Is it worth it?

[Hemmingstamp]

Hi,

Broke up and sold my old X470 - 2700x -1080 tI machine over a year ago. Change of circumstances and wanting to get outdoors more was the decision.
I recently built a small PC for some light to mid gaming with a Ryzen 5 2600 CPU, 16GB of 3200MHZ ram and a GTX 1660 xc. It runs fine, nothing fancy, and does what it needs it to do on the gaming front.

Now I'm pondering the idea of putting a foot back in and buying a mid range machine for Video editing, some gaming, and rendering.
I don't need to burn my eyes out with 4k and all that, 1080 or 1440 will do. Had my eyes on a Ryzen 3800x and an RTX 2080 Super. More Cuda cores would be better for my needs in all honesty.
But since newer hardware is on the horizon is it worth buying this setup or should I wait and probably save some cash when the prices drop.
I'm in no rush, rusty as hell on the newer hardware, any help is appreciated.

Thanks,

 

[P4-630]

For a new GPU I'd say just wait. (September) If you can.

 

[Fourstaff]

You can probably start doing all the heavy processing now and see how it goes. If its too slow, you should be able to guesstimate where the bottleneck is and upgrade that relevant part.

 

[TheLostSwede]

At least wait until the new AMD stuff comes out in June, it's a month to go.
As far as I've been told by friends at motherboard makers, there will be new Ryzen 3000 parts then too.
I don't have any more specifics than that.

Ryzen 4000 is more likely to be out towards the end of the year is that what you're thinking to go with.

B550 might save you some cash if you don't need a bunch of PCIe 4.0 expansion or a lot of add-in cards.

 

[xvi]

I jumped on a 5700 XT that was on sale just because I was selling my card to a coworker and I needed something. If you can wait, I'd suggest going with that. Even if you want to go with NVIDIA, the AMD launch might nudge prices down a bit.

Since you have specific use cases, I'd say you'd want to go straight to the benchmarks for the specific use cases you want. Design the system for what your software responds well to.

 

[Hemmingstamp]

@Fourstaff

That is an issue since others all over the web say the 2600 is a worthy CPU in gaming. But how does it stack up with a more powerful GPU as part gaming part production PC I wonder. I have an MSI B450 motherboard and think this CPU might stumble with say Photoshop and video production software, even wth 32GB of RAM. Or am I wrong? Sorry for the noob question.

I jumped on a 5700 XT that was on sale just because I was selling my card to a coworker and I needed something. If you can wait, I'd suggest going with that. Even if you want to go with NVIDIA, the AMD launch might nudge prices down a bit.

Since you have specific use cases, I'd say you'd want to go straight to the benchmarks for the specific use cases you want. Design the system for what your software responds well to.

I need Cuda cores for Nvida render engines. I read a while back that drivers for AMD cards were in development although by an independent developer.....Then nothing happeneded. I will have to stick with Nvidia cards for my needs because of this.

 

[Chrispy_]

Since you have specific use cases, I'd say you'd want to go straight to the benchmarks for the specific use cases you want. Design the system for what your software responds well to.

This is the truth.

 

[xvi]

I've never known Photoshop to be shy about taking resources. Me personally, I would consider the Ryzen 2600 and 32GB of memory enough to do most anything I'd want to do.
Gaming, I wouldn't expect any significant issues with an upgraded GPU and a Ryzen 2600. Depending on the game and visual settings, the 3800X might get you a percent or two more performance. I wouldn't consider that worth the cost to upgrade.

I need Cuda cores for Nvida render engines. I read a while back that drivers for AMD cards were in development although by an independent developer.....Then nothing happeneded. I will have to stick with Nvidia cards for my needs because of this.

I'm not quite with the times as I used to be but I thought CUDA was being phased out in favor of OpenCL. If the software you're using is specifically designed to take advantage of CUDA and not OpenCL or even if it does both but benefits more from CUDA, then NVIDIA would probably be the way to go. I still suggest looking for benchmarks of various cards with the applications you'd like to use. There's a decent chance someone has done the comparisons already and if the real-world tests show a benefit to one card more than another, you can make an informed purchase.

Edit: With all that said, if you want to upgrade just because you can, then go for it! I would still wait to see the Zen 3 launch and sniff out the GPUs that should be releasing soon-ish but even though your current system can likely do everything, an upgraded system will of course be able to flex some serious muscle at whatever you want.
Thinking more, perhaps start with a new GPU and upgrade CPU and motherboard later if you're not satisfied?

 

[Hemmingstamp]

I've never known Photoshop to be shy about taking resources. Me personally, I would consider the Ryzen 2600 and 32GB of memory enough to do most anything I'd want to do.
Gaming, I wouldn't expect any significant issues with an upgraded GPU and a Ryzen 2600. Depending on the game and visual settings, the 3800X might get you a percent or two more performance. I wouldn't consider that worth the cost to upgrade.

I'm not quite with the times as I used to be but I thought CUDA was being phased out in favor of OpenCL. If the software you're using is specifically designed to take advantage of CUDA and not OpenCL or even if it does both but benefits more from CUDA, then NVIDIA would probably be the way to go. I still suggest looking for benchmarks of various cards with the applications you'd like to use. There's a decent chance someone has done the comparisons already and if the real-world tests show a benefit to one card more than another, you can make an informed purchase.

