Question RTX 5090 4K Gaming build - Core Ultra 265K tuned vs 9800X3D - Talk me out of or for returning my 265K parts and getting 9800X3D parts at microcenter

[alcoholbob]

As for no stutters and no bugs if I decide to go 9800X3D, what are some things I can do. Any motherboard recommendations .

I have been fond of MSI mobos lately. Are they good. I also like a mobo that has 2 NVME X4 direct to CPU when able which all Zen 4/5 CPUs that are not APUs can while preserving all 16 GPU lans. I hate how so many X870E mandate USB4 and siphon lanes form NVME so you can only have 1 NVME to CPU woithout slicing GPU lanes to half.

Yes some mobos you can swithc it off and there is B850 mobos no such issue. But they are fewer. And ironically some of higher end boards actually have less options like the Carbon cs Tomahawk. Tomahawk whioch is a lower end board is better for my puirpose on the X870/X870E front. Yet got to steop all the way up to the stupid overpriced Godlike to get even better than Carbon and feature to ax USB4 in favor of 2 NVME X4 without slicing GPU lanes.

AM5 is known for USB instability issues while gaming - in fact Jay 2 cents just made a video about this issue recently joking about how infamous it is and how familiar AMD users are with the Windows device disconnect sound. The other known issue with 8 core and under Zen 4/5 parts is stuttering in gaming with fps/power monitoring tools, which doesn't happen on Intel or >8 core AMD parts, DannyZReviews has some videos on this.

If you look at reddit threads, AM5 USB instability appears to be prevalent on mostly Asus, Asrock or MSI boards, with few complaints about Gigabyte. The main problem with Gigabyte however, is Secure Boot doesn't seem to work right in their BIOS which makes playing Battlefield 6 impossible on AM5 Gigabyte boards. Not sure if they fixed that since, but it seems like Gigabyte users weren't able to play BF6 during the beta because of this bug...

If you go AM5 it's kind of a crapshoot right now, go Gigabyte and don't play Frostbite games, or deal with USB instability problems on other boards. Hopefully they fix this in the future, but this is been an ongoing issue since AM5 launched in 2022, I gave up on a 7900X build in 2022 and a 9800X3D build in 2025 because the boards I chose had this issue (Asrock and MSI). I built a 9800X3D system on a Gigabyte board for a friend recently and he had no issues with USB dropping out, but hilariously he complained he couldn't play BF6 because of the Secure Boot bug. The X870E platform is also kind of a clusterfvck too with PCI-E lane splitting issues and the number of NVME drives you can run. A real shame because the CPUs are so good.

 

[Wolverine2349]

AM5 is known for USB instability issues while gaming - in fact Jay 2 cents just made a video about this issue recently joking about how infamous it is and how familiar AMD users are with the Windows device disconnect sound. The other known issue with 8 core and under Zen 4/5 parts is stuttering in gaming with fps/power monitoring tools, which doesn't happen on Intel or >8 core AMD parts, DannyZReviews has some videos on this.

If you look at reddit threads, AM5 USB instability appears to be prevalent on mostly Asus, Asrock or MSI boards, which few complaints about Gigabyte. The main problem with Gigabyte however, is Secure Boot doesn't seem to work right in their BIOS which makes playing Battlefield 6 impossible on AM5 Gigabyte boards. Not sure if they fixed that since, but it seems like Gigabyte users weren't able to play BF6 during the beta because of this bug...

If you go AM5 it's kind of a crapshoot right now, go Gigabyte and don't play Frostbite games, or deal with USB instability problems on other boards. Hopefully they fix this in the future, but this is been an ongoing issue since AM5 launched in 2022, I gave up on a 7900X build in 2022 and a 9800X3D build in 2025 because the boards I chose had this issue (Asrock and MSI). I built a 9800X3D system on a Gigabyte board for a friend recently and he had no issues with USB dropping out, but hilariously he complained he couldn't play BF6 because of the Secure Boot bug. The X870E is also kind of a clusterfvck too with USB lane splitting issues and the number of NVME drives you can run. A real shame because the CPUs are so good.

