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Intel Core i9-12900K

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Do the e-cores take care of steam/discord and chrome in the background if you're playing a game?Getting that stress off the main cpu is kinda nice.

For example could having E-cores specifically take care of background stuff like chrome/discord/steam and etc and potentially prevent any minor fps inconsistencies like minor frametimespikes/microstutters if you're playing games at the same time?
 
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Do the e-cores take care of steam/discord and chrome in the background if you're playing a game?Getting that stress off the main cpu is kinda nice.

For example could having E-cores specifically take care of background stuff like chrome/discord/steam and etc and potentially prevent any minor fps inconsistencies like minor frametimespikes/microstutters if you're playing games at the same time?
That's essentially what they're for, yes. They also help quite a bit in heavily MT tasks like rendering and transcoding, but for gaming they seem well suited for letting the high performance cores be for high performance tasks only.
 
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Personally, I have nothing against ebay. The reason I wouldn't recommend anyone (especially new PC builders) to buy their stuff there is this:
1. Deals are temporary. What you posted may be there today, but may disappear by tomorrow. As such, it does not represent the actual value of the product in general. It only represents the value of that particular piece at that particular moment. You cannot say that the Quadro T600 is a good deal in general just because you found one on a local second-hand selling site.
2. No warranty.
3. You don't know what you get until you get it. Maybe it's good as new. Maybe it's f***ed. Maybe it's dirty as hell and you spend a whole day cleaning it. Maybe the person you're recommending it to doesn't know how to take a graphics card apart for cleaning. Then again, it's not a good deal for that person.
4. You're buying from a person instead of a registered company. Sure, you have buyer's protection on ebay, but you never have 100% protection against scammers.
Bruh, that website that I linked is from one of the biggest Lithuanian new hardware retailers. They sell new stuff with warranties and Quadros are certainly not in short supply, just their availability in this particular store may be as Lithuania has low demand for professional cards like that. Adequate criticism for eBay, but not for Varlė.lt

All in all, if you have a friend who knows his/her stuff about computers, sure, recommend him/her a good deal on ebay. But even then, that's one good deal, and not a picture of the current PC market. Here on TPU, we all have varying levels of understanding about PCs. Some of us have been building them for decades. Some of us are just getting into it now. Recommending ebay deals to people in general is a bad idea.

Like I said, I bought my RTX 2070 on ebay. Would I recommend you to do the same? Maybe, as you know a thing or two about PCs. Would I recommend it in general? Hell no.

Prices of new hardware and the second-hand market are two entirely different things.
That's why you look for local deals, way cheaper than eBay and you can likely test it in person. Sure, you may get hardware with lower lifespan, but better enjoy gaming for a while properly, rather than suffer with GT 1030 or Vega 7.

Why should a £280 APU play any modern game?
If it costs a whole 100 more than market alternatives, then I would expect it to do anything worthy of such high price. They probably don't waste die space for nothing. And I said that if that was a true intention of APUs, they would have Vega 3 in all of them.

And this is what AMD says on their website (https://www.amd.com/en/processors/ryzen-with-graphics) about 5000 series APUs:
"Get PCs powered by the world’s most advanced processors for high frame rates per second and an immersive experience. Good game, indeed."
"For gamers, creators, and all-around PC users who want enthusiast-class performance; without the need for a discrete graphics card" (This is way worse than I expected, they are selling it like they just slapped together 6900XT with 5950X. What a fail.)
"The World’s Fastest Graphics in a Desktop Processor"
"AMD Ryzen™ 5000 G-Series Desktop Processors deliver the fastest graphics performance available in a desktop processor with AMD Radeon™ Graphics built right in. Enjoy smooth, 1080P gaming right out of the box, no additional graphics card required" (lmao "smooth" 1080p gaming on APU, :D that's some nice Koolaid they got there)

We saw AMD's website and media clearly says that they are for gaming (modest, but still gaming). I don't know man, but it seems like they are meant for gaming not for some movies and other work.


You really like it when I repeat myself, don't you? ;)
Don't you too?

"My initial point was that APUs never really made much sense for gaming." + media hypes them way too much.

You have your own opinion about what APU is to you, but it's not a narrative that AMD or pretty much anyone in media does. Your point of "APUs aren't primarily meant for AAA gaming" is simply moot as nobody apart reviewers actually said that. And you surely try to make a point about faster graphics portion as if it actually matters. For media you don't need all that extra, Vega 3 is all you need. For media there's no point in anything more than Athlon 3000G. AMD claims that it can playback 4K HDR content, which should be plenty for HTPC. If you really argue about 5600G being a media chip, then I'm sorry that you paid too much for one. AMD is actually underselling those Athlons, as VCN spec says that Picasso can decode even 8K H.264 or H.265 videos, which is really impressive for 60 EUR MSRP product. It does decode VP9 up to 8K, sadly no AV-1 decoding, but it's really not that popular codec and Youtube mostly uses h.264 (for videos up to 1080p30 or 480p, if it's 50-60 fps) or VP9 (for videos above 1080p30 or 720p60). For AV-1 decoding, you would need Navi 21 or Navi 22 GPU, both of them cost way too much just for media playback, so Athlon 3000G is a reasonable media powerhouse on budget. Something like 5600G makes sense if you encode videos too, but that's what most people don't do and it's going to be still a lot slower than with dedicated card. Maybe it was useful in DVR era, but who does that anymore and even worse, who sells TV tuners for computers anymore as well as IR remotes? So, 5600G just doesn't have a compelling reason to get over 3000G, if it is used for media.

And on that note, if you just like chips for their value (as you have said about 3100 or 3300X), well Athlon may still surprise you with all that value for tiny cost. 5600G just doesn't have this unique selling point.
 
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Bruh, that website that I linked is from one of the biggest Lithuanian new hardware retailers.
That's cool, but how was I supposed to know that?

That's why you look for local deals, way cheaper than eBay and you can likely test it in person. Sure, you may get hardware with lower lifespan, but better enjoy gaming for a while properly, rather than suffer with GT 1030 or Vega 7.
Like I said: IF you know your way around computers. Not everybody (on this forum) does.

If it costs a whole 100 more than market alternatives, then I would expect it to do anything worthy of such high price. They probably don't waste die space for nothing. And I said that if that was a true intention of APUs, they would have Vega 3 in all of them.
It costs 100 more because it has a way faster iGPU.

Cheap ebay graphics cards are a better alternative for your specific use case. I get it. It doesn't mean that everybody is able to, or should learn to navigate ebay for old stuff that doesn't necessarily have the display standards and/or media decoding capabilities needed. For people who want a warranty and 100% certainty that they get what they pay for, ebay will never be a viable option.

Also, Quadros aren't meant for gaming, but you probably know that.

And this is what AMD says on their website (https://www.amd.com/en/processors/ryzen-with-graphics) about 5000 series APUs:
"Get PCs powered by the world’s most advanced processors for high frame rates per second and an immersive experience. Good game, indeed."
"For gamers, creators, and all-around PC users who want enthusiast-class performance; without the need for a discrete graphics card" (This is way worse than I expected, they are selling it like they just slapped together 6900XT with 5950X. What a fail.)
"The World’s Fastest Graphics in a Desktop Processor"
"AMD Ryzen™ 5000 G-Series Desktop Processors deliver the fastest graphics performance available in a desktop processor with AMD Radeon™ Graphics built right in. Enjoy smooth, 1080P gaming right out of the box, no additional graphics card required" (lmao "smooth" 1080p gaming on APU, :D that's some nice Koolaid they got there)

We saw AMD's website and media clearly says that they are for gaming (modest, but still gaming). I don't know man, but it seems like they are meant for gaming not for some movies and other work.
Are we bringing marketing BS into the picture? Then why don't you have a 10900K in your system? According to Intel, that's what you need to play games.

