I'm considering upgrading my CPU

[Dawgstah]

I am considering upgrading my CPU/motherboard as I'm beginning to suspect that my current CPU is beginning to become a bottleneck. I use my PC mainly for gaming, Cubase and some of the Adobe apps (mostly Illustrator and Photoshop).

My current specs are:
Asus ROG Strix RTX 3080 OC
Intel Core i7 7820X CPU running at around 4 GHz.
Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB DDR4 3000MHz RAM
Asus X299 Prime Deluxe motherboard

I'm considering to upgrade to a Ryzen 5900X CPU. Will this be a worthy upgrade?

 

[Deleted member 185158]

Yes, yes the 5900X will stomp all over the 7820X.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

12900k would probably be better long term maybe even the 12700k. If you plan on going Ryzen wait for the V$ varients.

 

[Dawgstah]

I know but the DDR5 supply in Norway is extremely limited for the time being. And it's a store over here which runs a 30% discount on a high end mobo for Ryzen and 15% on the CPU itself.

 

[Bill_Bright]

What do you have for storage? If hard drives, I would consider upgrading to SSDs before swapping out CPUs.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

A DDR4 ADL board is well up for it. The MSI pro or strix D4 are both very good, specially if you have decent DDR4 plus you get 4x m2 slots

 

[Dawgstah]

What do you have for storage? If hard drives, I would consider upgrading to SSDs before swapping out CPUs.

I have 2 HDDs (one at 3TB and one at 4TB, both 7200 rpm), 2 SSDs (500GB and 250GB. The latter one used for the OS) and one M2 (1TB).

 

[Dr. Dro]

Zen 3 is significantly faster than the original Skylake-X, but you already have a X299 base, wouldn't it be more sensible to you to look for an i9-10980XE on eBay? No platform change needed and the performance honestly won't be that far behind.

A 5950X will generally beat the i9-10980XE at just about everything sans AVX-512 (not supported on Zen 3), likewise for the 5900X and the i9-10920X/10940X, but given you already have the system, it should be a quick and painless upgrade.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

DDR4 performance is just fine on Alderlake..... Again if going AMD wait for the 3d cache varients they should be announced soon

AMD and Intel announce their January 4th press conferences around CES 2022 - VideoCardz.com

AMD and Intel to announce multiple products around CES 2022 Two important press conferences on the same day. Everyone buckle up, next month PC enthusiasts will have lots of new hardware to discuss. On January 4th, both Intel and AMD are to hold their own virtual press conferences, expectedly...

videocardz.com

 

[dgianstefani]

12700k + a decent asus z690 - profit.

Keep everything else.

 

[AusWolf]

According to a bottleneck calculator website, your current set up has an avg bottleneck percentage of 0.79% (CPU bottleneck).
With a 5900X your bottleneck would be 5.97% (GPU bottleneck)

Anything less than 10% is good.

No offense, but bottleneck calculators are BS. Every PC is bottlenecked. By what part and how much hugely depends on the application used, and even the specific scenario within the application. It's not a constant number and it can't be averaged. A non-bottlenecked PC would run every command at infinite speed.

As for OP's question, I agree with the above that a 10900X - 10980XE would probably be a more cost-efficient solution than building an entirely new system.

 

[AusWolf]

You're entitled to your opinion.

It's not an opinion. It's a fact. A no bottleneck situation means nothing restricts the program from being executed, ergo it runs at infinite speed, which is not possible on any PC. Either your CPU, RAM, GPU, storage, or at least the program's code will always bottleneck the application you're running.

I should have added their description of said assesment, which basically parallels yours.

*This result is based on average CPU and GPU usage from different programs and games. It changes based on operating system, background processes activity and targeted applications. This result is not universal and changes based on differences in hardware and software enviroments. Please do not use this calculator primary as decision maker than as helping tool to understand performance correlations between different components.