Well is it an issue if you disable secure boot. I have it always disabled anyways.

Are there any good quality Gigabyte boards with 2 NVME X4 direct to CPU without slicing GPU lanes in half?

I also hear Gigabyte has a more buggy BIOS and MSI stepped up their game recently especially since Intel 12th Gen on both platforms which would make it late 2021 where as before they were kind of not so good on either Intel or AMD.

Is there any workaround for the stuttering on 8 core AMD parts when using FPS/power/temp monitoring tools as not a fan of dual CCD parts. Any motherboards that are good for that or is it a single CCD Ryzen issue. Single CCD is better but for some strange reason even on Zen 5 DDR5 Read bandwidth is crap where as write and copy unaffected. I think it was same with Zen 3 and DDR4 single CCD. Not sure why. Just buggy AMD implementation? Or is 8 cores too few to have power monitoring tools open on either platform. Does it do it on Intel platforms with e-cores disabled (8 cores) or the Intel 12400/12500 which have 6 P cores and no e-cores?

AMD was more reliable (NVIDIA made their chipsets for them and VIDIA has good firmware and drivers historically) and dominated Intel far more in 2003 to early 2006 than they are now. I remember those days in which AMD truly was better than intel in my tail end teens to first couple of years of my 20s.

Though by April May 2006, it was known Intel had Conroe up their sleeve and it was most likely gonna beat AMD and AMD would not be on top much longer and not even on par rather way behind and it released July 2006 and gave a knockout punch. It does not appear Intel is close to something like that now. But then again no one thought they had Conroe up their sleeve until April/May 2006.

 

[alcoholbob]

I guess the question is what's the point of even going 9800X3D if you already have a 265K and 8400 RAM? Are you gaming at 240Hz? If not with a tuned Arrow Lake system you basically can stay above 120fps in pretty much any game, and if you are playing at 4K it's perfectly fine as a gaming system as there won't be that much of a difference between the systems anyway, generally 5-10% max at higher resolutions.

You said it yourself you don't like the choices. The current system IMO is good enough until Nova Lake/Zen 6 come out unless you are doing competitive gaming at >200fps. Going for the 9800X3D has the tradeoffs you know in terms of multicore, stuttering with power monitoring software, and I would imagine a newly updated X970E in 2026 would probably have some better options for PCIE lanes and (hopefully) fixing other AM5 related hiccups. If not, Nova Lake (hopefully) will be competitive and provide a brand new platform with new features and without the current crop of AM5 bugs.

 

[Ranulf]

Because there is no chance a 265K is ever going to be faster than a 9800X3D for gaming beyond some rare outlier.

Space Engineers. It has favored intel chips for years now. Both client and especially server with high frequency.

Though in reality is Intel's situation now as bad as AMD's was with Bulldozer in CPUs?

Seroiusly? Uh, I would say worse with raptor fail.

 

[511]

ARL is was better than Bulldozer to say the least it's a horrible comparison

 

[Thunder 57]

They closed it so I'll post this here:

Even the most passionate AMD supporters must see, that a 8 core very expensive CPU is in very difficult position against 20 core cheap CPU, so they resort to irrational and emotionally charged arguments.

Sales say otherwise. My God the number of people saying to buy ARL over there is absurd.

 

[511]

They closed it so I'll post this here:



Sales say otherwise. My God the number of people saying to buy ARL over there is absurd.

If someone is cheaping out why wouldn't someone go with ARL (265K) the only SKI that makes sense

 

[DAPUNISHER]

ARL is was better than Bulldozer to say the least it's a horrible comparison

I think we all suffer from confirmation bias. My suggestion: Go dig up Bulldozer gaming benchmarks at launch.

Here is the 9800X3D. As I stated, ignore geomean which only serves to obfuscate the reality of what happens in titles owners may play, and look at how many games are blowouts -



Like I said, it's brutal.

