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Reviews AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by bit-tech, 14 Nov 2019.

  1. bit-tech

    bit-tech Supreme Overlord Lover of bit-tech Administrator

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    Read more
     
  2. MLyons

    MLyons 70% Dev, 30% Doge. DevDoge. Software Dev @ Corsair Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    Seems Intel are in a spot of bother.
     
  3. yuusou

    yuusou Multimodder

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    Yesssur, they are. Even in gaming.
     
  4. Hustler

    Hustler Minimodder

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    ..I doubt many people will spend an extra £200-250 over the cost of a 9900K/9900KS, substantially more when you add in the cost of a decent X570 board that the 3950X deserves, just for gaming.
     
  5. Shirty

    Shirty W*nker! Super Moderator

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    Indeed. I suspect that Intel aren't hugely worried about this one.

    I use my PC almost exclusively for gaming, and there is nothing on the market even close to steering me away from my 9700K at present.
     
  6. David

    David μoʍ ɼouმ qᴉq λon ƨbԍuq ϝʁλᴉuმ ϝo ʁԍɑq ϝμᴉƨ

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    This.

    I don't have enough "productivity" workload to justify the extra cost, and nothing out there offers the better gaming performance than my 9700k for the price.
     
  7. Zak33

    Zak33 Staff Lover of bit-tech Administrator

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    All valid points, for people rocking the 9700K, there is no benefit to swapping for gaming

    But for the people using older tech, about to upgrade to the best they can afford, for another 5+ years with one PC.. this is a very serious contender.

    And for the people with a 1st gen Ryzen and some DDR4... a quick BIOS flash and they're all signed up too.
     
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  8. Shirty

    Shirty W*nker! Super Moderator

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    Assuming they are a) very comfortably off (or reckless with money), and b) doing a substantial amount of content creation, rendering, encoding or some other multi-threaded, compute-heavy tasks.

    For the gamer or generalist this is still extreme overkill, despite the low relative price for the performance on hand. For the right use-case though, I'd buy two!
     
  9. xaser04

    xaser04 Ba Ba Ba BANANA!

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    Just on the pricing front Overlockers have it up (albeit not for sale yet) for £750. Gibbo on Overclockers also mentioned that stock will be extremely limited and then prices will, and I quote, "explode".

    Reviews show it to be quite the beast. Not for me right now though as I only game on my PC (just sold my 3900X system).
     
  10. bawjaws

    bawjaws Multimodder

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    Aye. If you're a gamer who doesn't actually need all of those cores, then spending 50% more than the price of a 9900K (which is already Not Cheap™) is going to be a bit of a no-no for most.

    Sure, there'll always be "money no object" gamers and whilst you could point to folk shelling out £1,000+ on GPUs, at least they offer better gaming performance for your cash. Dropping £750 on a CPU that performs no better in games than a £500 CPU doesn't seem like a winner to me?

    I'd buy one if I had the money, but only if I was using it for something where it actually gave a benefit over a cheaper alternative :)
     
  11. David

    David μoʍ ɼouმ qᴉq λon ƨbԍuq ϝʁλᴉuმ ϝo ʁԍɑq ϝμᴉƨ

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    Almost tempted to buy a few and wait for the price to sky-rocket
     
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  12. David

    David μoʍ ɼouმ qᴉq λon ƨbԍuq ϝʁλᴉuმ ϝo ʁԍɑq ϝμᴉƨ

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    Yeah, coz the Intel boards are ten a penny, right?
    Regardless of my current use, if I was replacing an ageing platform right now, I'd seriously consider the 3950 it more or less matches the 9900 in gaming and absolutely slaughters it in prod tasks, all for the same power consumption. Plus, Gen4 support on X570.
     
  13. sandys

    sandys Multimodder

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    Beauty of the platform and the socket compatibility is you can drop the chip in anything, my daughters 60quid Asrock B450 board will take it no bother, so should I need to upgrade her gen 1 APU with something proper, it's there, as mentioned in the article you have an upgrade path and it is likely the gen afterwards will be compatible with it too.

    Shame AMD stuffed the x399 Threadripper upgrade as this chip deserves a good platform with future scalability and that's not the lane/bandwidth limited x570, this chip would have been a lovely drop in to my x399. :(
     
    Last edited: 14 Nov 2019
  14. Hustler

    Hustler Minimodder

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    ..A very good Z390 board, which can comfortably overclock a 9900K, can be had for ~£150-175, due to the maturity of the platform. A very good, equivalent X570 board, will cost a good £100+ or more than that, also, not much point in going above 3200Mhz RAM speeds for a 9900K, so that would be cheaper as well than the 3600MHZ RAM needed to get the best out of a Ryzen CPU, which surely all those going for a 3950X would want?

    ..It all adds up.
     
  15. bawjaws

    bawjaws Multimodder

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    Yeah, this is all true but I'm not sure what relevance it has to the post of mine that you quoted ;)
     
  16. sandys

    sandys Multimodder

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    Just that you can start with anything chip wise it doesn't have to be the flagship and you have options.

    As mentioned in my post above you can put the 3950x in cheap last gen boards and run cheap 3200 RAM, that is all that is supported RAM wise anyway, anything you want more that that is a choice much in the same way you can pay hundreds of pounds for an Intel board or forgo features for a cheapo, it's no different.

    Fairly decent gains to be had from good memory in gaming above Intels official speed of 2666Mhz on x390 with 9900k, certainly if I pick up Intels HEDT memory and mesh(if that is what it is) will be my focus more so than clockspeed as you end up with too much heat output with large all core clocks for marginal gains. Much in the same way that with Ryzen most people are better just leaving the chip to its own boost algorithms.

    https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/reviews/best-ram-speed,5951-5.html
     
    Last edited: 15 Nov 2019
  17. bawjaws

    bawjaws Multimodder

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    Aye, that's true, and awesome. Although I was specifically talking about people buying this chip for gaming purposes :)
     
  18. IanW

    IanW Grumpy Old Git

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    My wallet is scared that this will fit my B350 mobo!
     
  19. Gareth Halfacree

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

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    My hope is it sells in enough volume that I can pick one up for pennies on the dollar at CEX in five years or so - it'd make a nice drop-in upgrade for my Ryzen 2700X system around that time!
     
  20. phuzz

    phuzz This is a title

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    Well thats super impressive, but well out of my price range (and I'm happy with the 3700X I just bought thank very much), but the bit that made me go "huh?" was in the power consumption graphs.
    Why/how does the Ryzen 5 2600 and 2600X use so much power (and the 2700 under load)? Were AMD just not on the ball for that generation of chips? How does a six core chip end up using more power than a much faster one with sixteen cores?
     
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