Thanks for the info! All I see are gaming benchmarks. Many benchmarks say the 2600 and an RTX 2080 will bottleneck, others say it won't. I'm lost......
If the 2600 and 32GB of RAM will suffice with Photoshop at least I'm nearly there

Iray for instance needs Cuda and won't work with open CL. Other render engines will, just not Iray. Might have to splash out and try a different render engine if I want to go with an AMD card.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

If your gaming at 1080p maybe depending on the game for 1440p or above you'll be GPU limited the majority of the time

 

[Hemmingstamp]

If your gaming at 1080p maybe depending on the game for 1440p or above you'll be GPU limited the majority of the time

I'll sit it out for the newer AMD and Nvidia hardware, not long now I hope.

 

[Hyderz]

sorry to hear you broke up with the x470 motherboard.. was it a good relationship?
hehehe ill see myself out

 

[Chrispy_]

Thanks for the info! All I see are gaming benchmarks. Many benchmarks say the 2600 and an RTX 2080 will bottleneck, others say it won't. I'm lost......
If the 2600 and 32GB of RAM will suffice with Photoshop at least I'm nearly there

Iray for instance needs Cuda and won't work with open CL. Other render engines will, just not Iray. Might have to splash out and try a different render engine if I want to go with an AMD card.

Puget Systems are one of my go-to sources for non-gaming benchmarks - they tend to test CAD and editing suites.

 

[8BitZ80]

I still find it difficult to comprehend when someone says that a 3800X and RTX 2080 Super is a "mid range" setup.

 

[Chrispy_]

I still find it difficult to comprehend when someone says that a 3800X and RTX 2080 Super is a "mid range" setup.

You're probably thinking in terms of historic price points then, which doesn't work any more.

"The range" is from 2C/4T to 32C/64T on the CPU side, and from 896 CUDA cores to 4608 CUDA cores for the 3800X and 2080S that you just mentioned.

What's happened is that the top end of the range is much higher up the scale than it used to be, and so the midpoint has been dragged higher (and more expensive) as a result. What's probably not helping is that mid-range used to be the performance/$ sweet spot but that is also not true any more - since the Ryzen 5 3600 and a GTX1660 is far higher performance/$ in most metrics.

 

[John Naylor]

Now I'm pondering the idea of putting a foot back in and buying a mid range machine for Video editing, some gaming, and rendering.
I don't need to burn my eyes out with 4k and all that, 1080 or 1440 will do. Had my eyes on a Ryzen 3800x and an RTX 2080 Super. More Cuda cores would be better for my needs in all honesty.

I don't see that the 'more cored assumption fits all your usages.... it's going to be a 'what matters more' thing

Just went thru this with another user who wanted something similar ... he was looking at the 3900X or 9900KF (The 9900K w/o the iGPU). Here's what I gave him:

At 1440p it,s 102.7 % as GPU carries more of the load

I have always been amazed at the mistaken w assumption that more cores make for faster video and photo editing, clearly, based upon the above, it does not. I would get in yoiur head what % of your PC time fits into the stated categories and see which benefits you more ... ideally, if ya had cash to burn, you could buuld a dual system ... with a 2900x for the Rendering, and the 9900KF for everything else.

Other comments, i would not invest oin a $300 - $500 CPU and then cramo is witha budget series $125 MoBo. Not only tdo the X and Z series boards provide significant benefits vie the chipset, but they usually offer higher RAM speeds, and much better sound and LAN subsystems. ALC 1220 sound will come on just about all X and Z series boards for example where as the budget cipo sets are most often paired with ALC 887 or ALC 892.

For CUDA questions, this is a great source

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if at 1080P, you are perfectly fine with a 1660 Super... TPU testing has shownnno difference in performance with a 3 GB and 6GB 1060. Anything over the 2070 is fine and at 4K,,,, well I don't see anything nothing on the market as yet that id invest in at 4k. id wait fr new screens that can do ULMB at 4k and 144 Hz and then a card that can drive it.

All in all, as others have said, Id wait till the preholiday period not only for new CPUs and GPUs but for the pre holiday discounts.

As for the card,

 

[Devon68]

TBH I would wait. As you said you are not in a hurry.

 

[Hemmingstamp]

sorry to hear you broke up with the x470 motherboard.. was it a good relationship?
hehehe ill see myself out

Haha! It was a good relationship but it had to go. It went to a modder who was a happy bunny.

Puget Systems are one of my go-to sources for non-gaming benchmarks - they tend to test CAD and editing suites.

Thanks. I forgot about them.

I still find it difficult to comprehend when someone says that a 3800X and RTX 2080 Super is a "mid range" setup.