You cannot wish away to the cornfield the fact they both launched on a socket already effectively dead, and at best get a refresh. The refresh Vishera brought 10-20% improvements in Anand's testing. Though now you'll have to download the archive for the site to read it.

The FX needed a fairly expensive board, fast ram i.e. expensive, and aftermarket coolers that added expense so you could overclock and tune for max performance. @DaaQ can speak to the details of what is involved. Windows 7 also held the FX back at launch and it did a little better after patches and better yet with win10. Just as ARL has gotten better since launch, and fixed bugged performance in some games e.g. 2077. Both also depend somewhat on the silicon lottery too.

A big difference is they tested way fewer games in 2011-2012. I could not find 30 or 40 game shootouts.

A question that never gets answered - is tuned ARL even faster than tuned Raptor Lake yet? Never mind beating the fastest gaming CPU on the market. No YT or forum randoms, respected reviewers results.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Space Engineers. It has favored intel chips for years now. Both client and especially server with high frequency.

Any good numbers for it vs 9950X3D?

I would say worse with raptor fail.

The consequences of which are on going.

 

[Ranulf]

Any good numbers for it vs 9950X3D?

Doubtful, it is a dying niche game in some repects. SE2 is in early access. The devs are eccentric to say the least. They put out a xbox one version too that, had issues. I remember those who ran servers swore by it favoring intel and I know at one point the game had trouble with Zen1 or Zen2 chips for some odd reason.

 

[igor_kavinski]

This was a d*** move from Intel I never liked it

One source (didn't get explicit permission so not going to name him publicly) tested ADL's AVX-512 and found that on some cores with some AVX-512 instructions, there are errors so basically they saved money on releasing a new stepping and decided it was better to get rid of it because even with a new stepping, they didn't have a good way of making it work with the E-cores active.

In light of the above, I've stopped feeling mad about them disabling it but it is just a continuation of the long string of disappointments I've had to face from Intel since Core i7-5775C.

 

[igor_kavinski]

My advice is stick with the 265K until it stops being able to play your games the way you want to play them. Then buy whatever Intel offers next. U.S. taxpayer money was used to buy 433.3 million shares of Intel stock. I would like an ROI from it, so do you part.

Honestly best advice here.

OP really needs to stop overthinking and over-analyzing and just enjoy the hardware.

You don't want any BIOS related issue? Get a Dell pre-built. All the Taiwanese companies are constantly messing with their BIOS. Their objective is not stability. They just want to win benchmarks so they will sneakily "tune" (read: mess with) hidden settings to make benchmarks look good. This is, in my opinion, the main reason why ASROCK has burnt so many X3D CPUs and AMD has been a total wuss in dealing with this issue by stating that ASROCK isn't following their guidelines. Get your engineers on a plane to ASROCK HQ and get the mess sorted out, dammit! It's unbelievable that they don't see how this tarnishes the Ryzen brand. Either help ASROCK fix the issue ASAP or end the partnership with them. Simple as that.

My personal opinion on the existence of this thread is that the OP has spent wayyyyy too much time reading anti-Ryzen posts and didn't take the time to familiarize himself with the hardware's quirks. Nothing is perfect at the moment.

If, however, OP is still not satisfied with 265K, my suggestion would be to go with the Minisforum Strix Halo mini PC that has a PCIe 16x slot. May as well because the OP seems to have tried everything else under the sun, other than Threadripper or Epyc or Intel workstation CPUs.

 

[Shmee]

I may be tempted to upgrade to AM5 and Zen 5 soon. But, I would need to find the right board, one that either has 10GbE or has an x4 slot for my NIC. Also needs enough m.2 slots of course.

I have been looking at the MSI MAG Tomahawk 870E, but I have heard there were some issues with it and Zen 5 X3D in the past. Anyone know if these are fixed?

 

[511]

I may be tempted to upgrade to AM5 and Zen 5 soon. But, I would need to find the right board, one that either has 10GbE or has an x4 slot for my NIC. Also needs enough m.2 slots of course.