You have your own opinion about what APU is to you, but it's not a narrative that AMD or pretty much anyone in media does. Your point of "APUs aren't primarily meant for AAA gaming" is simply moot as nobody apart reviewers actually said that.
Who do you want to believe? AMD/Intel/nvidia's marketing department, or reviewers? A little bit on that:

And you surely try to make a point about faster graphics portion as if it actually matters. For media you don't need all that extra, Vega 3 is all you need. For media there's no point in anything more than Athlon 3000G. AMD claims that it can playback 4K HDR content, which should be plenty for HTPC. If you really argue about 5600G being a media chip, then I'm sorry that you paid too much for one. AMD is actually underselling those Athlons, as VCN spec says that Picasso can decode even 8K H.264 or H.265 videos, which is really impressive for 60 EUR MSRP product. It does decode VP9 up to 8K, sadly no AV-1 decoding, but it's really not that popular codec and Youtube mostly uses h.264 (for videos up to 1080p30 or 480p, if it's 50-60 fps) or VP9 (for videos above 1080p30 or 720p60). For AV-1 decoding, you would need Navi 21 or Navi 22 GPU, both of them cost way too much just for media playback, so Athlon 3000G is a reasonable media powerhouse on budget. Something like 5600G makes sense if you encode videos too, but that's what most people don't do and it's going to be still a lot slower than with dedicated card. Maybe it was useful in DVR era, but who does that anymore and even worse, who sells TV tuners for computers anymore as well as IR remotes? So, 5600G just doesn't have a compelling reason to get over 3000G, if it is used for media.

And on that note, if you just like chips for their value (as you have said about 3100 or 3300X), well Athlon may still surprise you with all that value for tiny cost. 5600G just doesn't have this unique selling point.
What would actually surprise me about the 3000G is if it worked in my A520 motherboard. Besides, it's currently on sale on Amazon UK for £90. It is a terrible value for that price.

The 5000G series are great if you need Zen 3's processing power with good multimedia and some light gaming capabilities without the need to use an external GPU. That target group is clearly not you, but that doesn't take away from the product's value. Let's leave it at that.
 
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Bruh, that website that I linked is from one of the biggest Lithuanian new hardware retailers. They sell new stuff with warranties and Quadros are certainly not in short supply, just their availability in this particular store may be as Lithuania has low demand for professional cards like that. Adequate criticism for eBay, but not for Varlė.lt


That's why you look for local deals, way cheaper than eBay and you can likely test it in person. Sure, you may get hardware with lower lifespan, but better enjoy gaming for a while properly, rather than suffer with GT 1030 or Vega 7.


If it costs a whole 100 more than market alternatives, then I would expect it to do anything worthy of such high price. They probably don't waste die space for nothing. And I said that if that was a true intention of APUs, they would have Vega 3 in all of them.

And this is what AMD says on their website (https://www.amd.com/en/processors/ryzen-with-graphics) about 5000 series APUs:
"Get PCs powered by the world’s most advanced processors for high frame rates per second and an immersive experience. Good game, indeed."
"For gamers, creators, and all-around PC users who want enthusiast-class performance; without the need for a discrete graphics card" (This is way worse than I expected, they are selling it like they just slapped together 6900XT with 5950X. What a fail.)
"The World’s Fastest Graphics in a Desktop Processor"
"AMD Ryzen™ 5000 G-Series Desktop Processors deliver the fastest graphics performance available in a desktop processor with AMD Radeon™ Graphics built right in. Enjoy smooth, 1080P gaming right out of the box, no additional graphics card required" (lmao "smooth" 1080p gaming on APU, :D that's some nice Koolaid they got there)

We saw AMD's website and media clearly says that they are for gaming (modest, but still gaming). I don't know man, but it seems like they are meant for gaming not for some movies and other work.



Don't you too?

"My initial point was that APUs never really made much sense for gaming." + media hypes them way too much.

You have your own opinion about what APU is to you, but it's not a narrative that AMD or pretty much anyone in media does. Your point of "APUs aren't primarily meant for AAA gaming" is simply moot as nobody apart reviewers actually said that. And you surely try to make a point about faster graphics portion as if it actually matters. For media you don't need all that extra, Vega 3 is all you need. For media there's no point in anything more than Athlon 3000G. AMD claims that it can playback 4K HDR content, which should be plenty for HTPC. If you really argue about 5600G being a media chip, then I'm sorry that you paid too much for one. AMD is actually underselling those Athlons, as VCN spec says that Picasso can decode even 8K H.264 or H.265 videos, which is really impressive for 60 EUR MSRP product. It does decode VP9 up to 8K, sadly no AV-1 decoding, but it's really not that popular codec and Youtube mostly uses h.264 (for videos up to 1080p30 or 480p, if it's 50-60 fps) or VP9 (for videos above 1080p30 or 720p60). For AV-1 decoding, you would need Navi 21 or Navi 22 GPU, both of them cost way too much just for media playback, so Athlon 3000G is a reasonable media powerhouse on budget. Something like 5600G makes sense if you encode videos too, but that's what most people don't do and it's going to be still a lot slower than with dedicated card. Maybe it was useful in DVR era, but who does that anymore and even worse, who sells TV tuners for computers anymore as well as IR remotes? So, 5600G just doesn't have a compelling reason to get over 3000G, if it is used for media.

And on that note, if you just like chips for their value (as you have said about 3100 or 3300X), well Athlon may still surprise you with all that value for tiny cost. 5600G just doesn't have this unique selling point.
I think you're doing some rather selective reading here, but I also don't quite agree with @AusWolf's take on this. Current desktop APUs are pretty decent for gaming, and are better suited for it than any previous AMD APU generation was for contemporary games. No, it's not an AAA powerhouse. Nobody is saying that - not even AMD's marketing. They say "smooth 1080p gaming", but crucially not "smooth 1080p AAA gaming". 1080p in esports titles at decent framerates is entirely possible for current APUs. The same is true for any slightly older or less demanding title.

Here's a comparison for you: Anandtech's review of the 2014 7850k vs. Techspot's review of the 2021 5300G and TPU's review of the 5600G. The 7850k ranges from decent to acceptable at 1280x1024, and is clearly unplayable in most games even at 1680x1050. 1080p is out of the question, with most games seeing single-digit framerates. Even for its time, gaming on this chip was dodgy. I know - I had an A8-7600 paired with fast DDR3-2133 in my HTPC, and tried to game on it. Even with the iGPU overclocked by a couple hundred MHz, it was barely acceptable in very light fare like platformers. My current 4650G? Rocket League might be from 2015 (though I think it's seen some graphical upgrades since then), and plays beautifully at ~90fps 900p or ~60fps 1080p - and that's not even at minimum settings. I clearly prefer the faster framerate though.

