While Intel’s 10th Gen processors are out in the US and North America, they’re still unavailable in many regions of Asia-Pacific. Furthermore, many countries like China and Australia, the new Comet Lake-S parts are overpriced, while the older 9th Gen lineup is still selling at its original MSRP. Therefore, these comparisons are still relevant to many consumers. In this post, we have a look at Intel and AMD’s top-end offerings and decide which one is the best buy. The competitors for this one will the Core i7-9700K, the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X and the 3800X.
Specifications
| Specs | Core i7-9700K | Ryzen 7 3700X | Ryzen 7 3800X |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cores/Threads | 8/8 | 8/16 | 8/16 |
| Base Clock | 3.6 GHz | 3.6 GHz | 3.9 GHz |
| Boost Clock | 4.9 GHz | 4.4 GHz | 4.5 GHz |
| Cache | 12 MB | 32 MB | 32MB |
| TDP | 95W | 65W | 105W |
| Memory Support | DDR4-2666MHz | DDR4-3200MHz | DDR4-3200MHz |
The prices of AMD’s Ryzen 3000 CPUs have dipped significantly over the past month. While the Ryzen 5 3600 is available for just $159, the 3700X and the 3800X are both selling under $300. Intel’s Core i7-9700K has dropped to $359 at Microcenter to make way for the 10th Gen Comet Lake-S parts. However, most online retailers like Newegg and Amazon are still selling it for around $380. This is despite the launch of the newer chips.
Test Bench
Motherboard:
- ASRock X570 Taichi (AMD)
- Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Master (Intel)
RAM:
- G.Skill Trident Z Royal 8GB x 2 @ 3600MHz
Graphics Card:
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti
Storage:
- WB Black 480GB NVMe
- WD Black 4TB HDD
PSU:
- Corsair HX1000i
Intel Core i7-9700K vs AMD Ryzen 7 3700X vs 3800X: Gaming Performance
All the games were tested at 1080p using the highest in-game graphics preset:
In Assassins’ Creed and Ashes, the Ryzen 7 3800X comes out on top with the 3700X following shortly behind. The Core i7-9700K manages a decent showing in the latter but AC’s Anvil Engine prefers thread counts over clocks. This leads to a rather rare defeat for the Core i7 in Assassins’ Creed Origins.
The remaining titles from Deus Ex to The Division all benefit from the Core i7-9700K’s high boost clocks while ignoring SMT. The Intel Core i7 seems like the better pick for gaming workloads, but keep in mind that these are all 1080p tests, and even then the deltas don’t cross 10%.
At higher resolutions such as 1440p and 4K, these deficits will mostly be reduced to under 5%. There’s also the price to consider. The Core i7-9700K is nearly $100 more expensive than the Ryzen 7 3700X. You can save those hundred bucks on the CPU and spend them on a better GPU or monitor.
Content Creation: Cinebench, IndigoBench
Moving on to non-gaming workloads, SMT suddenly becomes relevant. Cinebench fully utilizes all the CPU threads SMT or not. Unsurprisingly, the Intel Core i7-9700K is crushed by the Ryzen 3000 parts in both the single-threaded as well as the multi-threaded benchmarks. In the latter, the 3800X manages to one-up even the top-end Core i9-9900K which scores a bit under 4.9K.
In IndigoBench, the 9700K is once again beaten pretty badly by the Ryzen 7 siblings, clearly highlighting AMD’s advantage in multi-threaded workloads like rendering and video editing.
Encoding, Compression & Browsing
7-zip is one of those programs that’ll eat as many threads as you throw at it. It scales well with even 32 core Threadrippers. As expected, AMD once again has a major advantage here.
Kraken is a good indicator of browsing performance. Unlike Jetstream, it’s a more balanced test. In the latter, the Core i9-9900K often performs worse than the 9700K. The reason being that each thread has more L2 cache. Hyperthreading being enabled in the 9900K, each core’s L2 and L1 cache is divided between two threads, and they being competing for resources.
Like 7-zip, Handbrake also benefits from higher core counts and that’s quite obvious here. While the core clocks do have an impact, it’s largely nullified by the presence of SMT on the Ryzen 7 parts.
Conclusion
All three chips are excellent high-end processors. However, with the recent price drops, the Ryzen 7 3700X is a much better value for money CPU. Even if you’re looking to build a gaming-centric PC, it’s better to opt for the Matisse part, avoiding the 9700K.
You’re basically looking at like 5% more FPS in games for an extra $100 and significantly worse content creation performance. Not worth it. I’d suggest investing in the 3700X or the 3800X if you’re into overclocking. Both the chips offer much better performance per dollar and performance per watt. In gaming, they may be slightly behind their Intel rivals, they’re much faster in everything else and cost notably less.
