AMD *Ridge vs. Intel *Lake

[SenatorRobb]

Ok, I'm making a new new custom build, as the last one was damaged mid-way before, so I'm trying to salvage some stuff and make possible upgrades as I feel are worth it or better off with the previous choices. Mind you, I'm my own teacher, so don't be too harsh on me please.

 

Previous specs:

• Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming GT Motherboard
• Intel Skylake 6700K
• GeForce 980Ti
• 960GB SataExpress SSD
• Two Quad-Layer BDRW's
• 32GB System Memory, DDR 2400 (I think)
• One TPM Chip for Windows Bitlocker Compatibility
• 1600Watt PSU
• Liquid & Air Cooling Unit
• WiFI 802.11ac USB Extension

 

I would like to have a board that has WiFi 802.11ac & TPM chip as built-on features, but it's not absolutely necessary. My first and second choice of a new mobo are Asus Z170-Premium (First Choice) and Asus Z170-Deluxe (Second Choice) If not those a Gigabyte GA-170X-SOC Force. Also I'm not sure if I ought to get another Skylake 6700K or wait for a Kaby Lake or a Kaby Lake S with the Intel 200 series board. What about that? They offer 24 PCI-e x16 lanes.

Also if note Intel, what about AMD Raven Ridge with 2 Radeon's (Maybe more) are an option if that's the better, superior setup. Summit Ridge if I must, but prefer and APU if I go the AMD route. Also considering using M.2 or U.2 SSD's for even faster load/response time.

 

Edit: Sorry for the rambling, It's better edited now, I think, considering how tired I am. I must've done something right on the previous build because not only did it work and run, but it loaded windows in 3 seconds flat and logged into windows in 1 second or less maybe about 0.89 seconds.

[Yogurth]

If You are not in a time pinch, AMD Zen and Intel Kaby Lake are around corner and perhaps it would be wise to wait it out. 

[The Evil Overlord]

19 minutes ago, Yogurth said:

If You are not in a time pinch, AMD Zen and Intel Kaby Lake are around corner and perhaps it would be wise to wait it out. 

Seconded

 

OP

 

not to mention, usually the current gen drops in price also when the new gen comes out, so you stand to make a good saving, money that could pay for upgraded parts...

On a personal note, I'd ditch the 1gig ssd, get a 128gb ssd for your operating system only, and then get a 2 gig mech hdd for all your storage/work/gaming needs instead

[Open Minded]

5 hours ago, The Evil Overlord said:

 I'd ditch the 1gig ssd, get a 128gb ssd for your operating system only, and then get a 2 gig mech hdd for all your storage/work/gaming needs instead

This is good advice for most people.  I don't think it's worth the premium for such a big SSD unless you're a Steam junkie that wants fast loading times on all of your games or are working with massive files and need the speed.  If that's the case, get the 1TB SSD.  I hate loading screens with a passion, others might mind mind so much.

 

Speaking of SSDs, You might want to look into an NVMe drive like the 960 Pro.  They are much faster than a SATA SSD, use less space and are pretty much the new standard in storage as far as speed goes.  They do use a bit more power

and produce more heat but I think it's worth the speed.

[SenatorRobb]

6 hours ago, Yogurth said:

If You are not in a time pinch, AMD Zen and Intel Kaby Lake are around corner and perhaps it would be wise to wait it out. 

I'm thinking so as well, question is how much would I be looking to spend, just to know what I'm expecting. Question though, which would be better, from a gaming/video editing perspective, as well as large file backups? This I don't know. What would your recomendation be? AMD or Intel, and if AMD should it be an APU Raven Ridge or a CPU Summit Ridge? Radeon's are compatible with both, right? And what about the Kaby Lake S that supports this new Intel 200 series boards?

5 hours ago, The Evil Overlord said:

Seconded

 

OP

 

not to mention, usually the current gen drops in price also when the new gen comes out, so you stand to make a good saving, money that could pay for upgraded parts...

On a personal note, I'd ditch the 1gig ssd, get a 128gb ssd for your operating system only, and then get a 2 gig mech hdd for all your storage/work/gaming needs instead

That's a good idea!

