Intel 9900K, 8700K or 2700x ryzen: game development

There exists samples on 5nm without tunneling, but the price one chip needs to go down a few 1000 times before it can hit consumer market. I think 2020 is very optimistic

 

I agree. I think this tech can be pushed well beyond 2020 year.
Sonn Moors Law may become invalid, for further tech advancement.

 

I am thinking about going for 8086k, just for collectors edition haha, or basically 8700k.

Do you think Unity benefits from higher clock frequency? Any experience working with more threads or baking light maps (supposing 2700x)?

 

Everything benefits from higher clock frequency. It's the easiest way to improve performance in any program.

 

I mean regarding editor, viewport, compiling, etc. 8700k will behave better Or amd ryzen 2700x will work better due to more multicore power.

I read Adobe products rely on higher clock frequency rather than more threads or cores. Is this true? same happens with Unity?

 

It depends on what you do. I believe that lightmapping, and I'm pretty certain that shader compilation is distributed to different processes, so the more cores you have, the better. In other words, lightmapping and creating builds should be faster with more cores (and from my experience, that's more important than having an SSD - even though an SSD can make a huge difference when it comes to opening a project ;-) ). In "general operations", Unity and games developed with Unity were pretty much "single-thread" (which audio running in its own thread being one of the few exceptions).

However, with Graphics Jobs, and now ECS, the Jobs System and Burst compiler, this is changing quickly and if you want to see what kind of performance boost these technologies can offer, having a CPU that does have lots of cores is necessary. The tricky thing is that you need to make sure that your game also performs well on CPUs that have only few cores (I believe 4 is the current minimum).

Besides those new systems that are designed for multithreading, you could also always start your own threads in your game, as long as you know what you're doing, which could be distributed on several cores.

 

Will you go with 2700x or 8700k? Not taking into account budget but VR use, 3d modelling, viewport smoothness, lightmap, compilation times, and playing a project in Unity.

Thanks.

 

For most stuff, the 8700K will probably feel faster. But either CPU would perform really well.

 

Independently of number of cores/threads for tasks such as compiling,lightmap, etc? Thanks.

 

By the time you've finally decided on a chip both companies will have completely replaced them.

 

Haha, that's true. I will order 8086k tomorrow then.

 

I would get a 9900k or a 2700x

Here is my 2700x compared to a 8700k sure somewhat better single core, but alot better multi core on the 2700x

 

Point to consider from the Netherlands:

Intel prices:
The 9900k is ~650 euros (8x 3.6-5.0 ghz)
The 8700k is ~470 euros (6x 3.7-4.7 ghz)
The 9600k is ~290 euros (6x 3.7-4.6 ghz)

AMD prices:
The 1950x is ~590 euros (16x 3.4-4.0 ghz)
The 1920x is ~350 euros (12x 3.5-4.0 ghz)
The 2700x is ~330 euros (8x 3.7-4.3 ghz)

closest to buying a 9900k would be buying a 1920x (taking into account the expensive AMD threadripper boards, +200 euro compared to 'normal' mobo's).

closest to the 2700x is the 9600k (but then the 2700 is closer to that)

 

Closest to the 2700x is the 9900 since both have eight cores. The 9600 only has 6. Though at higher IPC and clock

 

Yeah, expected behaviour. That extra single core benchmark is what makes the difference in some applications. Regarding Unity in which areas is 2700x better compared to a 8700k?

8 cores, that is what I want, but I do not know currently until what point i would prefer model 3d viewport and editor smoothness compared to better rendering behaviour.

What about multitask? I guess 8700 will not struggle dealing with a lot of applications open.

Thanks for your comments.

 

Light baking building game and things like that. Also if you have visual studio, blender, Simplygon etc alive in the background many cores are good.

 

If you ignore the budget part, yes. But in reality a pc build has a rough budget, and one being twice as expensive as the other makes the comparison moot. If budget is no issue you'd go for 16+ cores unless you want too high fps in CS:GO, then not).

