Ever since AMD’s Ryzen CPUs debuted in 2017, the high-end CPU market has rapidly expanded. You’ve got the Core i7s and i9s on Intel’s side and the Ryzen 7 3700X, 3800X and the Ryzen 9 3900X from AMD. While the Core i9 and Ryzen 9 are overkill in most scenarios, the remaining processors are some of the best high-end consumer processors on the market.
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In this post, we look at Intel and AMD’s mainstream flagship products and decide which one is more suited for your needs, be it gaming or content creation.
We’ll be ignoring the Ryzen 9 and Core i9 parts in this piece, as only a very small percentage of users can afford them. We’ll limit ourselves to the Core i7 and Ryzen 7 offerings.
Specifications
| Core i7-9700K | Ryzen 7 3700X | Ryzen 7 3800X | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cores/Threads | 8/8 | 8/16 | 8/16 |
| Base Clock | 3.6 GHz | 3.6 GHz | 3.9 GHz |
| Boost Clock | 4.9 GHz | 4.4 GHz | 4.5 GHz |
| Cache | 12 MB | 32 MB | 32MB |
| TDP | 95W | 65W | 105W |
| Memory Support | DDR4-2666MHz | DDR4-3200MHz | DDR4-3200MHz |
| Price | $349.99 | $279.99 | $299.99 |
The prices of AMD’s Ryzen 3000 CPUs have dipped significantly over the past month. Where the Ryzen 5 3600 is available for just $159, the 3700X and the 3800X are both selling under $300. The Intel Core i7-9700K on the other hand is priced at $349.99 at the very least. Most retailers like Newegg and Amazon are even selling it for over $400, making it a hard buy.
Test Bench
Motherboard:
- ASRock X570 Taichi (AMD)
- Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Master (Intel)
RAM:
- G.Skill Trident Z Royal 8GB x 2 @ 3600MHz
Graphics Card:
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti
Storage:
- WB Black 480GB NVMe
- WD Black 4TB HDD
PSU:
- Corsair HX1000i
Intel Core i7-9700K vs AMD Ryzen 7 3700X vs 3800X: Gaming Performance
All the games were tested at 1080p using the highest in-game graphics preset:
In Assassins’ Creed and Ashes, the Ryzen 7 3800X comes out on top with the 3700X following shortly behind. The Core i7-9700K manages a decent showing in the latter but AC’s Anvil Engine prefers thread counts over clocks. This leads to a rather rare defeat for the Core i7 in Assassins’ Creed Origins.
The remaining titles from Deus Ex to The Division all benefit from the Core i7-9700K’s high boost clocks while ignoring SMT. The Intel Core i7 seems like the better pick for gaming workloads, but keep in mind that these are all 1080p tests, and even then the deltas don’t cross 10%. At higher resolutions like 1440p and 4K, these deficits will mostly be reduced to under 5%. There’s also the price to consider. The Core i7-9700K is nearly a whole $100 more expensive than the Ryzen 7 3700X. You can save those hundred bucks on the CPU and spend them on a better GPU or monitor.
Content Creation: Cinebench, IndigoBench
Moving on to non-gaming workloads, SMT suddenly becomes relevant. Cinebench fully utilizes all the CPU threads SMT or not. Unsurprisingly, the Intel Core i7-9700K is crushed by the Ryzen 3000 parts in both the single-threaded as well as the multi-threaded benchmarks. In the latter, the 3800X manages to one-up even the top-end Core i9-9900K which scores a bit under 4.9K.
In IndigoBench, the 9700K is once again beaten pretty badly by the Ryzen 7 siblings, clearly highlighting AMD’s advantage in multi-threaded workloads like rendering and video editing.
Encoding, Compression & Browsing
7-zip is one of those programs that’ll eat as many threads as you throw at it. It scales well with even 32 core Threadrippers. As expected, AMD once again has a major advanatage here.
Kraken is a good indicator of browsing performance. Unlike Jetstream, it’s a more balanced test. In the latter, the Core i9-9900K often performs worse than the 9700K. The reason being that each thread has more L2 cache. Hyperthreading being enabled in the 9900K, each core’s L2 and L1 cache is divided between two threads.
Like 7-zip, Handbrake also benefits from higher core counts and that’s quite obvious here. While the core clocks do have an impact, it’s largely nullified by the presence of SMT on the Ryzen 7 parts.
Conclusion
All three chips are excellent high-end processors. However, with the recent price drops the Ryzen 7 3700X is a much better value for money CPU. Even if you’re looking to build a gaming-centric PC, it’s better to avoid the Core i7-9700K. You get like 5% more frames for a whopping $100. Not worth it. I’d suggest investing in the 3700X or the 3800X if you’re into overclocking. Both the chips offer much better performance per dollar and performance per watt. In gaming, they may be slightly behind their Intel rivals, they’re much faster in everything else and cost notably less.
The post Intel Core i7-9700K vs AMD Ryzen 7 3700X vs 3800X: Which is the Best High-End Processor? appeared first on Hardware Times.