5 minutes ago, Open Minded said:

This is good advice for most people.  I don't think it's worth the premium for such a big SSD unless you're a Steam junkie that wants fast loading times on all of your games or are working with massive files and need the speed.  If that's the case, get the 1TB SSD.  I hate loading screens with a passion, others might mind mind so much.

 

Speaking of SSDs, You might want to look into an NVMe drive like the 960 Pro.  They are much faster than a SATA SSD, use less space and are pretty much the new standard in storage as far as speed goes.  They do use a bit more power

and produce more heat but I think it's worth the speed.

I was actually looking at that as well !!

I was also thinking of throwing in a EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 FTW Hybrid Gaming, If I went down the Kaby Lake or Kaby Lake S road.

[Yogurth]

12 minutes ago, SenatorRobb said:

I'm thinking so as well, question is how much would I be looking to spend, just to know what I'm expecting. Question though, which would be better, from a gaming/video editing perspective, as well as large file backups? This I don't know. What would your recomendation be? AMD or Intel, and if AMD should it be an APU Raven Ridge or a CPU Summit Ridge? Radeon's are compatible with both, right? And what about the Kaby Lake S that supports this new Intel 200 series boards?

According to rumors and early benchmarks 8 Core AMD Zen will be around 300$ with performance comparable to i7-6900K which is around 1000$. AMD boards have historically always been cheaper than Intel's, so there is some money to be saved there too.

[SenatorRobb]

5 minutes ago, Yogurth said:

According to rumors and early benchmarks 8 Core AMD Zen will be around 300$ with performance comparable to i7-6900K which is around 1000$. AMD boards have historically always been cheaper than Intel's, so there is some money to be saved there too.

So  Kaby Lake, from a mere performance as a CPU would be superior? Also I read about a Kaby Lake S (Different than Kaby Lake, I dunno) but that supports Intel 200 series boards. But I'm thinking an AMD APU with Radeon's (Two or more in SLI) would be better from a graphics power perspective? Unless it's not as simple as a yes or no question? Sorry to badger, just trying to understand more and even learn better.

Edit: I though at best there was only a 4+2 core for AMD Zen

[Yogurth]

4 minutes ago, SenatorRobb said:

So  Kaby Lake, from a mere performance as a CPU would be superior? Also I read about a Kaby Lake S (Different than Kaby Lake, I dunno) but that supports Intel 200 series boards. But I'm thinking an AMD APU with Radeon's (Two or more in SLI) would be better from a graphics power perspective? Unless it's not as simple as a yes or no question? Sorry to badger, just trying to understand more and even learn better.

Edit: I though at best there was only a 4+2 core for AMD Zen

Kaby Lake could end up being up to 10% faster than Zen in single core operations, but since it will be 4 core series for mainstream market it will probably wind up slower than 8 core Zen in multi core operations. Intel's real answer to Zen comes up in 2018. with 6 core mainstream CPUs. Not sure about that 4+2 info, What I am aware of is that mainstream high end desktop Zen should have 8 cores and server variants 16+. 

[SenatorRobb]

4 minutes ago, Yogurth said:

EKaby Lake could end up being up to 10% faster than Zen in single core operations, but since it will be 4 core series for mainstream market it will probably wind up slower than 8 core Zen in multi core operations. Intel's real answer to Zen comes up in 2018. with 6 core mainstream CPUs. Not sure about that 4+2 info, What I am aware of is that mainstream high end desktop Zen should have 8 cores and server variants 16+. 

Ok, then I think perhaps a Raven Ridge APU. Would Nvidia cards work with Raven Ridge and an AMD board?

 

Edit: If so, then I will get an AMD Zen.

[Yogurth]

6 minutes ago, SenatorRobb said:

Ok, then I think perhaps a Raven Ridge APU. Would Nvidia cards work with Raven Ridge and an AMD board?

 

Edit: If so, then I will get an AMD Zen.

Nvidia cards should have no problem working on AMD boards, however I don't know about SLI...check thoroughly for that info.

[SenatorRobb]

Just now, Yogurth said:

Nvidia cards should have no problem working on AMD boards, however I don't know about SLI...check thoroughly for that info.

Thank you for all your help and being a sounding board, I appreciate it.