Now, the 5300G and 5600G can't quite manage 30fps at 1080p low in heavy games like AC Valhalla, but they are still miles ahead of older APUs for contemporary AAA titles. And they deliver perfectly playable framerates at lower resolutions. They even mostly match the RX 550, a discrete GPU that you suggested buying. 60fps in DOTA2 at 1080p "Best Looking", >100fps in CS:GO, and a console-like 30fps in a huge selection of AAA titles? That's not bad. You asked about GTA V at some point: >60fps at 900p low. Looks pretty playable to me!

I think we also need to remember that not everyone has the expectations and demands of us PC enthusiasts, and that we to a large degree get conditioned into wanting a bunch of stuff that isn't strictly necessary for a good gaming experience. Is 30fps a worse experience than 60fps? Sure, and in games dependent on reaction times it can be really bad. But it can also be perfectly fine in a lot of games still. Unless you're accustomed to fancy gear and high performance, low performance isn't necessarily something that gets in the way of enjoyment - it depends on the game, the context, your habits, and a lot of other factors.

So, are these APUs gaming powerhouses? Of course not. Are they capable of gaming in general? Unlike previous generations of APUs, yes - though clearly with compromises. They keep up very well with similarly priced dGPUs still, and crucially deliver great CPU performance and 16 PCIe lanes for a future dGPU addition if you're interested in that. And they are crazy efficient on top of that. If this is all you can afford for your main PC, it's a good deal, and it leaves you with great upgrade potential - far better than an i3-10100, for example. The CPU in a 5600G is just a tad slower than a 5600X, which is an excellent all-round CPU, and great for dGPU gaming.

It's still obvious that if you're going for a bargain-basement, gaming-only build, you're better off buying used parts. That is always true - but it also comes with severe caveats, from needing to watch out for scams (fake GPUs are pretty common these days, not to mention far simpler scams than that), to dodgy component quality and longevity, to the lack of warranties, to the instability of used markets, to component availability, and so on. It's still the best way to get a cheap gaming computer, but it's definitely not the easiest, and it is the easiest way to screw up.


I have to admit I've forgotten how this discussion got into APUs in the first place though - isn't this about the 12900K? :p

Oh, and in a previous post you started getting into comparisons with the Ryzen 5 1600AF - look at where the 5600G ends up in CPU performance overall, and then compare that with the 1600AF. The 1600AF performs somewhere between a Ryzen 5 2600 and 2600X, so ~80% of a 3600XT (which is ~.3% faster than a 3600X). In the first link here, you see that the 3600X lands at ~88% of the 5600g. So, for $10-20 less you can get a CPU that's 0.88*0.8=~70,4% of the performance of the 5600G, alongside a dGPU that isn't any faster than its iGPU. And that is somehow a better value proposition for you? The 5600g is even nearly 10% faster with a dGPU at 1080p than the 3600X, which is again nearly 10% faster than the 2600X (=1600AF). CPU performance matters.
Let's be honest here, if you bought Athlon 200GE when it was new and survived with it this long and most likely have A320 board, then you are capped at 3000 Ryzens (unless your board has extended support) and then is it really worth investing in now dead end platform, which is artificially capped to older chips? It might be a better idea to just buy a new platform entirely.
Still a pretty hefty upgrade path though. Is the 3950X a weak CPU? And even a 3600X is a hefty upgrade, and can run fine on any A320 board. The upgrade path is absolutely there for these bargain-basement chips.
You can overclock old Vega 11 and for Vega 11, those Zen cores are fast enough.
Sorry, but they aren't. And the OC potential was quite limited. And as you can see in the Techspot review linked before, even the 5300G soundly beats the 3400G, despite a 5CU disadvantage.
Only 8x for PCIe and older PCIe gen 3 if you have lower end or older board. Now tell me, how much performance is lost by using less than ideal PCIe gen and then on top of that cutting lanes in half.
You say you think this is how things are, I say "no, they changed that with the 4000-series and above", and you come back with a source talking about the 3000-series? Come on, man! Turn on your brain, please. Current APUs have 16 PCIe lanes for GPUs.
Or did they actually find anything better? Budget builds official seems to be happy to be back. I'm pretty sure that they may have had C19 related difficulties or didn't think of how to make content.
Yes, sure, one person on youtube "seeiming happy to be back" is conclusive proof that nobody else (including them, really) found anything else useful to do in the meantime. I mean ... you understand that these people perform, right?
I'm staying with Zhaoxin, they have big chances of success. There are many IPO scams regarding CPUs in China and Zhaoxin is not a scam.
"Not a scam" and "big chance of success" are quite unrelated statements. One does not follow from the other. Zhaoxin might very well be a success - in the Chinese office and government PC markets, for example, as well as servers and other places - but they're never going to become a proper third option for gaming PCs in global markets.
You don't seem to mention service sector at all, which may not use many if any physical resources at all. And that's a huge sector in advanced countries. As long as we have money and appetite for that, well they can serve us and we very obviously has less money than our wants. It may not be infinite exactly, but with currently unknown potential.
The service sector relies on goods produced somewhere to deliver their services. They are just as imbricated in the flows of global capital as everything else. If anything, the move to a larger proportion of service sector jobs is precisely an indication of the export of difficult, unpleasant and harmful industrial production jobs to poorer areas, as people start refusing to take on shit jobs for shit pay, and companies neither want to make the jobs better/safer or pay more. While there is indeed something to be said for the benefits for moving from "buying stuff" to "paying people to do things" on many levels (from environmental to economic), that doesn't solve anything by itself.
What an alternative could be? HDI adjusted GDP?
I doubt it. I'm not saying I have a viable alternative, I'm just saying GDP is a deeply flawed measure.
It seems that you think that socialism or other similar right ideology would be a way forward.
"Right ideology"? What does that mean? Either you've fundamentally misunderstood the classic political spectrum, you ascribe to that edgelord idea of "Stalinism was totalitarian, so all socialism is right-wing" (which ignores the fact that Stalinism was socialist in name only, and that the soviet union rapidly devolved into an oligarchic extreme predatory capitalism), or you're just using words in some weirdly convoluted way. Either way, I'm not saying I have any conclusive answers, I'm just saying that it's quite widely documented that capitalism, especially in its current guise, is deeply harmful and fundamentally unsustainable. And not "unsustainable" as in "not environmentally friendly" (though that is also very true), "unsustainable" as in "it cannot be upheld over time, it is bound to crash". It's literally built into the workings of the system. Economic crashes are an intrinsic part of our current global economic systems, and avoiding them is literally impossible, as that would require literally infinite resources.
I disagree with you about Intel. Intel unlike AMD produces far more chips and they seem to have Pentiums and Celerons available. If you look for those, you can find them at reasonable prices. And nVidia is selling GT 710 and GT 730s new, not great, but at least better than literally nothing from AMD.
Pentium and Celeron availability has been very spotty for the past three or so years. Just do a quick search, you'll find tons and tons of forum posts decrying the persistent lack of stock for the best value chips in those ranges. It has gotten better as Intel has gotten out of their 2018-to-2020-ish supply crunch and have gotten 10nm/7 working at scale, but it's still not solved.
5700 XT had stock voltage issues and many cards were affected by that. It may be as much as 10% if not more of those cards. I'm honestly not sure about about RTG (I'm gonna call them that, beat calling them AMD's graphics card division). Beyond 5000 series, I haven't seen anything that has a tiny bit of appeal. I'm completely priced out of market currently (it didn't take much, once prices climbed past 300 EUR, I was done. 200 EUR is my graphics card ideal budget) and getting more and more cynical. 5000 series were already weak with budget cards, they only made 5500 XT, which was underwhelming card and it didn't gain any traction. I have to admit, that I quite liked 5500 XT for some reason, but my RX 580 serves me well.
Again you're mixing tons of factors from all over, from personal tastes to pricing to market conditions to product specs. Current GPU prices are crazy everywhere, so AMD (or Nvidia) can't really be blamed for that, even if their current MSRPs are also stupid - the 6600 XT should have been <$300 MSRP, for example. But that is what it is - nothing anyone can do but wait. You're right that the 5000-series wasn't great for budget cards, but even then AMD was supply constrained from TSMC, and it made sense for them to prioritize higher profile products like the 5700/XT (which were good, but had severe bugs that undermined their quality), and the 5600 XT (which was IMO the best GPU of that generation from either company). I'm definitely hoping we'll see a return to normalcy in the coming years with good value, good performance $200-ish GPUs again, but for now, there's nothing to do and nobody to blame for any of this - the problems are far too large in scope for that, and the only possible fixes are in international politics.
 