It is where iray is concerned. Moar Cuda cores is what I need because Iray is a GPU render engine. Of course a higher core count CPU is always a bonus for speeding things up. Might have to go Threadripper if I want quick results. CPU frequency doesn't matter either

I don't see that the 'more cored assumption fits all your usages.... it's going to be a 'what matters more' thing

Just went thru this with another user who wanted something similar ... he was looking at the 3900X or 9900KF (The 9900K w/o the iGPU). Here's what I gave him:

At 1440p it,s 102.7 % as GPU carries more of the load

I have always been amazed at the mistaken w assumption that more cores make for faster video and photo editing, clearly, based upon the above, it does not. I would get in yoiur head what % of your PC time fits into the stated categories and see which benefits you more ... ideally, if ya had cash to burn, you could buuld a dual system ... with a 2900x for the Rendering, and the 9900KF for everything else.

Other comments, i would not invest oin a $300 - $500 CPU and then cramo is witha budget series $125 MoBo. Not only tdo the X and Z series boards provide significant benefits vie the chipset, but they usually offer higher RAM speeds, and much better sound and LAN subsystems. ALC 1220 sound will come on just about all X and Z series boards for example where as the budget cipo sets are most often paired with ALC 887 or ALC 892.

For CUDA questions, this is a great source

Adobe Premiere CC 2015 CC 2014 CC CS6 CS5.5 CS5 Video Cards with CUDA Mercury Playback Unlock MPE Hack David Knarr

Unlock Adobe Premiere CC 2015, CC 2014, CC, CS6, CS5.5 and CS5 to use an NVIDIA video card with CUDA acceleration. Unlock Mercury Playback MPE Hack Written by David Knarr

www.studio1productions.com

if at 1080P, you are perfectly fine with a 1660 Super... TPU testing has shownnno difference in performance with a 3 GB and 6GB 1060. Anything over the 2070 is fine and at 4K,,,, well I don't see anything nothing on the market as yet that id invest in at 4k. id wait fr new screens that can do ULMB at 4k and 144 Hz and then a card that can drive it.

All in all, as others have said, Id wait till the preholiday period not only for new CPUs and GPUs but for the pre holiday discounts.

As for the card,

Thanks for all the information you provided.
I might, just might go down the Threadripper route for a higher core count. Nvidia Iray is my render engine of choice but I could try a different render engine if I was going for an AMD card. Iray is a GPUbased render engine and needs Cuda cores.

Noooo, my GTX 1660 and Ryzen 2600 is for light gaming only.
I wouldn't use a 2600 CPU for demaing tasks, I just wondered would it be beneficial If I upped the card to an RTX 2080 for an iris burning 1440p experience.
Looks like I'm going to keep the GTX 1660 gaming machine and build a completely new machine for video and rendering.
Those Threadrippers are looking favourable. and I'll see what the newer range of Nvidia cards bring.

 

[xvi]

I have always been amazed at the mistaken w assumption that more cores make for faster video and photo editing, clearly, based upon the above, it does not.

Unless I'm missing something, more cores does make everything better in those benchmarks. The Photoshop, Premier Pro, and Blender benchmarks are measured in seconds and have a "Lower is better" stamp on the image in the top right. It shows that having 50% more cores makes the time it takes to render ~66% faster (comparing the 3700X to the 3900X in Blender). I'd assume the variation there is a difference in clock speed.

 

[Chrispy_]

I have always been amazed at the mistaken w assumption that more cores make for faster video and photo editing, clearly, based upon the above, it does not.

Well, for photo editing, you're just after the clockspeed and IPC of a single-thread. You can photo edit just fine on pretty much anything with enough RAM. I was doing it on an i7-4790 for years (so 3.6GHz of old architecture and slow DDR3) and it didn't really feel any worse than my upgraded PC. The numbers in the graph say it all - a complex operation takes a fraction of a second even on an old, 3.0GHz 1st-gen Ryzen. I'm okay with waiting an extra 200ms for my operation to complete really. It's not like I, as a squishy human being, can perform anywhere near fast enough for the CPU to be a bottleneck in my workflow.

Video editing - that's a loaded category just there, because for me at least, storage is the bottleneck to video editing. Yest there are small differences between CPU but there are VAST differences between different gradees of storage. If you have money to spend on video editing, get lots of RAM, and a fast NVMe storage. The other issue with video editing is that it's tied hand-in-hand to encoding, which MASSIVELY benefits from more cores, and encoding is often the slowest part of any video editing project I undertake (probably because my projects are short and simple but using 4K/60 footage).

TL;DR = for photo work the CPU is irrelevant and for video work you need to purchase fast storage first, and then buy a CPU with as many cores as you can afford.

 

[Hemmingstamp]

Keeping my eye on AMD's latest developments and I'll see what bechmarking brings vs Intels latest offerings before making a decision. Of course more cores for less $$ might be the deciding factor.
We shall see..........

 

[kapone32]

At least wait until the new AMD stuff comes out in June, it's a month to go.
As far as I've been told by friends at motherboard makers, there will be new Ryzen 3000 parts then too.
I don't have any more specifics than that.

Ryzen 4000 is more likely to be out towards the end of the year is that what you're thinking to go with.

B550 might save you some cash if you don't need a bunch of PCIe 4.0 expansion or a lot of add-in cards.

I commend you on making the XT CPUs a reality without saying it.