For background - I need a computer immediately for work reasons, and plan to order a dell xps desktop with an rtx 4070. I would also be using this to play TWW (and don’t play any other games).
I was wondering - when it comes to the processor, what is the difference between an i9-14900 and an i9-14900K when it comes to WoW performance?
To answer your question the difference is the 14900 non k is slightly slower and slightly lower power consumption and a locked chip meaning you won’t be able to tweak it too much if at all depending on motherboard settings.
Neither is really a recomended purchase right now. The upcoming microcode update might fix it, but those CPUs have had an incredibly high instability and failure rate.
Further to this unless you need some massive multiple threaded performance have professional workloads you don’t need the best CPU there is. 13600/14600 will perform pretty darn close to the high end CPUs for big price savings. You are looking for single thread performance if looking at bench marks. I also beliew the 13600/14600 dont have quite the issues the highest end CPUs do. Im running a 13600k slightly overclocked with no issues.
I’d recommend AMD on the CPU-side right now.
If you’re gaming for WoW, specifically, AMD’s X3D chips are the way to go. If workstation performance is a serious feature, the 7900X3D and 7950X3D might be better to go with, but the 7800X3D is the best gaming CPU right now, especially for WoW, with this particular emphasis from the chip’s bigger cache.
Intel’s 13th and 14th gens are reporting extreme instability for a variety of reasons, and they won’t be covered in warranty for them if you happen to suffer them.
Edit: Intel has pushed out their microcode update BIOS to beta, though not every board manufacturer seems to have it, though it sadly won’t function correctly if the CPU has already been damaged. They’ve expanded their warranty, though, so a lot of people are going to have fun RMA’ing and waiting.
Im still an intel fan but any X3D chip is solid and I would consider for my next CPU
Hi, sorry about the late response - do you by chance know how the 7950X3D and 7800X3D compare for TWW? In my current situation the 7950X3D is a bit less expensive, but I’d happily spend extra for a 7800X3D if it performs better. Isn’t the 7950X3D’s cache larger?
There isn’t typically a benefit to running the other 7000-series X3D chips, unless the game specifically uses a lot of cores. WoW isn’t one of them, though, so it should perform the same as the 7800X3D, and the 7950X3D is a really sick ‘budget’ productivity CPU.
One caveat to the other X3D Zen 4 chips was you’d have to disable the other CCD or extra cores that didn’t have access to the cache. I’m not sure if that’s still a thing, but I think Ryzen Master (AMD’s CPU software–generally optional) handles that, too. I’d have to look into that, since it’s been a while.
I looked recently for a friend, and the 7800X3D was out of stock pretty much everywhere, except Newegg for $535, which is way overpriced. lol
If you are using an RTX 4070 you won’t see a major difference in WoW among any of these processors unless you lower the graphic settings and run the resolution at something like 1080p to remove the GPU limits of the RTX4070.
That said, not a major real world difference difference between the 14900 & 14900k unless you are running benchmarks. There are stability issues with the CPUs but my guess is DELL would limit power in the BIOS to have them run stable.
The AMD 7950X3D is a dual CCD CPU which in laymen terms makes it rather niche in terms of production use and while it can offer good gaming performance it’s an overpriced CPU to the better gaming performing 7800X3D (the current top dog gaming CPU).
That said what kind of work are you doing that needs that type of CPU performance? In terms of gaming you would probably be just as good with an AMD 7600x/9600x or Intel 14600k and the RTX4070 @ 1440p resolution.
The 7950X3D is a somewhat complicated processor, whereas the 7800X3D is fairly simple in comparison.
The 7800X3D has a single 8-core CCD (one package with 8 cores on it), and they all have access to the 3D cache on that CCD.
The 7950X3D has two separate 8-core CCDs. One CCD has 3D cache, one CCD does not. This definitely complicates things.
There are definitely some benefits to the 7950X3D. You have more total cores obviously, if you actually need that many. The cores on the non-3D-cache CCD can also be clocked higher than the cores on the 3D-cache CCD. This is because the 3D cache sits on top of the CPU core and acts as an insulating layer, making the 3D-cache cores harder to cool. Some programs actually benefit from the higher clockspeed of the non-3D-cache cores more than they do from the extra cache on the 3D-cache cores. Having both types of cores potentially allows you to see the best performance in both types of workloads, provided that each task is correctly assigned to the type of core that it will benefit most from.
A downside to the 7950X3D (and all multi-CCD Ryzen CPUs) is that when a core from one CCD has to communicate with a core on a different CCD, it has to communicate across the infinity fabric. That is much slower than communicating with another core that is on the same CCD, and this incurs a latency penalty that, in a worst-case scenario can be observed in a game as micro-stutter.
With the 7950X3D, using a combination of the Windows scheduler as well as the XBox Game Bar, Windows will do the best it can to not only schedule tasks onto the cores that they will benefit the most from, but to keep each task on a single CCD, as opposed to spread out among multiple CCDs, unless that task actually requires more than 8 cores. It’s not perfect. Tasks can and do get put onto the “wrong” cores. Tasks can and do get split between CCDs.
The 7800X3D, with only one CCD, and all 8 of those cores having 3D cache, all of those additional variables regarding core scheduling seen with the 7950X3D are completely removed from the equation. It’s a simpler design where there really isn’t much that can go wrong. As long as your focus is on gaming and you don’t need more than 8 cores, the 7800X3D is without a doubt the top-dog.
Hi again - I really appreciate everyone’s comments here; they were very helpful and I probably wouldn’t have known how important an x3d cpu was without them! I ended up going with the 7950X3D + 4070 Ti Super, and the performance in WoW is absolutely incredible @ 1440p, will need to change that out for a 4k monitor soon for sure! I’ve not ever used a dedicated gaming pc before and I’m stunned by the difference in performance between this and my prior computer - I don’t think it’s ever dropped below the monitor refresh cap of 144 fps in any content so far.
The AMD 7950X3D is a dual CCD CPU which in laymen terms makes it rather niche in terms of production use and while it can offer good gaming performance it’s an overpriced CPU to the better gaming performing 7800X3D (the current top dog gaming CPU).
That said what kind of work are you doing that needs that type of CPU performance? In terms of gaming you would probably be just as good with an AMD 7600x/9600x or Intel 14600k and the RTX4070 @ 1440p resolution.
Actually, as I said before in my case the 7800X3D was somewhat more expensive than the 7950X3D (unsure if this is the norm).
The primary purpose for this PC is wfh and some Tensorflow projects, so I mainly needed an nvidia gpu with a decent amount of vram as a baseline. The only other intensive use for my pc is WoW, so that was the main motivation for getting a 7800X3D / 7950X3D. I’m unsure if I’ll ever be working with RL frameworks much at home, but since it’s a small possibility I also felt a bit safer going with the 7950x3d’s higher core count.