[jnelsoninjax]

You can not SLI ATI cards, that is called Crossfire, SLI is for Nvida, and you should have no trouble SLI or Crossfire as long you get a board that supports it, they usually advertise the fact that they are Crossfire ready or SLI ready.

[SenatorRobb]

32 minutes ago, jnelsoninjax said:

You can not SLI ATI cards, that is called Crossfire, SLI is for Nvida, and you should have no trouble SLI or Crossfire as long you get a board that supports it, they usually advertise the fact that they are Crossfire ready or SLI ready.

I'm learning, I can see you know what I mean though, so perhaps another question. I keep reading about AMD Zen and x86... It's ludicrous to think, but certainly these aren't 32bit only CPU's/GPU's/APU's in an era when even cheap PC's are 64bit enabled, at least. Is this just a misbranding or are they truly 32bit only?

Edit: Thank you.

[Open Minded]

2 hours ago, SenatorRobb said:

I was also thinking of throwing in a EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 FTW Hybrid Gaming, If I went down the Kaby Lake or Kaby Lake S road.

Two things about that GPU

1.  The voltage regulators were catching fire on the GTX 1080 cards.  EVGA issued thermal pads to solve the problem.  Now I don't know if that did anything to help the cards that are out in the wild or if that's the only fix EVGA

did to the card so the VRU wouldn't go Note 7.  This issue has been isolated to EVGA GTX 1080 cards.  This was a month or so ago and I've yet to hear anything new about the fixed cards.  It sucks because

EVGA has always been my go-to for Nvidia GPUs.  I've always had excellent luck but this has shaken my faith in the company a bit.

 

2.  Even after the above... That's the GTX 1080 I want.  I would buy it in a heartbeat if I had the extra cash right now.  It's water cooled so there should be no fires, right? 

[SenatorRobb]

11 minutes ago, Open Minded said:

Two things about that GPU

1.  The voltage regulators were catching fire on the GTX 1080 cards.  EVGA issued thermal pads to solve the problem.  Now I don't know if that did anything to help the cards that are out in the wild or if that's the only fix EVGA

did to the card so the VRU wouldn't go Note 7.  This issue has been isolated to EVGA GTX 1080 cards.  This was a month or so ago and I've yet to hear anything new about the fixed cards.  It sucks because

EVGA has always been my go-to for Nvidia GPUs.  I've always had excellent luck but this has shaken my faith in the company a bit.

 

2.  Even after the above... That's the GTX 1080 I want.  I would buy it in a heartbeat if I had the extra cash right now.  It's water cooled so there should be no fires, right? 

Well, if there is and the water cooling is compromised, you'll have a fire, a flood, and a lot of angry words to say, as would I !! But I think I may have changed my plans to AMD's raven ridge with some crossfire radeon's... 3 or 4 radeons will trump (no pun intended) 2 1080's, even those 1080's, well at least the vega 10 R500 series should!

Edit: I don't see any verifiable resources that the Raven Ridge Zen microarchitecture is not just x86, that it's x86-64 compatible.

[The Evil Overlord]

Intel have always been superior to AMD, there are literally thousands of threads bouncing around the internet about how intel destroys amd in everything. Yes amd use more power, but they are considerably cheaper than their flagship intel counterparts.

The thing is, it all depends on how you plan on using it. I prefer amd but that's because for me, it's almost as good, I haven't found an application that made my 6360 struggle.

So for me at least, the cost vs performance was ratio was within acceptable margins. (I originally built my rig as a cad workstation, <as I've mentioned in other threads>)

Also on a personal note,I've thrown some high end games at it, admittedly, they are a couple of years old now, as I don't get the chance often to game on my pc anymore, and have never seen it struggle with them on ultra or extreme settings.

1080p

 

[SenatorRobb]

5 hours ago, The Evil Overlord said:

Intel have always been superior to AMD, there are literally thousands of threads bouncing around the internet about how intel destroys amd in everything. Yes amd use more power, but they are considerably cheaper than their flagship intel counterparts.

The thing is, it all depends on how you plan on using it. I prefer amd but that's because for me, it's almost as good, I haven't found an application that made my 6360 struggle.

