You must choose right now: Zen or Skylake-E (8 core)

[Justinbaileyman]

I honestly don't get what you're saying here. Are you saying that Intel needs to offer 2x the performance for you to be willing to pay the same amount of money for an Intel product relative to an AMD product?

If you could clarify that'd be great.

Nope I am saying I wont pay 2x the price for Intels offerings unless its going to perform 2x of what the competition offers. If they are the same price point then I guess it comes down to who ever has the better product at that time.Or even perhaps if some crazy discount deal pops up that would persuade me to. But seeing how things have worked out in the past I am guessing that Intel will continue to price gouge us consumers to death I mean come on the 5960x is still going for more then $1000 bucks.
That should really be no more then $500-600 tops.Specially when E5-2670's can be had in pairs for around 100 bucks. Doesn't matter that they are used either the point is they could drop the price a tad and they could be seeing bigger profits which would be a win for everyone.

 

[Ratman6161]

Is "none of the above" an option? Both are vapor at the moment. But if forced to choose right now (and why would I be?) I would always choose Intel. Why? I used to be an AMD fan long, long ago in a galaxy far away. But they have been promising and disappointing for so long that I'm just not betting on them. To this day, I still cant buy an AMD CPU that would come close to the i7 2600K I bought back in 2011 and still use. I'm rooting for them...I really am. I would love to see AMD CPU's that would go head to head against Intel above the mid-range. It would probably help keep prices down even if I stuck with Intel. but I'm taking an "I'll believe it when I see it" attitude.

 

[ElFenix]

What's wrong with people being antagonistic to AMD (or any company)? Everyone has a right to an opinion/view as long as they share it in a polite, non-confrontational manner and, in the case of debates, use facts to make their points.

Speaking as someone who reads most of the reported posts and used to read a lot of the infractions until XF, it's nearly impossible to be antagonistic without the schadenfreude dripping off the page, which is disruptive to the forums. Add on the fact that it's pretty much the same 4 people on each side having the same argument over and over and over and over... and it gets to be as bad as the Republicans and the Democrats.

So, you may say what's wrong with it, so long as people are respectful, and I'd agree, but the respectful condition is nearly never met.

 

[imported_bman]

One of the biggest unknowns that would affect this decision is how long are the respective platforms going to last, is Intel going to stick to changing sockets after every 2 years? I had a AM2 mobo that I was able to upgrade the CPU all the way to a Phenom II X6. AM4 looks to have a lot of features that are not going to be obsolete anytime soon, PCIe 4.0 and non volatile RAM support are the only two things I can think of that current platforms will be missing and even those will have limited utility for most users. Given this, AMD's history with socket backward compatibility, and assumed lower price would cause me to lean towards Zen even if its performance at release is only on par with Ivy-E or Haswell-E.

 

[moonbogg]

One of the biggest unknowns that would affect this decision is how long are the respective platforms going to last, is Intel going to stick to changing sockets after every 2 years? I had a AM2 mobo that I was able to upgrade the CPU all the way to a Phenom II X6. AM4 looks to have a lot of features that are not going to be obsolete anytime soon, PCIe 4.0 and non volatile RAM support are the only two things I can think of that current platforms will be missing and even those will have limited utility for most users. Given this, AMD's history with socket backward compatibility, and assumed lower price would cause me to lean towards Zen even if its performance at release is only on par with Ivy-E or Haswell-E.

These are damn good points. I forgot what it was like to buy a CPU upgrade without tossing the whole platform. There's a chance that an AM4 platform will allow several CPU upgrades. With Intel, you get the first CPU and then a refresh CPU which is usually worthless from a performance standpoint anyway. After that you need to toss the whole kit.
16 PCI-E 3.0 lanes per GPU will be sufficient for a very long time.
However, if Zen is only as good as Ivy-E due to clock limitations, then who will it be for? Anyone who wants that performance has already had it for several years. My 3930k @ 4.6 is old, but it performs at that level already. If Zen is no faster than what I already have, then Zen would have to cost around $300 or something and that would be a disaster for everyone. It will be better than that.

 

[Smoblikat]

Neither, id buy a $100 2500K off ebay and have absolutely no CPU bottleneck in almost any game.

 

[strategyfreak]

It's too early to make this type of decision. It really depends how Zen's performance and price end up. There are some AMD desktop processors currently out that I wouldn't use for gaming even if given for free. On the other hand, if Zen ends up being a good value, it would be a great deal for multicore performance. If they offer an 8c/16t CPU that matches the 5960x for $500-600, then I would have to buy it.

I have already put aside the money for my Skylake-X build which I plan to do in 2H 2017.

It is unlikely that an 8C/16T Zen will offer more performance than my 10C/20T Broadwell-E @ 4.3GHz.?

Buying Skylake-X a year after blowing $1700 on the 6950x? Lol. What are you even using this system for? I think this post unfortunately reinforces the more money than brains stereotype of people who buy that processor.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Buying Skylake-X a year after blowing $1700 on the 6950x? Lol. What are you even using this system for? I think this post unfortunately reinforces the more money than brains stereotype of people who buy that processor.

