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Ryzen 3000 Vs I9 9900K for music production

As I shop and put together wish lists I'm finding that the price to build a complete system between an i9 9900k and a Ryzen 7 3700x the price is roughly the same due to the fact that the x570 boards are a bit more money and that I would need to invest in a Video card that does nothing for me when it comes to music production. It seems to me that the real gem is the 3900x seeing that it competes even with the Intel i9 9900x. It's roughly $100 more than the 9900k (talking about a complete system build, not a cpu price difference) but a decent performance boost in all tasks. The other downside to Ryzen are those motherboard chipset fans and the fact that currently Asrock seems to be the only ones with Thunderbolt support. I like Asrock just fine but if you are an Asus or Gigabyte or MSI fan and need Thunderbolt then for now you are out of luck. Of course the cost of the Ryzen gets much cheaper if you aren't concerned with Thunderbolt or memory bandwidth beyond 64GB then there are plenty of decent X470 and b450 boards. I think that is where the sweet spot against Intel is when looking at cost, at least on the 3700x and below. Just a few more hours to Prime days but I'm not sure they're going to have anything much better priced than what I've seen regarding the CPU's and motherboards that have everything I want so the wait might be in vein. Perhaps I'll get a good deal on some SSD's and a power supply at least. I'll know very soon whether or not I go AMD or Intel.
 
pderbidge said:
As I shop and put together wish lists I'm finding that the price to build a complete system between an i9 9900k and a Ryzen 7 3700x the price is roughly the same due to the fact that the x570 boards are a bit more money and that I would need to invest in a Video card that does nothing for me when it comes to music production. It seems to me that the real gem is the 3900x seeing that it competes even with the Intel i9 9900x. It's roughly $100 more than the 9900k (talking about a complete system build, not a cpu price difference) but a decent performance boost in all tasks. The other downside to Ryzen are those motherboard chipset fans and the fact that currently Asrock seems to be the only ones with Thunderbolt support. I like Asrock just fine but if you are an Asus or Gigabyte or MSI fan and need Thunderbolt then for now you are out of luck. Of course the cost of the Ryzen gets much cheaper if you aren't concerned with Thunderbolt or memory bandwidth beyond 64GB then there are plenty of decent X470 and b450 boards. I think that is where the sweet spot against Intel is when looking at cost, at least on the 3700x and below. Just a few more hours to Prime days but I'm not sure they're going to have anything much better priced than what I've seen regarding the CPU's and motherboards that have everything I want so the wait might be in vein. Perhaps I'll get a good deal on some SSD's and a power supply at least. I'll know very soon whether or not I go AMD or Intel.
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Futhermore the availability of ryzen 3000 serie is not full for now. Some stores have difficults to stock them. I think it will be full available on september.
And i have not seen any down pricing on i9 9900k. It still at 500 bucks.
 
tack said:
I like the idea of separating by family, but I'd take more liberty with the available colors.
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Yes, thanks. I may have to make use of that as a few more light greens and yellow would certainly declutter it. :)

pderbidge said:
Very cool Pete! Did you happen to pay attention to the noise attribute of the x570 chipset fan?
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I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention to it, mostly as I was already considering other boards. The DPC on the TUF is a pass, but one that I wouldn't want to make use of long term. I was planning on going and finding a board without a fan, but it's since been pointed out to me that such a beast in rare indeed.

I'll get around to testing one in the studio this week when I set up a spec or two to sell, but the workshop I tend to benchmark in is a bit noisy most of the time.

Gunvor said:
I am not so much after the memory boost higher frequency would bring. But the fact that it increases the speed between the dies on the CPU itself. Wouldn't the data transfers between the dies directly on the CPU have an impact on non-partisan CPU performance?

The 3600 ram bandwidth option directly affects the die data transfer bandwidth between the dies. That is what I am curious about if it would have a direct impact on non-parallel CPU performance.
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Yes, they made the same claims last time and it had no impact for us. I've still got a 3900X on the bench, so I'll sit down this week and give it a quick second run to double check.
 