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I think you're doing some rather selective reading here, but I also don't quite agree with @AusWolf's take on this. Current desktop APUs are pretty decent for gaming, and are better suited for it than any previous AMD APU generation was for contemporary games. No, it's not an AAA powerhouse. Nobody is saying that - not even AMD's marketing. They say "smooth 1080p gaming", but crucially not "smooth 1080p AAA gaming". 1080p in esports titles at decent framerates is entirely possible for current APUs. The same is true for any slightly older or less demanding title.
Well, AMD states tht in Athlon 300G page, they claim that it runs esports games at 720p well. Ryzen 5000Gs are expected to run anything, that includes AAA games too. I guess that what they call "enthusiast level performance" includes AAA games.


Here's a comparison for you: Anandtech's review of the 2014 7850k vs. Techspot's review of the 2021 5300G and TPU's review of the 5600G. The 7850k ranges from decent to acceptable at 1280x1024, and is clearly unplayable in most games even at 1680x1050. 1080p is out of the question, with most games seeing single-digit framerates. Even for its time, gaming on this chip was dodgy.
I remember it ran Battlefield at 1080, so I thought they were capable, but still bellow HD 7750 obviously.


I know - I had an A8-7600 paired with fast DDR3-2133 in my HTPC, and tried to game on it. Even with the iGPU overclocked by a couple hundred MHz, it was barely acceptable in very light fare like platformers. My current 4650G? Rocket League might be from 2015 (though I think it's seen some graphical upgrades since then), and plays beautifully at ~90fps 900p or ~60fps 1080p - and that's not even at minimum settings. I clearly prefer the faster framerate though.
Your A8 is not A10, A8s had lower CPU clock speed, maybe lower cache too and certainly much less GPU cores.


Now, the 5300G and 5600G can't quite manage 30fps at 1080p low in heavy games like AC Valhalla, but they are still miles ahead of older APUs for contemporary AAA titles. And they deliver perfectly playable framerates at lower resolutions. They even mostly match the RX 550, a discrete GPU that you suggested buying. 60fps in DOTA2 at 1080p "Best Looking", >100fps in CS:GO, and a console-like 30fps in a huge selection of AAA titles? That's not bad. You asked about GTA V at some point: >60fps at 900p low. Looks pretty playable to me!
Still, they are marketed as smooth 1080p gaming solutions by themselves and they are yet to match RX 550 properly.

I think we also need to remember that not everyone has the expectations and demands of us PC enthusiasts, and that we to a large degree get conditioned into wanting a bunch of stuff that isn't strictly necessary for a good gaming experience. Is 30fps a worse experience than 60fps? Sure, and in games dependent on reaction times it can be really bad. But it can also be perfectly fine in a lot of games still. Unless you're accustomed to fancy gear and high performance, low performance isn't necessarily something that gets in the way of enjoyment - it depends on the game, the context, your habits, and a lot of other factors.
I strongly disagree. Even before I was enthusiast (whatever that means), I tried to make games to run smoothly and by that I mean targeting at 45-60 fps. 30 fps is a piss and is clearly laggy or unresponsive to me. Not even for fast paced games, but for anything at all. It's not acceptable even for Age of Mythology. My standards were like that with Athlon 64 3200+/FX 5200 machine, even if it meant much worse visual quality to achieve that. I only make an exception to Far Cry as it had surprisingly consistent framerate and didn't feel unresponsive when aiming, but that's just one exception. And to be honest, I never had "enthusiast level" gear. Downclocked RX 580 (which is slower than RX 480) was the best I ever had, you can take my word, that I wouldn't want to go back to 650 Ti 1GB for daily gaming. I remember it being somewhat a potato at Battlefield and almost insufferable in GTA 5.

I'm certainly not getting too conditioned to fps, it was just plainly obvious before, that fps matters. I never bought into nonsense that 30 fps is minimum playable framerate. For me that would be 40. Perhaps your perspective on that is different, since you own 6900 XT and perhaps a higher refresh rate monitor or at least one with Freesync. I don't and never even saw one in person. You can tell me about "stuff that isn't strictly necessary", when I was getting piss frames in GTA 5, on anything that wasn't 1080p low or when I had to run Far Cry 5 on RX 560 at less than 1600x900 to get 40-50 fps and even then it wasn't too stable. I know full well, that RX 580 is what I need. There's no merit in low end junk, it just sucks your money and doesn't deliver. That's exactly what 320 EUR 5600G is.

So, are these APUs gaming powerhouses? Of course not. Are they capable of gaming in general? Unlike previous generations of APUs, yes - though clearly with compromises. They keep up very well with similarly priced dGPUs still, and crucially deliver great CPU performance and 16 PCIe lanes for a future dGPU addition if you're interested in that. And they are crazy efficient on top of that. If this is all you can afford for your main PC, it's a good deal, and it leaves you with great upgrade potential - far better than an i3-10100, for example. The CPU in a 5600G is just a tad slower than a 5600X, which is an excellent all-round CPU, and great for dGPU gaming.
That doesn't change anything about them being grossly overpriced and overadvertised. Obviously, I will stick to my defined minimum spec, 5600G doesn't deliver. Doesn't matter to me if it's close or not, if it doesn't even meet a spec that I define as playable. Besides that, it's already this poor today, so it doesn't have any longevity in it.


It's still obvious that if you're going for a bargain-basement, gaming-only build, you're better off buying used parts. That is always true - but it also comes with severe caveats, from needing to watch out for scams (fake GPUs are pretty common these days, not to mention far simpler scams than that), to dodgy component quality and longevity, to the lack of warranties, to the instability of used markets, to component availability, and so on. It's still the best way to get a cheap gaming computer, but it's definitely not the easiest, and it is the easiest way to screw up.
At that budget, it's no brainer to avoid garbage like 5600G. i3 with GTX 960 is a way to go. Or new Quadro T600 it is.

I have to admit I've forgotten how this discussion got into APUs in the first place though - isn't this about the 12900K? :p
Just now, we are already on like 5th page on going off topic. Not sure if anyone care anymore.

BTW what i9? Alder Lake is trash /s


Still a pretty hefty upgrade path though. Is the 3950X a weak CPU? And even a 3600X is a hefty upgrade, and can run fine on any A320 board. The upgrade path is absolutely there for these bargain-basement chips.
Wait, weren't you just recently claiming that Threadripper makes no sense, because Zen 2 and IPC matters more. Oh my, how tables have turned. 3950X is pretty much a Threadripper on AM4.