Let me comment on how unscientific and nonsensical that assessment is:
Different programs and games - Yeah, which ones?
It changes based on operating system, background processes activity and targeted applications - Exactly, that's why you can't measure bottleneck objectively with a number.
This result is not universal and changes based on differences in hardware and software environments - Then why bother presenting it as a universal number (which it is admittedly not)?
Please do not use this calculator primary as decision maker - Yet, you suggested doing exactly that.
helping tool to understand performance correlations between different components - What does that mean? "Is my GPU faster than my CPU?" Really? Again, which programs are we talking about?

 

[repman244]

You have a great platform, get a 10900X.

 

[elghinnarisa]

I think I would still lean towards to the 5900x instead of a in-platform upgrade.
Reason being the first three things he mentions, gaming, illustrator and photoshop, are all the type of work that does not scale all that well over large core counts.
Illustrator and photoshop specifically do not scale practically at all with more cores. So the change to a 10980XE, 10900X, or similar that was recently suggested would do nothing in those two. And I doubt there are that many games that would make use of the extra cores in those cases either.
Which leaves cubase, which I am not sure of how well it noms up cores or not.

In all those cases there would be a much more significant improvement with the 5900x providing not as many cores as the 10980XE, but much faster per core instead. And that would indeed make a difference in illustrator and photoshop, and most likely more relevant in games as well.
Just throwing more cores at software that cannot make use of them effective isn't particularly useful as an upgrade.

 

[Dr. Dro]

I think I would still lean towards to the 5900x instead of a in-platform upgrade.
Reason being the first three things he mentions, gaming, illustrator and photoshop, are all the type of work that does not scale all that well over large core counts.
Illustrator and photoshop specifically do not scale practically at all with more cores. So the change to a 10980XE, 10900X, or similar that was recently suggested would do nothing in those two. And I doubt there are that many games that would make use of the extra cores in those cases either.
Which leaves cubase, which I am not sure of how well it noms up cores or not.

In all those cases there would be a much more significant improvement with the 5900x providing not as many cores as the 10980XE, but much faster per core instead. And that would indeed make a difference in illustrator and photoshop, and most likely more relevant in games as well.
Just throwing more cores at software that cannot make use of them effective isn't particularly useful as an upgrade.

I mean, I would recommend it if he couldn't put a 18-core chip in there. New in box 10980XEs are going for $900 (USD) sealed on eBay at the moment, that is roughly the cost of a high-end motherboard like a Dark Hero + a 5900X... and if you're willing to get an used one, you can find them for less cash than that. If I owned a X299 board, I would likely be rocking one right now instead of the 5950X.

Cascade Lake-X is no slouch, it will hold its own against Zen 2, and I don't know how relevant is AVX-512 acceleration to the workstation applications he intends to use, but that is also something Zen 3 cannot provide, despite being faster overall in linear and 128/256-bit AVX.

 

[QuietBob]

I got confused by Intel SKU numbering here. At first I thought the 10900X series is Comet Lake-S. But in fact it is Cascade Lake-X, direct successor to Skylake-X, so barely any faster.

OP's use scenarios will benefit more from high IPC than core count. Games and Adobe apps are happy with 6 cores and DAWs are all about ST performance. And even the top 10980XE is behind Zen 2 in terms of single threaded performance.

I would definitely wait for Zen 3 with V-cache and see how it stacks up against Alder Lake before deciding on upgrade path.

 

[BarbaricSoul]

after seeing this, I kind of wish I would have stayed with my 3930k-

Yes, the 3080 is bottlenecked, but not to unplayable levels

 

[Solid State Soul ( SSS )]

the i7 7820x is an 8 core, 16 thread processor, there is no way that processor would be a bottleneck, not now, and not in the next couple of years for gaming.
there is differently something ellse that is causing you problems, maybe a bad windows, or a bad overclock.

on a side note am very disappointed no body mention the fact that the 7820x is an 8 core 16 thread processor and immediately jumped ship to new recommendations .... Do most enthusiast think cpus go out of date THAT fast ?

i still game comfortably on my 6700k and thats a quad core eight threads processor, am not seein any major issues unless i want to pump frame rates to 144hz

come on guys wth.....

