LGA-2066 platform viable?

[Apocalypsee]

It seems like this is the only platform from Intel that spans over a huge generation, from Kaby Lake to current 10th gen. Thing is, is it good to buy, say older i7 7800x instead of going for something newer like Ryzen 3000 series? My main target is just for gaming, as I find quad core is not sufficient anymore. Would like to have some upgrade path to have more cores. Might thinking of doing some video editing if time allows.

With Ryzen having some difficulty of supporting next gen Zen 3 I tried to see all my other options as well, as if I wanted to have a bit of future proof right now is go all the way with X570 chipset and X570 chipset motherboard is quite expensive and prices approaching older LGA-2066 platform.

 

[phanbuey]

It seems like this is the only platform from Intel that spans over a huge generation, from Kaby Lake to current 10th gen. Thing is, is it good to buy, say older i7 7800x instead of going for something newer like Ryzen 3000 series? My main target is just for gaming, as I find quad core is not sufficient anymore. Would like to have some upgrade path to have more cores. Might thinking of doing some video editing if time allows.

With Ryzen having some difficulty of supporting next gen Zen 3 I tried to see all my other options as well, as if I wanted to have a bit of future proof right now is go all the way with X570 chipset and X570 chipset motherboard is quite expensive and prices approaching older LGA-2066 platform.

As a former 2066 owner you're going to find 3 things as issues:

1) 2066 low end chips like the 7800x and the 7820x (i owned this one) are not great for gaming, a cheap b450 and ryzen 3600 combo will beat a 7800x and match a overclocked/tuned 7820x in most games. The skylake-x chips suffer from the same memory latency issues as the original ryzen/ryzen+; you can overcome them by tuning/OCing but that will just bring you around the same performance as the 3600/3700/3900.

2) it's the worst of the "old" sockets -- the z370/z390 platforms are better at gaming by a decent margin, overclock easier and will age better; whereas the b450 will be overall cheaper for the same / better gaming performance; and the x570 is much more future proof.

3) Don't forget to factor in the cost of fast QUAD channel memory, which usually means an extra kit of 16gb at tight timing if you want 2066 to game better than a current zen 2.

tldr; You're better off going x570 with 3600x as a placeholder chip than 2066 if the money is around the same.

 

[EarthDog]

To the OP, yes and no. What the platform brings, now AMD can do that on the mainstream. The only thing you are missing is quad channel.

I don't get the jazz about 2066 not being great for gaming... My 7960x games just fine. The 7800x........wasn't that just skylake/kaby lake for 2066 anyway? I don't recall memory latency issues either, but, I'll go read up on that.

I also suggest going X570 and 3700x.......

 

[phanbuey]

To the OP, yes and no. What the platform brings, now AMD can do that on the mainstream. The only thing you are missing is quad channel.

I don't get the jazz about 2066 not being great for gaming... My 7960x games just fine. The 7800x........wasn't that just skylake/kaby lake for 2066 anyway? I don't recall memory latency issues either, but, I'll go read up on that.

I also suggest going X570 and 3700x.......

Your 7960x has enough cache to overcome the memory latency issues. The 7800x does not.

 

[EarthDog]

Can you link an article to this drawback, please? Memory latency I don't recall being an issue on anything intel, honestly.

EDIT: Note that the 7960x has the same amount of cache per core (1.375 MB) as the 7800x....

 

[phanbuey]

Can you link an article to this drawback, please? Memory latency I don't recall being an issue on anything intel, honestly.

EDIT: Note that the 7960x has the same amount of cache per core (1.375 MB) as the 7800x....

I can a bit later but essentially the skylake mesh has the same drawback as the IF on the ryzen designs.

Intel Core i9-7900X, Core i7-7820X and i7-7800X Review

Gaming Benchmarks. Intel recently announced their new Core X CPU series, comprising of not just three or four processors, but nine of them, making it the biggest range of...

www.techspot.com

If you look at gaming reviews, you will see the 7800x mostly behind the 7820x and 7900x with the exception of a few games (after the 7900x it flattens out). The higher core count chips also fare much better in the lows and 0.1% lows from sk-x than the 6 and 8 core ones. In the refresh they ended up increasing the amount of l3 cache for the 8 core models (the 8 core 9800x came with 16.5 Mb out of the box).