 

Neither one (8700k or 2700x) is going to feel slow in any task. When multitasking with a bunch of apps open at once, both CPUs will perform well.

 

Exactly. Every PC build has some kind of budget constraint. Even when people say the budget is unlimited, they really mean unlimited up to a specific number they have in mind.

 

No, you wouldn't just go for 16+ cores, because there are diminishing returns. High core count processors have to make up for the temperature increase and the solution is almost always lower per core performance. But that's not the real problem.

The real problem here is that Windows 10 (desktop editions) has trouble with high core counts. Once you step beyond 16 cores the OS suddenly starts losing performance in a big way. You won't lose everything you stood to gain, but you will still lose a few cores worth of performance if you don't choose Linux.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/98rfas/linux_vs_windows_benchmarks_threadripper_2990wx/

 

Thanks first of all.

But, I guess 2700x with 16c and W10 will no have problems to maximize that core numbers performance.

So 8086k compared to 2700x wise choice for 3d modelling tools, adobe cloud and unity?

I go with a 2080 rtx (no Ti xD) and i think 8086k would be the best to get the most of it when designing, developing and gaming.

I know 2700x is a superb CPU and if i were on a limited budget it would be my choice, without doubt.

 

Windows 10 has no problems with the 2700X but that's because it's not a 16C CPU. It's an 8C/16T CPU.

AMD completely dominates the field in the performance per dollar category, but it likewise dominates the field compared to the raw performance of the 8086K. If you want the best processor you need the 9900K. Previous generations are previous best processors.

https://www.cgdirector.com/best-cpu-for-rendering/

Just a heads-up, in case you come across a fantastic sale, the RTX 2080 is basically identical to a GTX 1080 Ti. I haven't seen reasonable prices for the 1080 Ti in months but that may be different in another country like @Zuntatos mentioned.

 

AMD 2700x better also than 8700k? In render ok but in what more? lighting, baking, compiling?

the problem is that 9900k is 639€...
8086k 478€..
8700k 450€.
2700x 335€.

9900k is so expensive and i am going with air cooling (dark rock pro 4) not liquid, so I do not want to have troubles with 9900k.

I do not mind going with previous generations, they perform superb. My question is if 8700 or 2700x, not taking into account budget.

I get 2080x because there is a good sale (-2% discount) and they present me with a copy of Battlefield 5, taking into account it was a game I was going to buy, 50€ discount. But yes, thanks for your advice.

 

You will be very happy with the 2700x, 9900, 8086k, or 8700k. All of them perform all of the listed tasks very well. If you built a system with each one, you would probably not be able to tell which one is which just by how they feel when you use them. You would simply think they were all plenty fast. The 2700x is the most cost effective of the group and the 9900k would be the fastest overall, but they would all be plenty fast for your listed needs.

Also, a high end air cooler can handle an i9-9900K. You don't have to use water cooling. A Noctua NH-D15 or a Dark Rock Pro 4 can handle an Intel i9-9900K.

 

Thanks. I know, I would have to order some of them asap.

 

Some things to note:
1) windows and linux always have different performance because the program they're running is not the same. There's compiler differences, file system format differences, kernel differences. See as an example https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=mac-win-linux2018&num=1 (quad core mac laptop benchmarks)
2) the 2990WX exacerbates the scheduling/numa problems from windows 10 relative to linux due to having 2 numa nodes without memory access.
3) the 2990WX will still beat a 8 core without any issue (2.5 to 3.5x performance depending on the type of threaded task).

I do fully agree that it is very often bad value to buy this cpu. You're much better off buying a high end 'normal' cpu or a lower end 'enthousiast' one value-wise. But my comment was about a situation where money is not relevant.

 

I would recommend going for the 2700x. If you have the budget, consider going all the way to the 9900k.