I know this might come as a shock to you, but my 6950X in a year-and-a-half's time will still have a ton of resale value

Anyway, could you further elaborate on your post here? This sounds like a personal attack, saying that I "have more money than brains," but I'd be happy for you to prove me wrong.

 

[itsmydamnation]

I know this might come as a shock to you, but my 6950X in a year-and-a-half's time will still have a ton of resale value

Really, if Zen delivers whats your resale value going to look like vs bought price? There is no way a 6950X is a safe i'll buy it and resell it in 18 month time chip, its just too expensive for what it is.

If intel go 6 core for mainstream over the next 18 months and Zen+ on 7nm in ~2 years is 12 cores a die your cost recovery on a 6950x isn't going to look so great.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Really, if Zen delivers whats your resale value going to look like vs bought price? There is no way a 6950X is a safe i'll buy it and resell it in 18 month time chip, its just too expensive for what it is.

If intel go 6 core for mainstream over the next 18 months and Zen+ on 7nm in ~2 years is 12 cores a die your cost recovery on a 6950x isn't going to look so great.

Thanks for your opinion. If resale value of the 6950X plummets by the time SKL-X comes out, at least I will have had ~18 months of using it and enjoying the fastest consumer desktop processor

Seriously, I use my computer a lot and I have a ton of fun tweaking/overclocking my stuff and when I'm not working my tush off, I play lots of games. This processor was expensive but to me it was worth every last penny.

 

[PPB]

If the AM4 platform is less costly than their LGA2xxx equivalent for Skylake-X (because of dual channel, Zen being a SoC and all and less PCI-E lanes), and there are compelling ITX options (currently only Asrock is bold enough to make a HW/BW-E ITX motherboard and it costs 250-300 bucks), Zen already will have a leg up regarding platform costs. But I dont really see it undercutting Intel in more than 20% of BW-E current prices. For the cheapo-crowd, it is more of a question of E5 V3/V4 ES vs Zen more than anything.

PS: Vray performance will be a determining factor for my next purchase. Needs to be a good 50% more performant than my current 4790K.

 

[YBS1]

I....I just don't know. I personally think Zen is going to surprise a lot of people here. A good lot of them can't seem to grasp the lower default clock speeds of these 8-10 core cpus are arrived at because of a need to fit all those cores in under a projected TDP. That being said, it's indeed possible Zen just doesn't clock all that high, I suspect it's simply limited by desired TDP though and given enough juice and cooling it will do just fine. I don't know that it will be able to offer me anything worth upgrading to however, I doubt it will be able to surpass a 5960X@4.5Ghz. Just like the 6950X, while indeed a multi-threaded monster, given the typical Broadwell overclock, I might end up actually losing single thread performance going that route, definitely not $1700 worth of improvement at any rate. Now that my kids are growing out of the "watch the same thing 5 billion times" age range, I'm finding less and less reason for monster multi-threading (encoding) performance. Being that I just like playing with new stuff, mainstream CPUs are a lot less expensive to rapidly switch around, I'll likely go that route in the future. If Zen hits the right price/performance range though I could absolutely see myself replacing the 3930K with one, like I said, I do like new toys.

I voted Zen though, I already know what to expect from a 8-10 core Skylake-X and I can guess the raping...I mean pricing.

 

[witeken]

How can I choose if I don't know how they perform?

 

[VirtualLarry]

This processor was expensive but to me it was worth every last penny.

And that's all that really matters... to you. Don't listen to the haters. That's one fine processor.

Hopefully, Zen is too. But not too fine, have to keep it affordable for us plebs.

I'm targeting a $500-600 price-point to save up for it. Knowing how cheap I am for CPUs, that says a lot about how much I "believe in" Zen. Hopefully it doesn't disappoint. I plan to use it for DC, so "moar cores/threads", with a dose of power-efficiency, is what I need.

 

[superstition]

4chan-style /b/ grade drivel topic.

>You have exactly 10 seconds to . . .

No one must choose right now between two products that are not available for purchase or even pre-order.

 

[moonbogg]

VirtualLarry is onboard with Zen!? HELL YEAH! I expect Zen to not be the best at gaming, nor at multithreaded workloads. I do expect it to be one of, if not the best value in the high end segment for doing everything. I don't think value this time around means a crappy CPU. I think it means an expensive CPU that is still a better value than anything Intel will have for doing gaming and heavy stuff. I think Zen will be a badass all rounder.

 

[guskline]

I guess it boils down to Zen is a cool name!

 

[sandorski]

Zen, simply because I am an AMD diehard. So far it's looking to be a real good upgrade for my 8320. That said, Price matters a lot for me, so I could see the possibilty waiting for the second gen of Zen before finally upgrading.

 

[Markfw]

This thread has been reported as a troll thread. When you are asking people to choose a CPU that is not out, and has no benchmarks even, they are right. Locking this.