AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D or Intel i9 14900KF

[Wolfhound]

Hello folks, in the near future I will build a new rig. I will be mainly using it for DCS (Vr PIMAX light), but also for IL2 and a little MSFS. The thoughest choice for me is the CPU. Any experience on your side with this CPU’s? Thanks a lot!

[SharpeXB]

Maybe a fair analysis here. Note what he says about the F models. Something to be aware of  

 

Beware of this 

 

[Aapje]

@Wolfhound

Neither, get the 7800X3D. The 14900KF is absurdly expensive & power hungry & kills itself. The 7950X3D is intended for people who both game and use heavy productivity software. For gaming, all those cores are not only not needed, but the extra chiplet can cause performance issues. So you are paying more, just to get potential problems in games.

[diego999]

Avoid 13th and 14th chips from Intel like they're coming from Chernobyl in 1986. They like to kill themselves.

Go AMD,  anything AM5 is a good bet as you can replace the CPU for a better one down the road.

[skywalker22]

On 8/4/2024 at 7:46 PM, Aapje said:

@Wolfhound

Neither, get the 7800X3D. The 14900KF is absurdly expensive & power hungry & kills itself. The 7950X3D is intended for people who both game and use heavy productivity software. For gaming, all those cores are not only not needed, but the extra chiplet can cause performance issues. So you are paying more, just to get potential problems in games.

Yep, if I would be buying now the new CPU, it would definitely be the AMD 7800X3D.

[BitMaster]

NO ONE, absolute ZERO people, with common sense would now buy any Intel CPU that may fit your gaming needs. Honestly, 0,00%

[Hiob]

On 8/4/2024 at 5:51 PM, Wolfhound said:

Hello folks, in the near future I will build a new rig. I will be mainly using it for DCS (Vr PIMAX light), but also for IL2 and a little MSFS. The thoughest choice for me is the CPU. Any experience on your side with this CPU’s? Thanks a lot!

Don’t waste money on the 7950X. The 7800X3D is the perfect gaming cpu and actually outperforms the 7950 in most games.

(Sorry, I don’t think I even need to mention how I feel about current gen Intel CPUs. Don’t screw yourself over)

Edited August 8 by Hiob

[LucShep]

I agree with the others here.

Avoid Intel for now.
In another time, I'd have said Intel i7 14700K, but no longer with all the ongoing catastrophic Intel problems. 

And yes, the AMD Ryzen 7800X3D is really the gaming CPU to get today (best gaming chip over all), perfect for what you want.
Especially for the price, the 7800X3D is an absolute no brainer.  It's not worth going for the 7950X.

[Sandman11]

7800X3D. Stay far away from Intel

[Cavemanhead]

7800X3D and 4090 and never looked back.  Works great for DCS, MS2020, IL-2, Xplane.  Fantastic Chip.  And... you help drive competition to help lower prices.  Win-win.

[Matthew007b]

So these AMD 3D chips they make... really are optimized well for VR these days? 

[kksnowbear]

I wouldn't describe it as 'optimized for VR' - that's a little too specific IMHO and the potential for misunderstandings exists.

The X3D chips AMD makes are - broadly and generally - better for gaming.  That's because of their guts inside (the "3D part", has to do with adding more cache in layers [hence 3D] inside the CPU).  Most games like this cache although not all.

With that said, I think most anyone will agree that yes, the X3D CPUs are very adept at DCS, even with VR.

Edited August 13 by kksnowbear

[Aapje]

13 hours ago, Matthew007b said:

So these AMD 3D chips they make... really are optimized well for VR these days? 

Basically, games tend to not really be able to use a lot of cores effectively, but love cache. Especially simming games.

The reason why that is so, is because games do a lot of the same thing. For example, if the game runs at 60 FPS, then the game has to make a new frame every 100 milliseconds. And a lot of that is used by the GPU, so the CPU has a fraction of that. In that time, the CPU has to calculate the new world state, convert that into updates to the 3D-model, which it then has to hand over to the GPU for actual rendering. The things that the CPU does for every frame is often called the gameplay loop.