Sorry, but they aren't. And the OC potential was quite limited. And as you can see in the Techspot review linked before, even the 5300G soundly beats the 3400G, despite a 5CU disadvantage.
I'm really not convinced, unless it has some overclock wall, that shouldn't be a case. Or maybe it's just DDR5.


"Not a scam" and "big chance of success" are quite unrelated statements. One does not follow from the other. Zhaoxin might very well be a success - in the Chinese office and government PC markets, for example, as well as servers and other places - but they're never going to become a proper third option for gaming PCs in global markets.
Still better than pouring millions to yet another chip IPO scam.



The service sector relies on goods produced somewhere to deliver their services. They are just as imbricated in the flows of global capital as everything else. If anything, the move to a larger proportion of service sector jobs is precisely an indication of the export of difficult, unpleasant and harmful industrial production jobs to poorer areas, as people start refusing to take on shit jobs for shit pay, and companies neither want to make the jobs better/safer or pay more. While there is indeed something to be said for the benefits for moving from "buying stuff" to "paying people to do things" on many levels (from environmental to economic), that doesn't solve anything by itself.
I still disagree. In service sector you also have people like barbers, that barely use any goods (unless you go to hair salon, but that's entirely different thing). There is finance sector, again barely uses resources. What about government? What about education, which recently proved that it can be done with just internet available?


"Right ideology"? What does that mean? Either you've fundamentally misunderstood the classic political spectrum, you ascribe to that edgelord idea of "Stalinism was totalitarian, so all socialism is right-wing" (which ignores the fact that Stalinism was socialist in name only, and that the soviet union rapidly devolved into an oligarchic extreme predatory capitalism), or you're just using words in some weirdly convoluted way. Either way, I'm not saying I have any conclusive answers, I'm just saying that it's quite widely documented that capitalism, especially in its current guise, is deeply harmful and fundamentally unsustainable. And not "unsustainable" as in "not environmentally friendly" (though that is also very true), "unsustainable" as in "it cannot be upheld over time, it is bound to crash". It's literally built into the workings of the system. Economic crashes are an intrinsic part of our current global economic systems, and avoiding them is literally impossible, as that would require literally infinite resources.
Oh shit, I meant left ideologies. Sorry for snafu, I'm not yet too familiar with formal terms of political parties. By left I mean those that have strong welfare, reject laissez faire capitalism and often private property.


Pentium and Celeron availability has been very spotty for the past three or so years. Just do a quick search, you'll find tons and tons of forum posts decrying the persistent lack of stock for the best value chips in those ranges. It has gotten better as Intel has gotten out of their 2018-to-2020-ish supply crunch and have gotten 10nm/7 working at scale, but it's still not solved.
Oh well, in my region those were available, but seemingly there was nearly no demand for them. Athlon 3000G was sold out nearly instantly and I don't see it anywhere to buy anymore.

Again you're mixing tons of factors from all over, from personal tastes to pricing to market conditions to product specs. Current GPU prices are crazy everywhere, so AMD (or Nvidia) can't really be blamed for that, even if their current MSRPs are also stupid - the 6600 XT should have been <$300 MSRP, for example. But that is what it is - nothing anyone can do but wait. You're right that the 5000-series wasn't great for budget cards, but even then AMD was supply constrained from TSMC, and it made sense for them to prioritize higher profile products like the 5700/XT (which were good, but had severe bugs that undermined their quality), and the 5600 XT (which was IMO the best GPU of that generation from either company). I'm definitely hoping we'll see a return to normalcy in the coming years with good value, good performance $200-ish GPUs again, but for now, there's nothing to do and nobody to blame for any of this - the problems are far too large in scope for that, and the only possible fixes are in international politics.
But 5700XT was mid range product, not high profile one. It took on 2060 Super, not rally 2070 and certainly not on 2080.

I can bet that we won't see normalcy for at least 5 years. Normalcy is dead and so are 200 EUR/USD GPUs. We would be doing well, if after 5 years we could start going back to that, but current situation is still a mess and we still have rampant pandemic that murders everyday, with no real supplies to tame it. Supply chains might get even more borked, if some will go bankrupt. Intel or AMD won't build fabs instantly either. And world economy is still in some turmoil, that is at mercy of how we handle pandemic, not really in hands of people doing a strong business otherwise. Countries still can just start a lockdown rather easily, which puts them in inescapable debt. Debt not only means that you are taking others money, but also that you pay interest. The poorer you are, the worse interest is for you and the more on slippery slope you end up. We are still deep in shit and just getting deeper, we are not even close to coming out of it.
 
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What's the point of these back and forth walls of text besides making the thread unreadable for everyone else?
 
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Well, AMD states tht in Athlon 300G page, they claim that it runs esports games at 720p well. Ryzen 5000Gs are expected to run anything, that includes AAA games too. I guess that what they call "enthusiast level performance" includes AAA games.
Do you mean 3000G? Or 300GE?

Either way, this is what AMD's landing page for "Athlon processors with Vega Graphics" tells us:
With AMD Radeon™ Graphics built right in, you’ll enjoy every pixel as you edit family photos, stream your favorite shows in up to 4K HDR, and play the most popular esports games in high-definition 720p. Fueled by AMD advanced 7nm processor core technology, AMD Athlon™ 3000 Series is ready to harness the power of graphics card upgrades for smooth HD+ 1080p gaming – so gamers looking for the flexibility for adding future upgrades like discrete graphics cards will enjoy an easy upgrade path.
(my emphasis)
That latter claim is rather weird as there are only 12nm and 14nm chips in the 3000G series (so far - might be foreshadowing some future launch, or one that has been cancelled due to 7nm shortages I guess?), but they're pretty clear about the scope of performance for these: 720p esports, dGPU upgrades for anything else. (And their use of "HD+ 1080p" there also indicates they're not selling this as the basis of a high end gaming platform.)
I remember it ran Battlefield at 1080, so I thought they were capable, but still bellow HD 7750 obviously.
"Battlefield". Which one? You said you had a 6000-series APU, which came out in 2013. According to that list, there were eight main series Battlefield games out at that point. I can find some BF4 videos of that APU, but none detailing the resolution or with a framerate counter, and judging either from an overcompressed youtube video is a fool's errand.
Your A8 is not A10, A8s had lower CPU clock speed, maybe lower cache too and certainly much less GPU cores.
... so you didn't look at the sources I linked then? The A8-7600 is in that AnandTech review as well. It's slower than the A10-7850K, yes, but not by a huge margin at all. They're both squarely in the same performance class overall.
Still, they are marketed as smooth 1080p gaming solutions by themselves and they are yet to match RX 550 properly.
Where? Can you show me an example of it being marketed as a smooth 1080p gaming solution that, as you've been harping on, somehow implies that this applies for AAA gaming?
I strongly disagree. Even before I was enthusiast (whatever that means), I tried to make games to run smoothly and by that I mean targeting at 45-60 fps. 30 fps is a piss and is clearly laggy or unresponsive to me. Not even for fast paced games, but for anything at all. It's not acceptable even for Age of Mythology. My standards were like that with Athlon 64 3200+/FX 5200 machine, even if it meant much worse visual quality to achieve that. I only make an exception to Far Cry as it had surprisingly consistent framerate and didn't feel unresponsive when aiming, but that's just one exception. And to be honest, I never had "enthusiast level" gear. Downclocked RX 580 (which is slower than RX 480) was the best I ever had, you can take my word, that I wouldn't want to go back to 650 Ti 1GB for daily gaming. I remember it being somewhat a potato at Battlefield and almost insufferable in GTA 5.
The fact that you were aware of framerates at all places you squarely in the enthusiast group. Seriously, most gamers don't know what framerate is or what it indicates. They can feel the difference between something being smooth and not, and might start looking into it if it bothers them too much, but most still have no idea.
I'm certainly not getting too conditioned to fps, it was just plainly obvious before, that fps matters. I never bought into nonsense that 30 fps is minimum playable framerate. For me that would be 40.
40? On a 60Hz panel? That's a juddery (or teary) mess. A steady 30fps feels far smoother than some in-between range.
Perhaps your perspective on that is different, since you own 6900 XT and perhaps a higher refresh rate monitor or at least one with Freesync. I don't and never even saw one in person.
Well, I do have a Freesync monitor, that is true. It's my secondary 75Hz 1080p monitor that I only really use for office work (rotating it into landscape and setting it as the main monitor in Windows is too much of a hassle for some occasional 75fps gaming). My main monitor is a decade old Dell U2711, at 60Hz 1440p. So, no, sorry, not applicable. Or, I guess you could count the 2160p120 TV, but I only rarely game on that, and I've so far not bothered lugging my main PC into the living room to test that out. I'm planning to, as it will no doubt be great, but it's not something I'm used to, no.
You can tell me about "stuff that isn't strictly necessary", when I was getting piss frames in GTA 5, on anything that wasn't 1080p low or when I had to run Far Cry 5 on RX 560 at less than 1600x900 to get 40-50 fps and even then it wasn't too stable. I know full well, that RX 580 is what I need. There's no merit in low end junk, it just sucks your money and doesn't deliver. That's exactly what 320 EUR 5600G is.
But that's the thing: you knew enough to identify what was bothering you. Again, that places you in the enthusiast class. Beyond that, you clearly have strong preferences for higher resolutions as well - remember, both the PS4 and XO render at somewhere between 900p and 720p in the vast majority of games, and that's what the vast majority of gamers are used to. Most games on those consoles are 30fps as well.