 

[Assimilator]

There is no such thing as future proofing in the PC industry. People have been spoiled by how good Sandy Bridge has been for so long, as well as the long lifetime of AM4. Those days are over.

Why not just get a second-hand i7-4770K or 4790K? That will give you 4 more threads which will definitely tide you over for a while.

If that's not acceptable, my personal recommendation would be to build an intermediate system: grab a second-hand B350 board for dirt cheap; then either a second-hand 1600, a new 1600AF, or possibly a new 3100.

 

[LFaWolf]

I built several x299 machines this last winter (thanks @EarthDog ) but they are for work and we need stability and good price and performance. I am not sure what features that you need in x299 that is not available in the Intel main stream socket 1151. Right now is a bad time to buy Intel as the new socket has just been announced and shipping, and they are expensive. For x570, it is possible that they will last just one more generation of AM4 before AMD moves to AM4+ or AM5. How long do you intend to keep your system and what is your budget and features requirements?

 

[EarthDog]

I can a bit later but essentially the skylake mesh has the same drawback as the IF on the ryzen designs. I've posted about it before, but essentially high frequency, low latency ram w/ TRFC tweaks

Intel Core i9-7900X, Core i7-7820X and i7-7800X Review

Gaming Benchmarks. Intel recently announced their new Core X CPU series, comprising of not just three or four processors, but nine of them, making it the biggest range of...

www.techspot.com

If you look at gaming reviews, you will see the 7800x mostly behind the 7820x and 7900x with the exception of a few games (after the 7900x it flattens out). The higher core count chips also fare much better in the lows and 0.1% lows from sk-x than the 6 and 8 core ones. In the refresh they ended up increasing the amount of l3 cache for the 8 core models (the 8 core 9800x came with 16.5 Mb out of the box).

I don't see a lot of difference in those titles. Maybe it isn't 'the best' gaming CPU out there, but surely looks like it does a great job

BF5, I don't see much here at all...
Mafia III for the 7800x only is lower (3% / 2 fps on mins)...7820x is fine.
Hitman, mins take a dive on 7800x, (5% / 4 fps on mins for 7820x)
Ashes, a game that can utilize 10c showing a notable difference, but it also scales with cores/threads better than any of those titles so I'm not sure what we are seeing there is a product of c/t count or what.

Also, clock speeds are different for these CPUs too...7800x is the slowest.. 100Mhz base and 300 Mhz boost vs 7820x (that doesn't count for the single thread at 4.5 Ghz on 7820x either)...that accounts for some difference at 1080p.

EDIT: If we want to see the effects on cache, these CPUs all needed to run at the same clockspeed and lock cores down. This test is just 'run it as you brung it' with core/thread differences along with clock speeds.

 

[phanbuey]

I don't see a lot of difference in those titles. Maybe it isn't 'the best' gaming CPU out there, but surely looks like it does a great job

BF5, I don't see much here at all...
Mafia III for the 7800x only is lower (3% / 2 fps on mins)...7820x is fine.
Hitman, mins take a dive on 7800x, (5% / 4 fps on mins for 7820x)
Ashes, a game that can utilize 10c showing a notable difference, but it also scales with cores/threads better than any of those titles so I'm not sure what we are seeing there is a product of c/t count or what.

Also, clock speeds are different for these CPUs too...7800x is the slowest.. 100Mhz base and 300 Mhz boost vs 7820x (that doesn't count for the single thread at 4.5 Ghz on 7820x either)...that accounts for some difference at 1080p.

1080p is actually masking them a bit, lets go to the ultra low resolution of... 720P! (scroll down to bottom)

Intel X299 platform first wave reviews - i7 7740X/7800X/7820X and i9 7900X

Just btw. that's not true. A PSU rated at 550W means it can (well, unless it's shitty) deliver 550W to your components. Depending on its efficiency, it can draw way more from the wall and still work perfectly fine within it's official limits. To follow up (because that previous post was bugging...

www.neogaf.com

 

[EarthDog]

1080p is actually masking them a bit, lets go to the ultra low resolution of... 720P!

Oh dear... please don't. You know I absolutely LOATHE that method of testing...

So again, where people play games (I assume few with HEDT based system sport a potato GPU and play games at Y2K resolutions), we don't see much going on and that testing isn't great to show off cache differences in the first place.