So for me at least, the cost vs performance was ratio was within acceptable margins. (I originally built my rig as a cad workstation, <as I've mentioned in other threads>)

Also on a personal note,I've thrown some high end games at it, admittedly, they are a couple of years old now, as I don't get the chance often to game on my pc anymore, and have never seen it struggle with them on ultra or extreme settings.

1080p

Well I'll be running it at 2160p, hopefully with extreme/max/ultra settings in the games, but with a couple or few radeons to help with that. I've seen that Zen instruction set is AMD64, so will that be 32 & 64 bit support, as I think it will? It's on wikipedia that way, but I would like to still verify it's x86-64 compatible.

 

Edit 2: Also do video editing/encoding... some of that. And I'm willing to make a small sacrifice, like you said the ratio... but also to have more dGPU's is nice.

Edit 3: Sorry just want to be absolutely certain I'm not buying a 32bit only processor.

[SenatorRobb]

So is it the AMD K12 is the 64bit variant of AMD Zen, but isn't that odd being build on ARMv8? I'm just confused now, or is it nobody knows because there isn't enough info out yet on Zen? My head hurts, I don't mind looking crap up it's just I'm finding contradictory stuff... apparently Zen is x86 but also x86-64, so which is it... aye cay-rumba.

Edit: What search strings should I use to find the right answer, though I found two conflicting answers, does somebody know or nobody knows?
Edit 2: Didn't mean to do a bump, I would've edited my last post but it wouldn't let me.

[The Evil Overlord]

1 hour ago, SenatorRobb said:

Well I'll be running it at 2160p, hopefully with extreme/max/ultra settings in the games, but with a couple or few radeons to help with that. I've seen that Zen instruction set is AMD64, so will that be 32 & 64 bit support, as I think it will? It's on wikipedia that way, but I would like to still verify it's x86-64 compatible.

 

Edit 2: Also do video editing/encoding... some of that. And I'm willing to make a small sacrifice, like you said the ratio... but also to have more dGPU's is nice.

Edit 3: Sorry just want to be absolutely certain I'm not buying a 32bit only processor.

I'm no expert, but I feel very confident on saying on record Zen will not be a 32bit only processor but this is a layman's opinion. I'm sure there will be 32 bit only variants, like all processor chips.

I don't see why it would be, seeing as the world of tech is looking towards 64bit as standard, (hell you can buy phones with 64bit chips now)

 

(I've tried video converting, yes I know it's different to full blown editing and so on, but a 1 hour 55 minute video took less than an hour and a half with supposedly 5.1 sound, at the time this rig didn't have a blu ray writer, so I had no way of testing the disc afterwards, so I deleted the project for reasons, but that was about the only time I've seen my processor spike max on task manager, it didn't even do that on autocad)

[The Evil Overlord]

7 minutes ago, SenatorRobb said:

So is it the AMD K12 is the 64bit variant of AMD Zen, but isn't that odd being build on ARMv8? I'm just confused now, or is it nobody knows because there isn't enough info out yet on Zen? My head hurts, I don't mind looking crap up it's just I'm finding contradictory stuff... apparently Zen is x86 but also x86-64, so which is it... aye cay-rumba.

Edit: What search strings should I use to find the right answer, though I found two conflicting answers, does somebody know or nobody knows?
Edit 2: Didn't mean to do a bump, I would've edited my last post but it wouldn't let me.

I'm sure a more knowlegable user will be along in time to better answer your question here, but only time will tell for certain. I used to get flustered like that looking at intel's numbers... I guess it's just how a brain is wired, I find looking at FX chip numbers simpler

[SenatorRobb]

1 minute ago, The Evil Overlord said:

I'm sure a more knowlegable user will be along in time to better answer your question here, but only time will tell for certain. I used to get flustered like that looking at intel's numbers... I guess it's just how a brain is wired, I find looking at FX chip numbers simpler

Yea, similar minds think alike, ahh time I guess will tell me, patience was never really my strong suit, working on it though. Oh well not much more to say, except thank you everyone for you help and input! Also, just curious, how much of a newbie did I sound like?

[The Evil Overlord]

5 minutes ago, SenatorRobb said:

Yea, similar minds think alike, ahh time I guess will tell me, patience was never really my strong suit, working on it though. Oh well not much more to say, except thank you everyone for you help and input! Also, just curious, how much of a newbie did I sound like?