Also, as you point out, unsteady framerates exacerbate poor gameplay smoothness. You'd likely have been better off at a locked 30fps than that unstable 40-50.
That doesn't change anything about them being grossly overpriced and overadvertised. Obviously, I will stick to my defined minimum spec, 5600G doesn't deliver. Doesn't matter to me if it's close or not, if it doesn't even meet a spec that I define as playable. Besides that, it's already this poor today, so it doesn't have any longevity in it.
Why overpriced? You get a near-5600X CPU with a moderately capable GPU built in for a lower price than the 5600X. Intel has launched some very competitive offerings since, but their iGPUs are still trash, so they lose out there. And as I've shown, you're not getting an equally fast CPU + equally fast GPU for the same price that way.
At that budget, it's no brainer to avoid garbage like 5600G. i3 with GTX 960 is a way to go. Or new Quadro T600 it is.
If you can find a used 960 for a decent price? And one that isn't run into the ground, being 5+ years old? Also, while TPU doesn't allow for a direct comparison, the 960 isn't that much faster either. The 1060 in the 5600G review is 242% of the 5600G's performance at 1080p, or 41% of the performance. In TPU's database the 960 is 58% of a 1060 6GB. That makes the 960 clearly faster, but it's not a staggering difference. Definitely enough to make games playable on the 960 that aren't on the APU, sure, but for that you have to step down significantly in CPU performance and ease of upgradeability, as that i3 is going to start being a bottleneck long before the 5600G's CPU is. Everything has tradeoffs.
Wait, weren't you just recently claiming that Threadripper makes no sense, because Zen 2 and IPC matters more. Oh my, how tables have turned. 3950X is pretty much a Threadripper on AM4.
... sigh. Seriously? Yes, I did make that argument. And I also made the argument that there is a significant upgrade path from a low-end Athlon on an A320 board even if it's limited to "only" 3000-series CPUs. You see how those two statements in no way whatsoever contradict each other or even conflict with each other, right? One is in the context of "someone wants to maximize performance for a high end PC, which parts are smart to choose", while the other is in the context of "can we speak of a viable upgrade path for an Athlon 300GE on an A320 motherboard". The scenarios are wildly different. If you can't see that, we literally can't have a conversation.
I'm really not convinced, unless it has some overclock wall, that shouldn't be a case. Or maybe it's just DDR5.
DDR5? 5000-series APUs use DDR4. Also, "overclock wall"? Yes, 3000-series APUs have the same limits to overclocking as all 14/12nm Zen/Zen+ CPUs have - they don't go much above 4GHz (and the iGPUs might reach 1700MHz if you're lucky). Meanwhile the 4000 and 5000 series chips have significantly higher IPC (~+15% and ~+35% respectively) and clock their iGPUs much higher even at stock (my 4650G is 1900MHz, and I got a bit of a dud that only OC's to 2100 - 2400 is relatively common). They also have much better memory controllers, which of course help, but ... well, that's part of what makes them better. Yes. They are better. That is the core of the argument here.
Still better than pouring millions to yet another chip IPO scam.
Has anyone here suggested doing so?
I still disagree. In service sector you also have people like barbers, that barely use any goods (unless you go to hair salon, but that's entirely different thing).
Uh ... razors? Shaving cream? Lotions and all that stuff? The equipment they use? The furnishings in the barbershop? Literally everything they need to do their jobs is dependent on the flows of global capital, and the large-scale exploitation of natural resources and labor in poorer parts of the world.
There is finance sector, again barely uses resources.
But also does literally zero of any worth. They shuffle numbers around to make them look bigger, and organize gambling circles for the ultra-rich. Oh, and they spend massive amounts on computers and technology, creating a lot of E-waste.
What about government? What about education, which recently proved that it can be done with just internet available?
"Can be done" is a stretch. That it can be done at a significantly reduced quality by massively overworked staff in a crisis situation is ... well, not proof of anything. Also, what about the stuff you need to teach and learn remotely? Are computers or the internet outside of the flows of global capital? Obviously not. Government is obviously not either. We live in a neoliberal world. The flows of global capital run through everything. Unless you live off of subsistence farming and make your own tools, there is no way for any person to avoid this in our current world.
Oh shit, I meant left ideologies. Sorry for snafu, I'm not yet too familiar with formal terms of political parties. By left I mean those that have strong welfare, reject laissez faire capitalism and often private property.
No problem, we all mix up words from time to time :)
Oh well, in my region those were available, but seemingly there was nearly no demand for them. Athlon 3000G was sold out nearly instantly and I don't see it anywhere to buy anymore.
Hm, that's odd. Probably down to some weird dynamic of distribution. I don't think the Pentium Gold series has been reliably in stock at all since it launched in the markets I've paid attention to.
But 5700XT was mid range product, not high profile one. It took on 2060 Super, not rally 2070 and certainly not on 2080.
Oh, absolutely. It's just that it was the highest end they had at the time, and thus their focus as they desperately needed to focus on rebuilding the image of their graphic division after five years of not really competing.
I can bet that we won't see normalcy for at least 5 years. Normalcy is dead and so are 200 EUR/USD GPUs. We would be doing well, if after 5 years we could start going back to that, but current situation is still a mess and we still have rampant pandemic that murders everyday, with no real supplies to tame it. Supply chains might get even more borked, if some will go bankrupt. Intel or AMD won't build fabs instantly either. And world economy is still in some turmoil, that is at mercy of how we handle pandemic, not really in hands of people doing a strong business otherwise. Countries still can just start a lockdown rather easily, which puts them in inescapable debt. Debt not only means that you are taking others money, but also that you pay interest. The poorer you are, the worse interest is for you and the more on slippery slope you end up. We are still deep in shit and just getting deeper, we are not even close to coming out of it.
Yeah, I don't think you're necessarily wrong here. At lest it's a good thing that we're seeing pushes for more localized chip production, as the centralization of the industry that we see today has made it - as we're currently experiencing - extremely precarious. Another built-in function of neoliberal thinking: if overhead is seen as bad and detrimental to profits, you start building things exactly to your projected future needs, and if those projections are wrong, you're suddenly in a situation where it takes several years of scrambling to correct for the simple fact that predicting the future accurately is impossible. The chip industry didn't just put all their eggs into ever fewer baskets, they also made sure those baskets were just big enough, so that when crisis struck and we suddenly needed more eggs in more places there was no way to make this happen. The short-sighted, profit-oriented thinking of global neoliberal capital is, when you look at it in certain ways, impressively dumb. Though it's easy enough to think that this is a feature rather than a bug, as those in power are never the ones hurt by these events.