Anything inbetween is a bit odd. The 8700k is quite expensive compared to the 2700x, with 2 less cores (but say 15% better for tasks that don't scale). The 9600k/9700k don't have hyperthreading, which makes them noticably worse for tasks that do scale compared to the 2700x. Only consider these if that last 15-20% non-scaling performance is very important to you. The 8086k is a 5% speed bump for 10% cost bump here.

 

I am going to use 3d modelling tools, VR; Unity, Unreal and gaming sometimes, but mainly app development. I think that better CPU high frequency clock would be great but i know 2700x is best for value.

1. Do you think 2700x better than 8086k for my needs?

2. Considering this video: do you think 2700x bottleneck 2080 rtx? Could that bottleneck be more noticeable in the next years?

3. What about incompatibilities or porblems with AMD? Nothing to highlight?

I have also think on saving money and going for 2070 rtx and 2700x.

4. Any good mobo for 2700x to avoid problems regarding RAM?

Thanks, I am going to order my PC this weekend so any help is welcome.

 

It's completely dependent on the game, the resolution, and the refresh rate you want to play at. Higher resolutions need better GPUs but higher refresh rates need better CPUs. Generally speaking once you step beyond 1080p the GPU is the bottleneck but there are cases where the CPU is the bottleneck.

Back when I was considering the purchase of a new graphics card, I made a list of the games I wanted to play as well as the resolution and refresh rate I wanted. I then went and looked at recent benchmarks for all of the games and made my decision based on that.

 

Yeah, my main game to play is BF5. But the PC is mainly for Unity, unreal, 3d modelling, so...2700x or 8700k...9900k is to much money...

Thanks again.

1. Do you think 2700x better than 8086k for my needs?

3. What about incompatibilities or porblems with AMD? Nothing to highlight?

I have also think on saving money and going for 2070 rtx and 2700x.

4. Any good mobo for 2700x to avoid problems regarding RAM?

 

For most productivity work (such as making games), the 2700x will be slightly better. For most game playing, the 8700k or 8086k will be better. Both will run everything really well, though.

 

With most productivy work (making games), do you think Unity editor/viewport and 3d modelling tools will work better in ryzen 2700x than Intel? Where ryzen shine making app/games compared to 8700k (compile, baking, lightmapping)??

Any other incompatibility with AMD?

 

For just running the Unity Editor while developing games, the 2700x and 8700k/8086k would both run really well. The 8700k/8086k might have a slight edge some of the time during typical use. Where the 2700x would have an edge is when doing lightbaking, which is time consuming and does take advantage of additional cores. On code compiles, both CPU should do really well. I don't know if the code compiling would take full advantage of additional cores the same way lightbaking does.

 

Ok thanks, I am inclined to buy Intel just for not having any problems regarding configuration, compatibilities and smoothness when doing changes in my project. The difference is minimal I suppose. I will think about it.

Do you about any problems regarding ryzen 2700x?

Any good ryzen mobo?

Thanks for your answers.

 

I am not aware of any specific problems regarding the 2700x. If there were any issues, there would be software patches and drivers updated by now. For example, there were probably minor updates for Windows 10 to address different things, but those would all be handled already. Both Intel and AMD submit code to Microsoft to ensure solid CPU support by Windows.

 

Ok thanks, and any good motherboard for 2700x? I have read asus X give problems, that's true? what mobo?

 

All vendors have problems for some people. GIGABYTE is the brand that I typically turn to as they're reasonably priced and I haven't had any problems with them. That said I do know people who have had problems with them. Your mileage will vary.

 

I have personally had great results with Asus motherboards over the years. For most Intel builds, I use Asus Maximus boards.

 

I have been told Asus x470 are not the best option, i check it out Gigabyte x470 gaming 7 if i go with AMD. As it has been commented, people have also tell me problems with gigabyte.

If Intel, then ASUS for sure at least for me based on my last laptop experience.

Thanks.

 

The times I have gone for MSI or Gigabyte I always run into problems, so I stay away from those.
I tend to use Asus for my main desktop builds, but have also had good experience with Asrock for example on my HTPC and server builds.