Has someone already measured the CPU latency of the Ryzen 3 CPUs?
From the power-consumption, price and IPC standpoint Ryzen 3 seems to be on top of Intel.
 
Loading Kontakt Libraries is a joy on PCI Gen4?
Well hell I better buy the X570 then....NOT.

A thoroughly tested Workstation board, Low Watts, no thrills and frills using X470 designed for a 1U Rack is what I’ll get. But not until I actually need one.
Maybe later this year.

Seems this little low watt gem is not as fast or strong as the Intel, but a cool running low watt CPU with plenty of polyphony. Going to 100% is impressive too.

Hey get one on Amazon for 449 USD. AMD is selling them there. But it’s not Adavanced Micro Devices. Some smart ass schlemiel that thought he was tricky.
Pretty easy to fool automated systems these days.
 
I took the plunge. I decided to go with the Ryzen platform after all. Here's why.

1. Future proof - By investing in the x570 Asrock Motherboard I have the option to get a Thunderbolt card in the future. I also have the option to upgrade to 128GB ram if I feel it becomes necessary. Also, this chipset is still new and future updates might only improve performance in the future. It also seems that whatever CPU I choose I can always upgrade to a better one in the future so I'll likely go with the Ryzen 7 3700x for now and maybe upgrade to a 3900x or even a Threadripper in the future.

2. Bang for buck. a 3700x with MOBO, case, ram, SSD's etc... ends up being roughly the same cost as an Intel i9 9900k, which does outperform the 3700x, except when it comes to multitasking and since the 3700x still comes admirably close to 9900k performance and when it comes to multitasking I find that I do that a lot even when I composing music so I think the 3700x will balance my workload a bit better overall. I also do a "little" bit of Video editing and that's another area where Ryzen comes ahead. With the 9900k I have no other upgrade path (at least not a real affordable one) but with Ryzen I do so even if 9900k is better with samples I can remedy that with a new CPU like a 3900x or a new Threadripper (when it comes out). However, my biggest bottlenecks are not CPU but rather lack of SSD's and memory so as I put my system together I doubt I'll notice any lack of CPU performance given I've focused on also upgrading Ram and Upgrading to SSD's.

Things I don't like about my upgrade:

1. There are always trade offs and I still don't like having a fan on my chipset but after looking at the video Evildragon shared I might decide, if it bothers me enough, do do a mod of my own replacing the fan (at my own risk) with an aftermarket heatsink.

2. I wish there were Integrated Graphics with the Ryzen since I don't particularly have a need for better graphics but my old system has a Radeon HD 6950 so I'll just use that and my old system can go back to using the Intel Integrated graphics (problem solved).

3. I'm not fond of the fact that X570 boards are currently higher priced than competing Z390 boards. If they were priced more competitively then making this decision would have been a lot easier (almost a no brainer). It still is a no brainer for people satisfied with what B450 and X470 have to offer.

4. Currently options are limited to Asrock for people that would like to have Thunderbolt. That will certainly change in the future and if rumors are true of incorporating Thunderbolt specs into future USB platforms then it becomes less of an issue.

So as you can see, in it's current form there are still trade offs to consider when moving from an Intel ecosystem but no matter how much money you spend on either platform that seems to be the case. I think I've carefully weighed the decisions and found what's best for me. At some point indecision was becoming my worst enemy and I really need to get back to work so there really was no wrong decision other than the need to just make a decision. Truth be told, flipping a coin helped me finalize my decision:)
 
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pderbidge said:
It also seems that whatever CPU I choose I can always upgrade to a better one in the future so I'll likely go with the Ryzen 7 3700x for now and maybe upgrade to a 3900x or even a Threadripper in the future.
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I might be wrong but does Threadripper not require a different CPU socket than Ryzen?
 
It will probably be better for you to wait to upgrade to the 4xxx series Ryzens as opposed to a 3900x. The 1000-series got a refresh with the 2000-series, which was the same architecture but with improved clocks and efficiency. The same is likely to happen with the 4000-series.
 