I have been looking at the MSI MAG Tomahawk 870E, but I have heard there were some issues with it and Zen 5 X3D in the past. Anyone know if these are fixed?

Why don't you wait for 1 more year if you can you can see NVL/Z6 and than decide

 

[Thunder 57]

Why don't you wait for 1 more year if you can you can see NVL/Z6 and than decide

I think you meant to say that to Wolverine.

 

[Shmee]

Heh, it could be a fair suggestion for either of us. Part of my thought process is I am not quite sure how I am going to handle the Win10 EOL, and if I need to go to Win 11 soon, it might be time to go to a new system while at it. Not exactly sure how I would handle that though...

I kinda would like to get a PCIe gen5 drive to go with the new board, and either do a fresh install of Win 11, or do an upgrade install from a clone from the old drive. Again, not sure exactly how I want to handle that, especially since I may want to get a special Enterprise image of Win 11 or something, with less bloat.

 

[511]

I think you meant to say that to Wolverine.

General advise to anyone who is not in a urgent need of upgrade cause I know of two confirmed gen for LGA-1954
Nova Lake and Razer Lake

Heh, it could be a fair suggestion for either of us. Part of my thought process is I am not quite sure how I am going to handle the Win10 EOL, and if I need to go to Win 11 soon, it might be time to go to a new system while at it. Not exactly sure how I would handle that though...

I kinda would like to get a PCIe gen5 drive to go with the new board, and either do a fresh install of Win 11, or do an upgrade install from a clone from the old drive. Again, not sure exactly how I want to handle that, especially since I may want to get a special Enterprise image of Win 11 or something, with less bloat.

With NVL you get Integrated TB5 as well and 24 Pcie gen 5 lanes

 

[Shmee]

Yeah I have heard that NVL is planned to have a nice lane count/layout. We'll have to see how it does overall.

 

[511]

It's leaked by Jaykhin it's pretty much guaranteed at this point in terms of MB specs they don't usually change usually

https://twitter.com/x/status/1934778035611554165

 

[igor_kavinski]

since I may want to get a special Enterprise image of Win 11 or something, with less bloat.

Some games with anti-cheat may refuse to work with anything other than Home or Pro editions of Windows.

I don't think Win10 will be suddenly EOL'ed by everyone other than M$. It will continue to work for a year or two just fine. You can dual boot with Win11 and go into that only for things that don't run on your current Win10 installation. I think that would save you the trouble of having to upgrade prematurely until you feel that a platform is good enough to last you several years.

It is only yesterday that I started getting a yellow bar on my gmail that this browser version is not supported anymore (I'm on Win 8.1). But gmail is still working.

 

[511]

Even Windows 7 Outlasted Windows 8

 

[igor_kavinski]

Why don't you wait for 1 more year if you can you can see NVL/Z6 and than decide

I doubt Nova Lake will be available in exactly a year's time. Make it at least 31st March 2027 for reasonable prices and 31st June 2027 for BIOS kinks worked out.

 

[511]

I doubt Nova Lake will be available in exactly a year's time. Make it at least 31st March 2027 for reasonable prices and 31st June 2027 for BIOS kinks worked out.

lol Intel availability is not as bad as AMDs with ARL they simply produced less and shifted Wafer to Mobile/LNL.

 

[igor_kavinski]

with ARL they simply produced less and shifted Wafer to Mobile/LNL.

No they did not. Had they produced less, 265K would never have gotten such a deep discount.

285K I can believe. Not the other SKUs. They really needed to produce a ton of them to give something sellable to the OEMs since Raptor was such a resounding success that people kept returning them because they couldn't believe they got so much more than what they paid for and their guilty conscience left them unable to sleep thinking "I don't deserve so much for so less. Sorry Intel but you deserve it back so you can screw over someone else".

 

[igor_kavinski]

@Wolverine2349 Don't forget that Intel APO's advanced mode could help gaming performance in unsupported titles. Don't give up on a CPU until you have loved it enough.