I'm on a x370 Asus Crosshair VI Hero, it survived my 1800x build. Only complaint its picky about memory, but thats a problem with the entire Ryzen line so nots Asus fault

 

Thanks for your comment. I think I'd go with 8086k and if i need a new build in the next years I would pay close attention to AMD progress regarding IPC, multicore/threads (I know they have no problem with this) and memory issues. Next years seems to be exciting regarding Intel switching to 10nm in 2020 and AMD with AM4's last year and AM5.

 

Hi there,

The 1920x costs around 350 euro. Add a good motherboard e.g. Aorus Xtreme x399, total cost around 800 euro, comparable with 9900k + mobo.

It has some disadvantages (inferior single threaded speed, fewer RAM kits to choose from) and some advantages :
-More PCI lanes, aka option for more GPUs simultaneously (useful for GPU rendering like Redshift, Octane, VRay), more m.2 drives at full speed, 10Gbe.
-More max RAM supported.
-More CPU options for upgrading in the future (e.g. in 3-4 years, a 2990wx maybe costs ~800 euro and is finally fully utilized by windows).

I would like to know other people's thoughts regarding this option, I try to decide too.

 

One downside is the memory latency of Threadripper. If your problem requires alot of syncing between threads you could run into bottlenecks.

 

Thanks for the feedback,

As far as I have read, the problem you mention affects mostly the 2970wx and the 2990wx.
Also, despite latency, benchmarks are quite clear, better multithreaded performance (Unity builds, Unity lightmaps, CPU rendering), worse single threaded performance (Unity assets import - hint : use Cache server to see this happen only once). Maybe I forget / ignore other aspects, any clarifications are appreciated.

I am still not 100% convinced on this CPU and any feedback on it - especially from people who use a Threadripper - would be very useful - Thanks.

 

I have got same problems , trying to choose Threadripper 2970wx or Core I9-7960 (16 cores )
, and i have chosen I9-7960 , less problems , core for core performance is better for thing i do on daily basis ( including Ue4 ) .
If you are also rendering in Vray or something similiar better chose 2970WX probably .

Have not buyed it yet , i will wait till start of next year - Intel can show new socket , AMD can probably also show new Socket .

Wait till begining of next year , and make decision .

Btw ... i know 2970 wx and i9-7960 cost a lot with good motherboard and at least 64GB ram , but those Cpu will last you probably next 4 years , till new generation come .

 

Waiting for the announcement from AMD at CES?

 

I would wait for the new Ryzen 9 CPU's they seem to be complete Intel killers, but who knows. Plus they are roumured to have 16 cores. I dont think the AM4 dual channel can keep up with that to be honest

• Ryzen 3 3300 - 6/12 - 3.2/4.0GHz - 50w - $99
• Ryzen 3 3300X - 6/12 - 3.5/4.3GHz - 65w - $129
• Ryzen 3 3300G - 6/12 - 3.0/3.8GHz - 65w - $129
• Ryzen 5 3600 - 8/16 - 3.6/4.4GHz - 55w - $178
• Ryzen 5 3600X - 8/16 - 4.0/4.8GHz - 95w - $229
• Ryzen 5 3600G - 8/16 - 3.2/4.0GHz - 95w - $199
• Ryzen 7 3700 - 12/24 - 3.8/4.6GHz - 95w - $299
• Ryzen 7 3700X - 12/24 - 4.2/5.0GHz - 105w - $329
• Ryzen 9 3800X - 16/32 - 3.9/4.7GHz - 125w - $449
• Ryzen 9 3850X - 16/32 - 4.3/5.1GHz - 135w - $499

 

If the 3000 series Ryzen rumors are true, then 2019 is going to be a massive year for AMD.

 

So, Ryzen 3000 are out. Would you prefer 3700x over 9900k? 3700x wins in price and tdp. But I wish there was comparison of importing and compiling.

 

I would wait for 3950, but I'm on a 8 core today so it depends

Also, I give high hopes for the Threadripper family