pds41: Thanks - that's a useful perspective. Avoiding the X570 board is probably a good idea if I go ryzen (as I'd imagine I wouldn't need the pcie 4.0 performance for at least another upgrade cycle - I'm still running a HDD in my current rig - albeit a WD Black one).
If we look at the 9700 (£340) vs the 3700x (£320), do you think that the £20 saving (plus better threaded performance) offsets the superior single core performance of the 9700?
I hadn't considered a 3600 before - I had been slightly put off by the fact that my FX-8350 has 8 physical cores (I know there's an argument over whether they are more akin to 4 physical cores with 8 threads), with a 4.0ghz (ish) clock. However, I'm assuming that mhz for mhz you get much better performance on a single core on the newer generation products.
As an aside, graphics card wise, I'm probably going for a 2070 Super (as mentioned, this is because I have a gysnc monitor).
The i7 9700 does not have more single core performance than a Ryzen 3700x, prebably it has less depending on the benchmark test (who would say :D)... Since I didn't test it for myself I cannot argue that but either way we are talking about meaningless differences. There are some games wich run better on Intel hardware, that will show more fps on typical benchmarks. On real gaming, with the fps capped or the GPU maxed out, there will be no difference...
About the SSD thing, try it, you can never go back.
So you're still rocking the fx 8 core? It has nothing to do with the newer Ryzens. Those times are past, let's see what Intel can do, their move.
The newer CPU's are so much more responsive than the old FX series, even browsing the web. A heavy facebook page open faster with a dual core Intel (sandy bridge and above) than a 8 core FX, this is something I never saw any youtube media talking about, usually they just benchmark. Even 1 gen Ryzen had a little less responsivness than Intel CPU's. I cannot quantify this "responsivness", not sure if it shows on any javascript benchmark like the
mozilla kraken I tested with a dual core pentium g3258 at 4.2 GHz and got around 1000 ms (less the better).
Back in the day I was shocked when got a new dual core AMD A6-7400k how slow it was, even a core2duo was faster... Probably browsers became more efficient handling extra threads but at that time the difference was huge. Later when I got a 4 core Athlon 860k, the dual core pentium was still much faster in mundane tasks like facebook scrolling.
Big rant over, my recomendation is you cant go wrong with either CPU and 20 euros (or GBP) doesnt make any difference given the total cost of a entire new platform. Go with whatever you feel more confortable. Just keep in mind 3700x is overall faster than the 9700 except in a couple of games. In most games (maybe except that Assassins creed trash) the 3600 is mostly as fast as the 3700x.
Is likely you wont see any benchmark of the 9700 but the 9700k should be around 10% faster overall than the 9700k(give or take) if you want to do comparatives.
Dark_art_: ...Both sockets discussed here are in the end of life. Am4 will get a 16 core soon but probaby nothing beyond that....
MadalinStroe: Isn't the refresh zen2+ coming next year, also on AM4?
Yeah, it seem so. But wouldn't hold my hands on next refresh as a big improvement. Just speculation of course.
That said I do look foward to see newer zen2 APU's. We know on the GPU side will not get any faster, as is memory bandwith limited, but the 1gen was still a bit sluggish. I do want to build a computer for myself with a good APU to replace the old Pentium g3258 and Nvidia gt1030.
Nex generation may bring the needed ddr5 or whatever :D