What's the point of these back and forth walls of text besides making the thread unreadable for everyone else?
Hey, you're not wrong, but there doesn't seem to have been any interest in actually discussing the 12900K since this kicked off, so ... meh.
 

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.....
Hey, you're not wrong, but there doesn't seem to have been any interest in actually discussing the 12900K since this kicked off, so ... meh.


Then consider this notice of interest. Start a new thread, or take it to PMs, but get back to the original topic. Blatant disregard of the forums rules is not the best plan of action. thanks!
 
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Do the e-cores take care of steam/discord and chrome in the background if you're playing a game?
That's the general idea. And as of 22000.282, microsoft has got Windows 11 to a state where the p-core/e-core dynamic works the way it should.
For example could having E-cores specifically take care of background stuff like chrome/discord/steam and etc and potentially prevent any minor fps inconsistencies like minor frametimespikes/microstutters if you're playing games at the same time?
Again, yeah. That's the idea and it's working well so far.

If you're looking at Alder Lake and want to know if it's worth it, I think you can safely jump in at this point.

Advice from me, if you you already have DDR4 and don't want to spend a ton of money on DDR5, go with a DDR4 motherboard. The performance differences between DDR4 and DDR5 in most use cases are margin of error kind of differences and that will remain the case until DDR5 starts edging ahead, which historically happens about 18months to two years after new RAM standards go to market. If you want more details on this dynamic see the article W1zzard did comparing several kits of DDR4 to a kit of DDR5-6000;
 
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That's essentially what they're for, yes. They also help quite a bit in heavily MT tasks like rendering and transcoding, but for gaming they seem well suited for letting the high performance cores be for high performance tasks only.
Tempted to save up for it then.
That's the general idea. And as of 22000.282, microsoft has got Windows 11 to a state where the p-core/e-core dynamic works the way it should.

Again, yeah. That's the idea and it's working well so far.

If you're looking at Alder Lake and want to know if it's worth it, I think you can safely jump in at this point.

Advice from me, if you you already have DDR4 and don't want to spend a ton of money on DDR5, go with a DDR4 motherboard. The performance differences between DDR4 and DDR5 in most use cases are margin of error kind of differences and that will remain the case until DDR5 starts edging ahead, which historically happens about 18months to two years after new RAM standards go to market. If you want more details on this dynamic see the article W1zzard did comparing several kits of DDR4 to a kit of DDR5-6000;
I usually upgrade once every 5 years so I usually go big or go home so I don't end up doing small ugprades inbetween so If I upgrade Il go prepared for ddr5.

Damn,I thought GPU prices where the only thing (mainly) effected by the price hikes but motherboards are unusually pricey too.Think il wait another half a year or so maybe some better mid-end motherboards will pop up.
 
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I usually upgrade once every 5 years so I usually go big or go home so I don't end up doing small ugprades inbetween so If I upgrade Il go prepared for ddr5.
To be fair, if you only upgrade every half decade, DDR4 would still be a valid choice as a quality set with tight timings would stand the test of time. Just food for thought.

Think il wait another half a year or so maybe some better mid-end motherboards will pop up.
Might be wise to do. AMD has the upcoming new-hotness and waiting to see the full scope of this latest generation of CPU's could change your perspective.
 
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I usually upgrade once every 5 years so I usually go big or go home so I don't end up doing small ugprades inbetween so If I upgrade Il go prepared for ddr5.

Damn,I thought GPU prices where the only thing (mainly) effected by the price hikes but motherboards are unusually pricey too.Think il wait another half a year or so maybe some better mid-end motherboards will pop up.
Motherboards have gotten a lot more expensive in recent years due to the wealth of high-speed I/O in them - PCIe 4.0 (and now 5.0), USB 3.2G2x2, fast DDR4/DDR5, and so on. Especially Z690 with PCIe 4.0 in the chipset is likely to be a bump up from Z590 - we saw the same with X570 on the AMD side. That the cheapest Z690 boards just after launch are ~$200 is pretty much par for the course these days.

As for upgrading, remember that DDR5 only really comes into its own in terms of performance at high speeds, so if you're planning to upgrade in the near future, I would factor in a RAM upgrade a year or two down the line.There simply isn't sufficiently fast DDR5 on the market yet for it to be really valuable. ADL still performs best with DDR5, but it needs to be fast still.
 
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I keep joking that I am going to build my wife a footrest to put under her desk w/ a 4 x 140mm radiator in it. This would be a good CPU to for that. But over the last 2 decades +, performance upgrades usually come before efficiency ... mainly because that's what sells. Much like politics, and "well it's faster in things I don't actually ever do" arguments, it seems the negatives like power consumption only become important when brand loyalty comes into play. It only matters when one brand is slower and the other is faster and like politics, both teams have accused the other of this failing and then switched arguments when the situation flips. It's never really factored in to my decision making as everything is custom water cooled to < 10C delta T and I pay a teeny bit more for HVAC in summer and a teeny bit less in winter.
I usually upgrade once every 5 years so I usually go big or go home so I don't end up doing small ugprades inbetween so If I upgrade Il go prepared for ddr5.

Damn,I thought GPU prices where the only thing (mainly) effected by the price hikes but motherboards are unusually pricey too.Think il wait another half a year or so maybe some better mid-end motherboards will pop up.

That's seems to be the case these days within our circle of users .... Here in the US, a significant portion of the build price has been the import tariffs, which have hurt American businesses far more than China. PCs 100% built in China are exempt from the tariffs, leaving stateside system builders and BYO enthusiasts at a distinct disadvantage.... production yields, pandemic related shipping costs also significantly affect build prices.

We are also seeing a wider stratification between players as for example "Nvidia controlled 83% of the discrete graphics card market in the third quarter, with AMD holding the rest." The concern here is that the wider that difference, the more clout a company gains in securing its supply chain and the lower unit price it pays. In response to an analysts question on how it was able to do that, Huang responded "we have secured guaranteed supply, very large amounts of it, quite a spectacular amount of it from the world's leading foundry in substrate and packaging and testing certain companies, the integral part of our supply chain."

