9900k VS 4790K

[EarthDog]

Sorry, but no.
It was "diminishing gains" for several years and then suddenly a jump of 50% IPC (to Zen 1) ? And then another 15% present day to Zen 2 ?
No, it was just bad decisions on the top level, and bad engineering, bad expectations, a "perfect storm" of bad choices.

I agree with Vario on that one. AMD was so far behind, monster gains were easy to come from bulldozer/piledriver... consider when it was first released as well and how long they rode that broken down horse.

 

[Vario]

Sorry, but no.
It was "diminishing gains" for several years and then suddenly a jump of 50% IPC (to Zen 1) ? And then another 15% present day to Zen 2 ?
No, it was just bad decisions on the top level, and bad engineering, bad expectations, a "perfect storm" of bad choices.

Luckily we're over that.

Anyway, @op , keep your Haswell CPU as long as you can play fine with it. As long as you don't do professional workloads that would actually benefit from 8 cores, there's not much need to change it.
It will probably be necessary only after launch of next gen consoles, when 8 cores is predicted to be -minimum- for smooth gameplay in new titles. But we're still many months away from that...

Wavetrex, I disagree with your logic. The gains AMD has made are from starting so far behind. In terms of IPC, 2012's FX 8350 was a sidegrade from 2009 Phenom II Deneb/Thuban. That does not disprove my argument that silicon as a medium for processor development has hit diminishing returns and new materials need to be used to continue making progress.

 

[Kapone33]

Wavetrex, I disagree with your logic. The 2011 FX 8150 and the 2012 8350 were slower than the 2009 Phenom II at single thread performance when at the same clock speed (IPC). The gains AMD has made are from starting so far behind. That does not disprove my argument that silicon as a medium for processor development has hit diminishing returns and new materials need to be used to continue making progress. Furthermore, please give me a source for the 50% IPC improvement from Bulldozer to Zen1.

Well I had both of those and I can tell you with confidence that the FX series were faster than Phenom, even in games which is where the single thread performance was mostly applied. If you look at reviews from that time they are pretty much inline with not only the Phenom reviews but also the 1st gen Ryzen reviews. The problem for AMD's FX series was the way they were marketed, the way benchmarks looked at them, the way Intel (and it`s lovers) bashed them and the way Windows saw them. Even though the actual number for anything that really mattered was 10-15% (in games) and even though Ryzen is faster it is not 50% faster in real world performance. The IPC could be realized as no Ryzen chip OCs like Bulldozer. Let's remember that the 9590 was the first 5 GHZ CPU. If we could get Ryzen anywhere near that clock they would be hands down the fastest CPUs period. It is because of that I agree with the diminishing returns theory but not the so far the "huge" gain in performance.

 

[Chrispy_]

The worst part about Bulldozer's architecture is that it made the same dumb mistake that Intel made with the Pentium 4 at the turn of the century.

Pentium 4 Prescott was a horrendously long pipeline that mistakenly assumed that higher clocks were the way forwards. Intel can be let off the hook for that one because the trend up until then supported clockspeed increases as the way forward.

Whoever decided AMD should make Bulldozer was an idiot. I'm not sure if the initial design was approved under Hector Ruiz or Dirk Meyer but between them we have around a decade of AMD being useless in the CPU market.

 

[frdmftr]

Downloaded Cinebench as suggested and ran the 4790k at 4.6, 4.8 and 5.0 GHz. At 5 GHz (4.997 exactly) it is only 9% slower than the 9900k, so there is my answer. Just really having a hard time wrapping my head around a less than 10% increase in 5 generations/6 years???

Makes me wonder why bother with the changes, wouldn't just shrinking Haswell to 12nm give the same if not a better result???

 

[Vario]

Downloaded Cinebench as suggested and ran the 4790k at 4.6, 4.8 and 5.0 GHz. At 5 GHz (4.997 exactly) it is only 9% slower than the 9900k, so there is my answer. Just really having a hard time wrapping my head around a less than 10% increase in 5 generations/6 years???