 

[phanbuey]

I would say the 2066 platform is viable; but not for purely budget gaming, which is what the OP wants. There are better options out there and you can probably pick up second hand b450 boards for next to nothing + a 3600 and a cheap but decent set of ddr4 and you have OG Skylake-X gaming performance for ~$350. Plus once prices drop in the future on the 3900x / 3950x (and you know they will) you can bump up to 12/16 cores pretty easily and affordably.

It's just not worth the money to buy into it right now. If you bought it when it came out and are keeping it for a while then it's awesome, it's lasted for absolutely ever and still has great performance. But I wouldn't buy it in it's current state for gaming.

 

[EarthDog]

Yeah, HEDT isn't budget anything. But I'm just not seeing the 'cache' differences mentioned in the testing sourced here so far. Nobody tests properly for that so it will be tough to weed out.

The OP should skip HEDT and stick with X570 or wait a day or so and see what the Intel platform brings. Likely less cores /$, but gaming performance will be as good or better than AMD alternatives too...

 

[Apocalypsee]

As a former 2066 owner you're going to find 3 things as issues:

1) 2066 low end chips like the 7800x and the 7820x (i owned this one) are not great for gaming, a cheap b450 and ryzen 3600 combo will beat a 7800x and match a overclocked/tuned 7820x in most games. The skylake-x chips suffer from the same memory latency issues as the original ryzen/ryzen+; you can overcome them by tuning/OCing but that will just bring you around the same performance as the 3600/3700/3900.

2) it's the worst of the "old" sockets -- the z370/z390 platforms are better at gaming by a decent margin, overclock easier and will age better; whereas the b450 will be overall cheaper for the same / better gaming performance; and the x570 is much more future proof.

3) Don't forget to factor in the cost of fast QUAD channel memory, which usually means an extra kit of 16gb at tight timing if you want 2066 to game better than a current zen 2.

tldr; You're better off going x570 with 3600x as a placeholder chip than 2066 if the money is around the same.

Thank you, this sort of reply from the person who use this platform is just what I need. I already have a couple of generic Samsung B-die that could clock nicely to 3200-3400MHz at CL16.

I built several x299 machines this last winter (thanks @EarthDog ) but they are for work and we need stability and good price and performance. I am not sure what features that you need in x299 that is not available in the Intel main stream socket 1151. Right now is a bad time to buy Intel as the new socket has just been announced and shipping, and they are expensive. For x570, it is possible that they will last just one more generation of AM4 before AMD moves to AM4+ or AM5. How long do you intend to keep your system and what is your budget and features requirements?

I think of keeping it as long as my current 4th gen i5 so maybe up to 5 years. I cant state my budget because I don't live in US so prices there isn't the same as my local pricing. Let just say I could get i7 7800x for the same price of 3700X with X570 motherboard. But that is what I planned, if I go with AM4 I would just get 3600 or even 3300X as a placeholder and wait for Ryzen 4000

There is no such thing as future proofing in the PC industry. People have been spoiled by how good Sandy Bridge has been for so long, as well as the long lifetime of AM4. Those days are over.

Why not just get a second-hand i7-4770K or 4790K? That will give you 4 more threads which will definitely tide you over for a while.

If that's not acceptable, my personal recommendation would be to build an intermediate system: grab a second-hand B350 board for dirt cheap; then either a second-hand 1600, a new 1600AF, or possibly a new 3100.

The reason is 4770K/4790K prices is ridiculous as I can get Ryzen 2600/3400G or sometime 3600/x. The motherboard that I use also have some bend pins, two of the DIMM slots is dead that I don't know if this is CPU problem or motherboard problem so I thinking of changing platform

 

[LFaWolf]

Oh hey, I just saw that you are from Malaysia. I was born there too

From what I read, AM4 is your best bet. However, if I am not mistaken, 4xxx will be coming out end of this year or early next year. If you can wait until then, that series of chips should give you a good 4-5 years run.

If you cannot wait that long, X570 and a 3600/x as a placeholder could work, then you can see what would be out there, upgrade and sell the 3600/x

 

[Apocalypsee]

Well looks like AMD said they support older B450/X470 for new Ryzen 4000 series