For all I know dude, you probably know more than I  

[Luc2k]

10 hours ago, The Evil Overlord said:

Intel have always been superior to AMD.

Except in the Athlon64 days, when Intel resorted to illegal dealings to stop AMD's faster CPUs.

4 hours ago, SenatorRobb said:

Well I'll be running it at 2160p, hopefully with extreme/max/ultra settings in the games, but with a couple or few radeons to help with that. I've seen that Zen instruction set is AMD64, so will that be 32 & 64 bit support, as I think it will? It's on wikipedia that way, but I would like to still verify it's x86-64 compatible.

 

Edit 2: Also do video editing/encoding... some of that. And I'm willing to make a small sacrifice, like you said the ratio... but also to have more dGPU's is nice.

Zen will support 64/32/16-bit applications.

 

The APUs with Zen cores will most likely appear some time after Zen dedicated CPUs, towards the end of 2017. If you're going for that, you will need to wait almost a year. While we know something about the Zen cores (just rumours mind you), the GPU parts in them are a mystery. As for crossfire, current APUs can only be paired with dGPUs of a similar performance, so that excludes anything mid-end and up. This might change with Zen APUs, but it's unknown.

 

Now, Crossfire (or SLI) with dGPUs will improve performance in games, IF (and it is a big if) the game actually supports the feature. Having more GPUs does not automatically mean more FPS than a single card. Considering you plan on gaming @4K, you'd need top end hardware and even that does not guarantee good performance considering the badly optimised games we've been having lately. Wait for AMD's Vega and Nvidia's 1080 Ti before deciding on this, and then, if the performance they offer is not satisfactory, go for a second card.

 

4 hours ago, SenatorRobb said:

So is it the AMD K12 is the 64bit variant of AMD Zen, but isn't that odd being build on ARMv8? I'm just confused now, or is it nobody knows because there isn't enough info out yet on Zen? My head hurts, I don't mind looking crap up it's just I'm finding contradictory stuff... apparently Zen is x86 but also x86-64, so which is it... aye cay-rumba.

AMD K12 is a different architecture from Zen. Zen is x86 (e.g. desktops), K12 is ARM (e.g. smartphones, tablets). To clarify, x86-64 is part of x86.

 

I hope this clears some of the confusion.

Edited November 27, 2016 by Luc2k

[The Evil Overlord]

2 minutes ago, Luc2k said:

Except in the Athlon64 days, when Intel resorted to illegal dealings to stop AMD's faster CPUs.

My bad, I should not have blanket posted that statement

Early Macs and so on...

[SenatorRobb]

2 minutes ago, Luc2k said:

Except in the Athlon64 days, when Intel resorted to illegal dealings to stop AMD's faster CPUs.

Zen will support 64/32/16-bit applications.

 

The APUs with Zen cores will most likely appear some time after Zen dedicated CPUs, towards the end of 2017. If you're going for that, you will need to wait almost a year. While we know something about the Zen cores (just rumours mind you), the GPU part in them are a mystery. As for crossfire, current APUs can only be paired with dGPUs of a similar performance, so that excludes anything mid-end and up. This might change with Zen APUs, but it's unknown.

 

Now, Crossfire (or SLI) with dGPUs will improve performance in games, IF (and it is a big if) the game actually supports the feature. Having more GPUs does not automatically mean more FPS than a single card. Considering you plan on gaming @4K, you'd need top end hardware and even that does not guarantee good performance considering the badly optimised games we've been having lately. Wait for AMD's Vega and Nvidia's 1080 Ti before deciding on this, and then, if the performance they offer is not satisfactory, go for a second card.

 

AMD K12 is a different architecture from Zen. Zen is x86 (e.g. desktops), K12 is ARM (e.g. smartphones, tablets). To clarify, x86-64 is part of x86.

 

I hope this clears some of the confusion.

Greatly clears things up, and I will plan on getting a Radeon at first with raven ridge (Damn, just wish it wasn't a year away because this is, or was, my gaming rig)... But I think I'll wait for it. I think Zen is going to help bring AMD back into the fight, at least poise them to have a chance of going head to head with Intel.