    Posts:
    17,419
    Likes Received:
    5,791
    From what little I've read, 8c16t is a better choice for streamers.
     
  3. adidan

    adidan Guesswork is still work

    Joined:
    25 Mar 2009
    Posts:
    19,737
    Likes Received:
    5,502
    From what little I understand I was under the impression moar cores is better for content creation.

    The 5600x would be a better gamer.

    Would a 3700x hold you back gaming? Nope, my 3600 hasn't.
     
  4. yuusou

    yuusou Multimodder

    Joined:
    5 Nov 2006
    Posts:
    2,852
    Likes Received:
    916
    The 3700X will serve you well, especially if you give it some tweaks with CTR (ClockTuner for Ryzen).
     
  5. Sgoaty

    Sgoaty Minimodder

    Joined:
    4 Feb 2005
    Posts:
    928
    Likes Received:
    203
    The 5600x comes pretty close to 3700x productivity performance even with fewer cores ( within a few hundred cinebench points). I swapped out a 3700x for 5600x and gained Around 10 fps on ms flight sim which is a huge gain as a percentage so I'd whole heartedly recommend it for gaming

    I don't stream but I really can't see it struggling.
     
  6. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

    Joined:
    4 Dec 2007
    Posts:
    17,085
    Likes Received:
    6,635
    Why software? The GTX 1060 has NVENC support, as far as I remember, so you should be able to farm the work off onto that regardless of CPU. I've an AMD 2700X and a RTX 2080, and NVENC blows CPU-based encoding out of the water - way, way faster.

    EDIT:
    Just tried it on a low-res AVI to H.264: CPU gets me 850-ish FPS, NVENC gets me about 2,000 FPS. It is, however, significantly less efficient compression-wise: The NVENC-encoded version is 172MB, while the software-encoded version is 119MB.
     
  7. hamza_tm

    hamza_tm Modder

    Joined:
    10 Apr 2012
    Posts:
    3,220
    Likes Received:
    206
    One key factor is you can get the 3700x for £100 cheaper than the 5600x on the used market. And if it’s with a B450 mobo it’s usually a bios update away from a future upgrade to any 5000 chip so you’re pretty future proof.

    I’d say 3700x all the way. Check the benchmarks for the games you play at the resolution you game at on e.g. techpowerup to satisfy your gaming curiosity. And also bear in mind that the CPU only comes into play in gaming when the GPU is not the limiting factor - which may not always be the case for you.

    Tell me more!
     
    adidan likes this.
  8. yuusou

    yuusou Multimodder

    Joined:
    5 Nov 2006
    Posts:
    2,852
    Likes Received:
    916
  9. fix-the-spade

    fix-the-spade Multimodder

    Joined:
    4 Jul 2011
    Posts:
    5,489
    Likes Received:
    1,275


    3700X a bit faster for work thanks to the extra cores, but slower for gaming, if it's cheaper it's probably the better choice, plus X470 boards support it offiically.
     
  10. adidan

    adidan Guesswork is still work

    Joined:
    25 Mar 2009
    Posts:
    19,737
    Likes Received:
    5,502
    Yup money and a availability are also big factors.
     
  11. Byron C

    Byron C Multimodder

    Joined:
    12 Apr 2002
    Posts:
    9,880
    Likes Received:
    4,493
    Thanks all!

    I won't have the money for a couple of weeks yet, so I'll see what availability and prices look like then. Scan are reporting both in stock for exactly the same price at the moment, but I'll shop around properly 2 weeks. As well as see what people here may be willing to part with :grin: (I know some people have had serious issues with Scan's stock management, but honestly I've never had a single issue with them in years.)

    It does indeed, and for live streaming NVENC works very well. The only thing holding me back in terms of live streaming is general system performance: encoding via NVENC is great, but things like plugins, transitions, complex scenes, animated overlays, etc, all put additional load on CPU & memory resources. But obviously that'll all go away when I upgrade.

    The main thing I'll probably be sticking to CPU encoding for is video rendering. Vegas Pro just doesn't seem to use the NVENC encoder properly, despite having GPU acceleration turned on and explicitly using an NVENC encoding preset. I've used two different versions and my experience so far with GPU rendering is... patchy at best. Newer versions are probably better, and I am considering the Vegas Pro 365 subscription, but experience tells me I'm going to be heavily CPU bound.

    Moving to Adobe Premiere is just not on the cards; subscription costs are only a little higher than Vegas 365, but it's just too much of a change. I planted my flag in the Vegas camp a long time ago!

    Of course I could just render to raw uncompressed files and then shove it through a less fussy encoder, but: a) that's a massive ballache in terms of workflow, and b) who the hell has the disk space to render uncompressed 4K videos regularly! :grin:
     
    Gareth Halfacree likes this.

Share This Page