The interesting thing, to me anyway, is the fact that top end buyers are not significantly influencing sales. Looking at month to month sales, the three biggest changes (leaving out mobile and integrated GFX) in market share were ....

GeForce GTX 1660 +0.35%
GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER +0.29%
GeForce RTX 3060 Ti + 0.12%

A bit down in sales we have ..

GeForce RTX 3080 +0.05%
GeForce RTX 3080 Ti +0.05%
Radeon RX 570 +0.03%

While it's always true that the lower price cards will dominate sales ... the month to month sales usually see an increase the further along into the release cycle .... From September to October the 3080's market share was up 0.15%, just 1/3 of that from October to November.

What cards have been the most taken out of service and upgraded ?

GeForce GTX 1050 Ti -0.22%
GeForce RTX 2060 -0.41%
GeForce GTX 1060 -0.56%

In short, what I am seeing here is that users of 'mid-range components are happy enough with the cost of components to have them open their wallets.... the high end, not so much. Given the current market and economy, I don't see as many folks jumping on a $600 CPU and $400 MoBo as GPU prices for "matching" GFX cards will result in a PC that is well above what folks are used to making. The power consumption of CPU and GPU also screams for custom water cooling addiing even more expense.

The 12700k and 12600k at more moderate prices should be able to win a substantial amount of builders but personally, I wouldn't be willing to invest in a 12900k + 3-80 Ti custom water cooled build on a new MoBo platform. I having been doing builds since 1990, had more than a couple of instances of Buyers Remorse with 1st iterations of new MoBos. As to how this release might impact market share, AMD hit a 14 year high in this past August with just under 40% but has dropped 2 % since. Because of the secondary issues of market / economy / component cost issues above but moreso the generally lesser adoption rate of new MoBo platforms, I don't think we'll see components sales at the level we've seen in the past. So don't see a big shift in CPU market share coming up with the 1st set of DDR5 capable componentry, but AMD's next gen needs to make a splash before the second gen of DDR5 capable MoBos arrives as "mindshare" going in to that 2nd gen will be spiked by those who have put off upgrades for the last couple of years.
 

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As a designer, and definitely not as a computer hardware/software specialist, not even close, I found the information here to be sobering at some level. I know so many folks, me included, who want the most powerful processors without consideration for heat and power consumption. It seems that selecting a processor that is a little better than good enough, rather than selecting a high end product like a 12900K is really the best path for professionals using processor reliant programs - AutoCAD/SketchUp. For me, which was pointed out above, durability and consistency are most important.

I suppose that folks in VR and photo-realism may accept higher heat and power consumption as a trade-off for absolute production speed, I simply need every click to be responsive and reliable...for at least 5 years. The i7700K in my current rig does run hot and its performance dropped off after ~2.5 years.
 
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@W1zzard

There is something very wrong with your power limited numbers. At 75w I get 18500k points in CBR23, while you review has it at 11k....tried on 2 different mobos. Also at 125w I get 23800-24500. You most have done something wrong
 
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@W1zzard

There is something very wrong with your power limited numbers. At 75w I get 18500k points in CBR23, while you review has it at 11k....tried on 2 different mobos. Also at 125w I get 23800-24500. You most have done something wrong

Not really, no. You must keep in mind that the review is older and it was done on early microcode for a new microarchitecture, and that OS level optimizations for the processor probably weren't very well developed yet. The processor should be faster now, especially if you tweak it like you obviously did.
 
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Not really, no. You must keep in mind that the review is older and it was done on early microcode for a new microarchitecture, and that OS level optimizations for the processor probably weren't very well developed yet. The processor should be faster now, especially if you tweak it like you obviously did.
Nope, no tweaking, everything was reset to default with just a power limit. 18500 score @ 75w on 2 different motherboards.
 
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Nope, no tweaking, everything was reset to default with just a power limit. 18500 score @ 75w on 2 different motherboards.

The earlier microcode and OS build would still apply, however. Launch day reviews just show tech with all of its newness, you should take a look at 12900KS reviews instead. These processors are newer and have all been reviewed on more updated platforms, to get the ballpark your regular 12900K should be, knock off like 5-10% of the performance the KS shows due to its aggressive clock speeds :)
 
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The earlier microcode and OS build would still apply, however. Launch day reviews just show tech with all of its newness, you should take a look at 12900KS reviews instead. These processors are newer and have all been reviewed on more updated platforms, to get the ballpark your regular 12900K should be, knock off like 5-10% of the performance the KS shows due to its aggressive clock speeds :)
Well techpowerup did not test the ks with any power limits, so it's really hard to figure out whats up, but there is something definitely wrong with the original 12900k review. It makes the CPU look way more inefficient than it actually is, i mean the actual numbers from my testing are 70% higher. That's a HUGE margin
 

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Well techpowerup did not test the ks with any power limits, so it's really hard to figure out whats up, but there is something definitely wrong with the original 12900k review. It makes the CPU look way more inefficient than it actually is, i mean the actual numbers from my testing are 70% higher. That's a HUGE margin
W1z is an established reviewer with a great reputation for accuracy, so he's just not gonna screw up so badly. So, sure, 70% is huge, but what makes you so sure that your numbers are accurate, even accounting for early platform differences like @Dr. Dro explained?
 
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W1z is an established reviewer with a great reputation for accuracy, so he's just not gonna screw up so badly. So, sure, 70% is huge, but what makes you so sure that your numbers are accurate, even accounting for early platform differences like @Dr. Dro explained?
Multiple reasons. First off, reset to default settings ensure that there is nothing wrong with my settings. Second and most importably, it is common sense - wizs numbers show that a 6c zen 3 ties an 8+8c cpu in efficiency in CBR23, with both at 65w. That's just ridiculous, and of course, it is not the actual case.
 

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Multiple reasons. First off, reset to default settings ensure that there is nothing wrong with my settings. Second and most importably, it is common sense - wizs numbers show that a 6c zen 3 ties an 8+8c cpu in efficiency in CBR23, with both at 65w. That's just ridiculous, and of course, it is not the actual case.
What do other launch day reviews from reputable sites show? I'll bet they agree with TPU, not you.

You're still ignoring those manufacturer optimisations too which will have a measurable effect on the benchmarks.

The bottom line is that you're ignoring confounding factors in your testing and conclusion. All these things have to be taken into account when coming to a valid conclusion. At most, you should point out to W1z that your results differ and you'd like to discuss why, not conclude that he's wrong end of story.
 
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What do other launch day reviews from reputable sites show? I'll bet they agree with TPU, not you.
Well, good thing we didn't bet cause you'd lose the bet. The only other known reviewer that tested with various power limits is igorslab. Unfortunately they didn't test at 65w, but they did at 125 and it clearly shows that - for example - in every MT workload the 12900 @ 125w easily beats the 12600k and basically ties the 5900x and the 12700k., On the other hand, at TPU's review the 12900@125w gets handily beat by both the 5900x and the 12700, while it only ties the 12600k. There is a huge margin here.


These are the links, check the blender numbers from TPU and igorslab and compare.


 

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Well, good thing we didn't bet cause you'd lose the bet.
That's misrepresenting my argument. I challenged you to check properly before accusing W1z of a bad review, I didn't outright say that you were wrong, hence no bet to lose.

There may be a reasonable explanation for the differences that neither of us have thought of though. It's up to him now to explain the differences between his review and Igor's. Be prepared that he may not reply though.
 
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