 

[Dawgstah]

I mean, I would recommend it if he couldn't put a 18-core chip in there. New in box 10980XEs are going for $900 (USD) sealed on eBay at the moment, that is roughly the cost of a high-end motherboard like a Dark Hero + a 5900X... and if you're willing to get an used one, you can find them for less cash than that. If I owned a X299 board, I would likely be rocking one right now instead of the 5950X.

Cascade Lake-X is no slouch, it will hold its own against Zen 2, and I don't know how relevant is AVX-512 acceleration to the workstation applications he intends to use, but that is also something Zen 3 cannot provide, despite being faster overall in linear and 128/256-bit AVX.

If I order from eBay, it would be a lot more than 900 USD when I take the crazy high customs fee and tax we have in Norway. The CPU and mobo will cost me 9000 NOK (approx. 1000 USD) in total.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

If I order from eBay, it would be a lot more than 900 USD when I take the crazy high customs fee and tax we have in Norway. The CPU and mobo will cost me 9000 NOK (approx. 1000 USD) in total.

You could probably get a ADL 12700k and a board for less than 900 USD

 

[AlwaysHope]

You could probably get a ADL 12700k and a board for less than 900 USD

But does Intel assure that Rapid lake or whatever name the next lineup is will be compatible with socket 1700? upgrade paths can be important for some without swapping boards around.

 

[Dawgstah]

I looked at a mobo similar to the Dark Hero. A bit too expensive for my taste.

 

[Mussels]

the i7 7820x is an 8 core, 16 thread processor, there is no way that processor would be a bottleneck, not now, and not in the next couple of years for gaming.
there is differently something ellse that is causing you problems, maybe a bad windows, or a bad overclock.

on a side note am very disappointed no body mention the fact that the 7820x is an 8 core 16 thread processor and immediately jumped ship to new recommendations .... Do most enthusiast think cpus go out of date THAT fast ?

i still game comfortably on my 6700k and thats a quad core eight threads processor, am not seein any major issues unless i want to pump frame rates to 144hz

come on guys wth.....

single threaded performance can absolutely be a bottleneck, if you game above 60Hz then it 100% is an issue.
The 7820x is skylake, otherwise commonly known as 6th gen intel. This is just a higher core count version of it.
Is it terrible? not at all. Does faster exist, single and multi threaded? yes, by large amounts in both. OP could have had it for the last 4 years and be ready to upgrade, and OP has an RTX strix 3080 which would absolutely be the kind of GPU to benefit from CPU and memory improvements.

My old ryzen 1700 was also 8 core 16 thread, and it's laughably behind my 8 core 16 thread 5800x.

60Hz display? Then no need, old CPU's still hold their own quite well there, i'd say Anything from a 3770k/Ryzen 1400 and up would still be game-able with 2021 titles (For 1080p60, above that depends on the game, settings and GPU)

I looked at a mobo similar to the Dark Hero. A bit too expensive for my taste.

Because that's literally one of the most expensive AM4 boards? Why?

AM4 only needs the board to not be garbage, this isn't the era of manual overclocking. Midrange mobo, slap any CPU in and call it a day.

 

[Franz]

I vote to put more over on your processor. If possible 4,5ghz will be a good improvement and the 7820 do not have a bad single core like the firsts ryzens.

If you want to upgrade anyway, just go with 12700k and ddr4 motherboard. But seriously your processor can hold until the next intel generation and I think it will be like the sandy bridge ones and things that not work so well will become a way better!

 

[eidairaman1]

I am considering upgrading my CPU/motherboard as I'm beginning to suspect that my current CPU is beginning to become a bottleneck. I use my PC mainly for gaming, Cubase and some of the Adobe apps (mostly Illustrator and Photoshop).

My current specs are:
Asus ROG Strix RTX 3080 OC
Intel Core i7 7820X CPU running at around 4 GHz.
Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB DDR4 3000MHz RAM
Asus X299 Prime Deluxe motherboard

I'm considering to upgrade to a Ryzen 5900X CPU. Will this be a worthy upgrade?

Stick with your system until AMD DDR 5 parts are available

I could understand upgrading from a Socket 1155 or older but not where you are.