Makes me wonder why bother with the changes, wouldn't just shrinking Haswell to 12nm give the same if not a better result???



View attachment 130393

Lake is Haswell shrank to 14nm.

 

[Space Lynx]

i always wondered why my laptop did so well with only an i7-7820 cpu in it. even the clock speed is slow at 2.9ghz when gaming, it still handles everything pretty easily

 

[hzy4]

Downloaded Cinebench as suggested and ran the 4790k at 4.6, 4.8 and 5.0 GHz. At 5 GHz (4.997 exactly) it is only 9% slower than the 9900k, so there is my answer. Just really having a hard time wrapping my head around a less than 10% increase in 5 generations/6 years???

Just minor improvements, in single core performance, the other factor is power consumption at that frequency, manufacturing cost... The improvements are to find mostly in core count.

 

[Ruyki]

The IPC difference between haswell and skylake/kaby lake/coffe lake is roughly 8%
Source: https://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-review-6700k-6600k-ddr4-ddr3-ipc-6th-generation/9
Skylake, kaby lake and coffe lake all have the same IPC btw.
So IPC has only increased by around 8% in the past 6 years.

 

[Chrispy_]

The only real difference between Haswell and Kaby Lake is the IGP. Newer architecture, more execution units (20% increase per tier) and fixed-function hardware added for newer codec support like H.265 encode/decode.

Not that anyone uses Quicksync encode, because the output quality and filesize is trash compared to other encoders.

 

[trog100]

more cores dont do a lot if gaming engines dont use them.. a 4790K will be perfectly fine for gaming.. a 9900K wont make much of a difference if any..

trog

 

[Space Lynx]

more cores dont do a lot if gaming engines dont use them.. a 4790K will be perfectly fine for gaming.. a 9900K wont make much of a difference if any..

trog

only time it makes a difference is in witcher 3 i have noticed. or other high demanding games. i have to turn down quite a few settings to get smooth gameplay on my 7820 cpu, but once i do its smooth as butter and still looks great. so meh

i agree just keep current cpu OP and upgrade gpu

 

[EarthDog]

more cores dont do a lot if gaming engines dont use them.. a 4790K will be perfectly fine for gaming.. a 9900K wont make much of a difference if any..

trog

only time it makes a difference is in witcher 3 i have noticed. or other high demanding games. i have to turn down quite a few settings to get smooth gameplay on my 7820 cpu, but once i do its smooth as butter and still looks great. so meh

i agree just keep current cpu OP and upgrade gpu

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[X800]

.
Here is my 6700k and there is not a big difference.

 

[Vya Domus]

Sorry, but no.

He is right, wider designs for cores don't give out the improvement that they once did, there is so much instruction level parallelism that can be achieved after which you hit a wall.

It was "diminishing gains" for several years and then suddenly a jump of 50% IPC (to Zen 1) ?

Piledriver was an old design with a very long pipeline, slow cache, etc. No wonder they got that much improvement over it.

And then another 15% present day to Zen 2 ?

Exactly, from 50% to 15% there is a massive drop off. Things are slowing down.

 

[frdmftr]

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Partly why I was looking at upgrading. Although I do have 8 threads and it seems I am okay for now...

If you could get a decent OC on the new Ryzen chips it would be an easy decision. Seems like we are in a strange period across the board.

 

[phanbuey]

Partly why I was looking at upgrading. Although I do have 8 threads and it seems I am okay for now...

If you could get a decent OC on the new Ryzen chips it would be an easy decision. Seems like we are in a strange period across the board.

Anything you buy right now is a stopgap to end of 2020/early 2021 when the new chips come out from both vendors. IMO going to AMD you're going to see very little if any improvement or difference in gaming.