You should always wait for a better and newer CPU unless you are currently in need of a new one. So if your current CPU still is good enought, save the money.
 
zircon_st said:
It will probably be better for you to wait to upgrade to the 4xxx series Ryzens as opposed to a 3900x. The 1000-series got a refresh with the 2000-series, which was the same architecture but with improved clocks and efficiency. The same is likely to happen with the 4000-series.
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Correct me if I'm wrong but that will use the same socket, won't it? So if I bought a 3950X I would be able to put in a 4000 series processor to replace it next year.
 
Yes that's correct. I'm just saying that rather than upgrading twice (and losing time/money in the process), might as well wait for the 4000 series.

Keep in mind when you do a CPU update, some programs/plugins may reset your authorization, which makes it a hassle. I try to do that as infrequently as possible.
 
derstefmitf said:
I might be wrong but does Threadripper not require a different CPU socket than Ryzen?
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That's right, I forgot. So really it would just be a 3900x upgrade, but honestly I don't think that would be a significant upgrade to the 3700x. I don't want to wait for the new Threadrippers because I honestly don't want to spend that much right now and I was planning to do this upgrade a month ago already. So in that case there could still be a case made for going with the i9 9900k since it still tics all the other boxes I mentioned. The thing that tips the scale to Ryzen for me is the multitasking performance.
 
pderbidge said:
I took the plunge. I decided to go with the Ryzen platform after all. Here's why.

1. Future proof
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For me future proof is a myth. Eventually lack of contentment sets in and you want something faster despite only being slightly faster.

I am looking forward to your results with Ryzen.
 
zircon_st said:
Keep in mind when you do a CPU update, some programs/plugins may reset your authorization, which makes it a hassle. I try to do that as infrequently as possible.
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Good point though about the cpu update hassles with some programs. I didn't think of that one.
 
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kitekrazy said:
For me future proof is a myth. Eventually lack of contentment sets in and you want something faster despite only being slightly faster.

I am looking forward to your results with Ryzen.
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I knew someone would call me out on that when I wrote it because I've thought the same thing. Having said that, if my current 1150 chipset with my trusty i7 4770k would have allowed me to upgrade my 32GB ram to 64GB , then I likely would not be doing a full upgrade right now and just added more memory and SSD's and been happy with that. This time around I wanted to make sure I didn't make that same mistake and gave myself room to grow. However, there is the real possibility that by the time I want to upgrade ram to 128GB that the DDR5 will be the new standard and DDR4 chips will be so scarce and costly that upgrading the whole system ends up being cheaper. Been there, done that:)
 
pderbidge said:
I knew someone would call me out on that when I wrote it because I've thought the same thing. Having said that, if my current 1150 chipset with my trusty i7 4770k would have allowed me to upgrade my 32GB ram to 64GB , then I likely would not be doing a full upgrade right now and just added more memory and SSD's and been happy with that. This time around I wanted to make sure I didn't make that same mistake and gave myself room to grow. However, there is the real possibility that by the time I want to upgrade ram to 128GB that the DDR5 will be the new standard and DDR4 chips will be so scarce and costly that upgrading the whole system ends up being cheaper. Been there, done that:)
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I had a similar thought, not about 3000 vs 4000, but that you might have waited at least until the x570 made it to Main St. More choices, chipset maturity, potential heat dispersion/noise issues resolved, lower cost and all of that... My tentative plan is to rebuild again next January. My aging i7 2600 (maxed at 32 GB) is still running great, so I never even saw a reason to possibly upgrade until Intel gen 8 (improvements between Sandy Bridge and Kaby Lake, though not exactly trivial, were incremental enough to not be worth it on my meager budget).

But my hope is that by 2020 the dust will have settled on the current Intel/AMD wars, the post-Spectre/Meltdown landscape will have been addressed, and I can plop 128 GB of memory into 12 or 16 cores without being particularly expensive or cutting-edge. You're being an early adapter, which is cool. Hope it works out really well for you, and look forward to hearing how you like the performance of your new machine.
 
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