If the code and data for the gameplay loop is in the cache of the CPU, it can work very fast and efficiently, because it doesn't have to bring in the data from the relatively slow RAM. And you tend to get very consistent FPS. For example, you can have 60 FPS where some frames take 150 ms and others take 50 ms, or you can have all frames take 100 ms. The latter will feel much smoother.

It turns out that the extra cache for the X3D-CPUs means that the code and data for the gameplay loop fits in the cache much better, so it works great for games.

The end result is that those X3D-CPU's are very efficient at gaming. In contrast, if you buy a 14900K over lets say a 14600K, then you get a relatively small cache increase from 20 to 32 MB. This is not really enough to fit most gameplay loops, so the CPU has to work very hard in an inefficient way to compensate. This is one reason why the 14900K uses so much power.

And you also pay for 2 extra performance cores and 8 extra e-cores, that do very little for you, in gaming.

In contrast, with the 7800X3D, you get 104 MB of L2/L3 cache. So that is more than triple what the 14900K has. And despite the 7800X3D only going to 5 Ghz, it tends to beat the 14900K at up to 6 Ghz, in benchmarks. The 14900K is brute forcing, while the 7800X3D is much more designed around what is useful for games. The end result is that it is much cheaper than the 14900K (both in manufacture and in sales price), runs cooler and uses less power.

And to get back to your question: VR is really not all that relevant. The above is true for both flat and VR games.

[Matthew007b]

Thanks Aapje  that does make more sense.  Even the new AMD chips coming out sound like they won't do much for simulators so.. the X3D CPU's are geared more for DCS application then. (Thanks for explaining that) 

[Greekbull]

Nothing but good things to say about my experience with the 7950X3D which I got the day it launched.  The only thing I would say is rumor has it AMD may launch the new 9000X3D series chips in September...I would wait and see if that happens...

[BitMaster]

Keep the processed data close to the core, this is not a new thing, by far not.

It has always been part of the server CPU layout and very often in mobile "laptop" CPU's too to compensate for the lower MHz.

AMD just took it a step further ( also in their server CPUs )

 

 

[MakAttack]

I thought I would post on this thread, as I found myself buying parts for a new VR sim gaming computer, and took advantage of a sales tax free holiday coupled with a new MicroCenter credit card to get the most discounts I could on a 7950X3D based system using the MC bundle available at the time. This is the build: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/mak8tack/builds/#view=yCTJ7P where I pulled the 4090 from my previous system based on a i9/12900K CPU. I'm happy with it, but found the DCS multithreaded performance to be interesting. Using the latest Win11 23H2 (with the AMD branch prediction patches) coupled with the latest chipset drivers, XBox Gamebar, and UEFI BIOS, I find that with the multithreaded DCS app, it will default to using both CCDs (extra vcache CCD0 and higher frequency CCD1). If I were to use Win11 Task Manager to setup "Process Affinity" to keep DCS on cores 0-15, by disabling 16-31, I don't perceive much of a difference with the DCS built-in FPS counter. This is in VR (Windows Mixed Reality with a HP Reverb G2)

Here are some screenshots I made with a OBS recording of DCS, AMD Ryzen Master (to easily show which cores are utilized) with no special CPU affinity config, and affinity preferring CCD0. In the screenshot with the CCD1 cores with the lower level of activity, I think that might have been OBS. Anyway, feel-wise, they both felt similar in performance in VR. Numbers-wise, they both hovered between 45-51 FPS on the DCS frame counter. I will note that with other similar sims I have tried: MSFS, and FalconBMS they tend to run in CCD0 based on the XBox Gamebar identifying them as games. DCS is also recognized by XBGB as a game, but I have to use the Task Manager process affinity config to make it run in CCD0.

nullnull

[Aapje]

The only surprising thing about that is that GameBar recognizes DCS correctly by default.