If you do want to upgrade and be able to pop in a new chip when zen 3 comes then a 3600 and a cheap B450 board would be a decent way to go. Get some fast ram, tweak trfc and you have a box that games 92% as good as 8700/9900K. ~$300 upgrade total for 12 threads.

Then when zen3 comes out you can update to that and sell the 3600.

CPU roadmaps from intel are so crap right now, and AMD isn't quite there on performance, im just waiting until Nvidia releases the 3k series then Ill build a rig around that when it comes out.

 

[trog100]

Was this just a hypothetical question about the single core performance of the 4790K? Are you trying to justify an upgrade? My 4790K was bottlenecking my RTX 2070 in games that used more then 4 cores which most of them do now days.

by how much and at what resolutions.. ??

trog

 

[frdmftr]

Anything you buy right now is a stopgap to end of 2020/early 2021 when the new chips come out from both vendors. IMO going to AMD you're going to see very little if any improvement or difference in gaming.

If you do want to upgrade and be able to pop in a new chip when zen 3 comes then a 3600 and a cheap B450 board would be a decent way to go. Get some fast ram, tweak trfc and you have a box that games 92% as good as 8700/9900K. ~$300 upgrade total for 12 threads.

Then when zen3 comes out you can update to that and sell the 3600.

CPU roadmaps from intel are so crap right now, and AMD isn't quite there on performance, im just waiting until Nvidia releases the 3k series then Ill build a rig around that when it comes out.

Interesting comparison and benchmarks if accurate:

 

[phanbuey]

Interesting comparison and benchmarks if accurate:

Looks about right - that 4790 is at stock too - the r5 doesnt OC at all- so if you oc that 4790 chip 10%-15% it's basically the same gaming performance.

Some games do drop FPS and have deeper lows (like crysis 3 due to the quad core) lower but overall its not a huge difference between the two. Both great chips for gaming.

 

[hzy4]

by how much and at what resolutions.. ??

trog

f.e. Sandstorm Insurgency at 1440p, I had occasional stutters, both CPUs gave more then100fps in almost every game (except AC Odyssey), but you get much more smooth experience when you move from 4 cores to 6, 8 cores. For the FPS values you need to watch some benchmarks. I figured its time to upgrade now, if I would wait longer my GPU would be already obsolete paired with the Ryzen 4000 or Intel 10nm.

 

[Ja.KooLit]

more cores dont do a lot if gaming engines dont use them.. a 4790K will be perfectly fine for gaming.. a 9900K wont make much of a difference if any..

trog

The reason why I am still at my 4.1 ghz 4770k (dud haswell)

 

[trog100]

as a gaming cpu the 4790K cpu is still very much alive... as a general purpose cpu the 4790K cpu is also still very much alive..

as for other none gaming benchmarks that do use all cores/threads its the more cores the merrier but that dosnt make lesser cores dead..

as for price comparisons for anyone that already owns a 4790k or similar.. the cost is zero..

there does seem to be some dumb logic in this thread.. it goes just because cpu Y produces a few more FPS than cpu Z cpu Y is dead.. if that were the case anything less than best most expensive high end hardware would be dead... quite clearly nonsense thinking..

trog

ps.. as a little test i am gonna turn off 6 of the 8 cores on my 9900K and see if the current game i am playing (division 2) is still playable.. this will give me a 2 core 4 thread cpu at 5 ghz..

i will report back..

 

[hzy4]

cheers

 

[trog100]

cheersView attachment 130501

dunno i play division 2 at 1440 i just played a half hour session with my 9900K on 2 cores 4 threads at 5 ghz.. i was seeing frame rates at around 100 fps.. the game was perfectly playable.. i also did a quick run of farcry new dawn.. once again the game was perfectly playable..

i ran the ashes of singularity benchmark on the crazy setting the heavy batches recorded 53 fps.. very playable..

i would argue that people who own a 2080TI dont run at 1080p and i can only use the cpu i have.. i could slow it down but the thread is about core counts and the need for them..

trog