Question 2 separate systems for best of both worlds (single threaded and multi-threaded performance)?

[corinthos]

So I currently have a 1950x system with a Radeon VII, to be used primarily for video editing. It has very good multi-threaded performance that will make it very good for video editing, but the base core clock speed of the 1950x makes it less snappy feeling when loading apps and opening/closing windows. Also, it's not optimal for gaming.

So, I'm considering building a 2nd PC to use as a primary PC for both gaming and day-to-day work, like programming in Visual Studio, web browsing, video playback, office applications, and what not. I'd get something like an i9-9900K which should give me excellent single threaded performance and responsiveness daily, and when I want to do video editing, I would log into my 1950x with Radeon VII system. I could probably share the same display, just change the input.

I know that it is a costly solution for the best of both worlds.. separate cpu, motherboard, ram, psu, case (although I do have a spare case and ram 3200mhz ddr4 ram already), not to mention the added electricity costs. I could mitigate that somewhat by turning off the video editing rig when not in use.

What do you guys think?

I had been entertaining the idea of vfio and running gaming, video editing, and everything else in virtual machines with gpu passthrough, but since I have AMD Radeon VII with the reset bug, I think it would be more grief and hassle than it may be worth.. I'd also face maybe a 5% performance penalty.

Which way would you go?

 

[DigDog]

a 1950x is fine for gaming.

having two systems just means less downtime when you are encoding and such - obviously you can't game when your PC is encoding a video; but otherwise a system designed for ST vs a system for MT have very little margins on each other when they are both at the same price point. This simply because a many-cores system will have some benefit to an app that likes ST, and a high ST performance will have a benefit on an app that likes strong MT.

i think the truth is because you have been enticed by redacted the 9900k's awesome marketing and like me, are drooling to get your hands on one.
You dont need it. You're fine.


Inappropriate analogy in the tech areas.

AT Mod Usandthem

 

[corinthos]

a 1950x is fine for gaming.

having two systems just means less downtime when you are encoding and such - obviously you can't game when your PC is encoding a video; but otherwise a system designed for ST vs a system for MT have very little margins on each other when they are both at the same price point. This simply because a many-cores system will have some benefit to an app that likes ST, and a high ST performance will have a benefit on an app that likes strong MT.

i think the truth is because you have been enticed by redacted the 9900k's awesome marketing and like me, are drooling to get your hands on one.
You dont need it. You're fine.


Inappropriate analogy in the tech areas.

AT Mod Usandthem

Thanks. Yes, I don't really need one. I was really annoyed by how long it took for an Internet Explorer window to pop up and thought it was because of my lower ST from the 1950x, but then I tried Chrome and it comes up more snappily. But usually IE doesn't take that long on other systems I've used, including lower powered 4-core systems at work.

 

[DigDog]

probably a matter of OS settings
edit: NOOoooo .. my awesome and totally poignant South Park reference!

 

[richaron]

If anyone came to me asking to reduce their "loading" or "opening" times I'd usually point them towards a faster and lower latency SSD. Sure sometimes one pays for single threaded workloads on a hugely multi-core system, but a sweet new SSD should help with the problem and hopefully reduce the urge for an almost redundant second system..

 

[Arkaign]

Yeah that's probably an edge case. Funny enough, I did build a pair of systems for different purposes, and then added a Threadripper 2920 later on. I guess technically I have dozens of PCs, but only the three I purpose built for myself. Gaming : 9900KS on an ASRock Phantom Gaming 9, 5.2, no offset, stock volts, with DDR4 4000 CL16 and a 2080ti AMP Extreme. General : Ryzen 3700X on a Taichi X470 with DDR4 3600 (currently at 3466 CL14) and my old 1080ti. Tinkerer : TR 2920x on an Asus Prime X399 with 96GB of 2666, and I think my old 970. All have nVME SSD rated around the same, but all perform quite differently. The 3700X is the most 'all-rounder'. Nobody should be disappointed in it. The 9900KS is a pretty silly thing, but it's quite a bit faster for gaming in some titles, I recently retested AC Odyssey with current patches, and saw ~82-85ish go up to 125+ between the two at 1440UW (moving the AMP between the pair). Now this will be a non factor for most because of a lack of either a high refresh display, or the lack of a GPU strong enough to push beyond bottlenecks at your chosen settings. So what you're left with is an overall superior Ryzen 3700X that makes more sense the vast majority of the time.

The TR I'm ambivalent about I guess. It definitely doesn't suck, but it's obviously not as well performing as the 9900 or 3700 in anything short of extremely well threaded stuff. Unless you need GOBS of memory and/or IO PCIe lanes, TR1/2 are largely superfluous to the AM4 Zen2 SKUs. I haven't messed with TR40X and the new TRs, but they seem pretty incredible.

Long story short, either stick with what you have, or perhaps move to a Z570 Ryzen 3900X/3950X if you can find one. It would give you a sizable boost to IPC, clock speeds, and IO tech (PCIe 4.0, yadda).

 

[Topweasel]

So I currently have a 1950x system with a Radeon VII, to be used primarily for video editing. It has very good multi-threaded performance that will make it very good for video editing, but the base core clock speed of the 1950x makes it less snappy feeling when loading apps and opening/closing windows. Also, it's not optimal for gaming.

So, I'm considering building a 2nd PC to use as a primary PC for both gaming and day-to-day work, like programming in Visual Studio, web browsing, video playback, office applications, and what not. I'd get something like an i9-9900K which should give me excellent single threaded performance and responsiveness daily, and when I want to do video editing, I would log into my 1950x with Radeon VII system. I could probably share the same display, just change the input.

I know that it is a costly solution for the best of both worlds.. separate cpu, motherboard, ram, psu, case (although I do have a spare case and ram 3200mhz ddr4 ram already), not to mention the added electricity costs. I could mitigate that somewhat by turning off the video editing rig when not in use.

What do you guys think?

I had been entertaining the idea of vfio and running gaming, video editing, and everything else in virtual machines with gpu passthrough, but since I have AMD Radeon VII with the reset bug, I think it would be more grief and hassle than it may be worth.. I'd also face maybe a 5% performance penalty.

Which way would you go?

Get a 3900 or 3950x. Between the boost clocks and the IPC advantage, the less than marginal increase in "gaming" performance of the 9900k is completely devalued. When the first gen Zen came it was one of those things MT threaded games did well, most people run with a GPU bottleneck, high refresh gaming was minimal. It's changed a lot since then and to a degree I'd probably not make the recommendations I did in 2017. That said, even that has gone away. Some games in a CPU bottlenecked situation run faster on a 3900 or 3950. In ones that the 9900k is faster it really is only just barely (I think I have seen 1 bench that has 9900k win by anything other than single digits). So now with those 2 CPU's the gaming advantage is basically gone. Now you have a compute advantage. The 3900x @$500 is an amazing compute value compared to the 9900k and the 3950x is really just plain the best consumer CPU and still a decent value at $750. All of a sudden you have a great (though maybe not the best) gaming CPU and the best MT consumer CPU on the market. You would within a hair of basically having the best of both worlds in one CPU and it wouldn't cost that much more than making a 9900k system, with the 3900x being the same price.