8 cores is sufficient for just about every game, and the inter-chiplet latency has a bigger negative impact than any possible gain from extra cores. And the 3D-cache makes a bigger difference in games than the extra clock speed, which is why games should run on the X3D-chiplet.

[Hiob]

9 minutes ago, Aapje said:

8 cores is sufficient for just about every game, and the inter-chiplet latency has a bigger negative impact than any possible gain from extra cores. And the 3D-cache makes a bigger difference in games than the extra clock speed, which is why games should run on the X3D-chiplet.

This! 

Also a perfect summary why the 7800X3D is the optimal choice for gaming above 79XX processors.

[MakAttack]

I would agree that for most games the 7800x3d is ideal. I went with the 7950x3d because I typically run extra processes that I feel don't require the vcache performance gains so I wanted to see if I could task those to the frequency ccd. I'm not sure it really buys me much, other than more cores with cache available to the main game process. Since I enjoy VR, with DCS, I will often run VAICOM pro with voice attack. For FalconBMS, I use foxvox for audio recognition.  I also have tacview for both dcs and falconbms, but I think DCS runs it as a module within the main process, but I'm not 100% sure. It just seems to me that running these extra processes in ccd1 while the game runs in ccd0 makes sense. I also see OBS in ccd1 when I am using that tool. For MSFS, I'm often running vr, voiceattack (for copilot like commands), beyondatc (with traffic injection) and find that those run well in ccd1.

Edited September 13 by MakAttack
Typos

[MAXsenna]

This! 
Also a perfect summary why the 7800X3D is the optimal choice for gaming above 79XX processors.

What about the 7900X3D? 10USD difference here in Norway.

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

[Hiob]

1 minute ago, MAXsenna said:

What about the 7900X3D? 10USD difference here in Norway.

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk
 

has two CCDs of which only one is connected to the 3D-cache. So basically same as the 7950X3D. Adds no benefit to gaming whatsoever.

(doesn't hurt much necessarily either, but you have to make sure that the stupid windows scheduler is not running the wrong cores whilst gaming)

21 minutes ago, MakAttack said:

I would agree that for most games the 7800x3d is ideal. I went with the 7950x3d because I typically run extra processes that I feel don't require the vcache performance gains so I wanted to see if I could task those to the frequency ccd. I'm not sure if really buys me much, other than more cores with cache available to the main game process. Since I enjoy VR, with DCS, I will often run VAICOM pro with voice attack. For FalconBMS, I use foxvox for audio recognition.  I also have tacview for both dcs and falconbms, but I think DCS runs it as a module within the main process, but I'm not 100% sure. It just seems to me that running these extra processes in ccd1 while the game runs in ccd0 makes sense. I also see OBS in ccd1 when I am using that tool. For MSFS, I'm often running vr, voiceattack (for copilot like commands), beyondatc (with traffic injection) and find that those run well in ccd1.

 

Nothing wrong with that. I'm running a 5900X over a 5800X3D for various reasons.

I was strictly relating to min-maxing money for gaming performance.

Edited September 13 by Hiob

[MAXsenna]

@Hiob Thanks!

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[Aapje]

2 hours ago, MAXsenna said:

What about the 7900X3D? 10USD difference here in Norway.

The 7900X3D has two 6-core chiplets, so for gaming, it's basically a 7600X3D (if GameBar works correctly or you manually make sure the game runs on the X3D-chiplet.)

The 7950X3D has two 8-core chiplets, so for gaming, it's basically a 7800X3D.

Given that price difference, getting the 7950X3D is a no brainer.

[Hiob]

23 minutes ago, Aapje said:

The 7900X3D has two 6-core chiplets, so for gaming, it's basically a 7600X3D (if GameBar works correctly or you manually make sure the game runs on the X3D-chiplet.)

The 7950X3D has two 8-core chiplets, so for gaming, it's basically a 7800X3D.

Given that price difference, getting the 7950X3D is a no brainer.

Ah  of course. Forgot that it is only 6 cores per CCD. That really makes it the worst choice out of the three.