Would it be worth it

[D-Dan]

I’ve been considering upgrading my CPU. Currently, Ryzen 7 1800X, and looking at the R9 3950X. However, all the info I can find suggests only a modest improvement all round, and probably not worth the investment. Does anyone have any real world experience of the two that will give me a truer picture?

Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.

[Dave Rice]

What is the “real world”? Mine is very different from yours.

In general computing each core is more efficient so quicker, but let’s face it you’re not going to really notice it in every day usage. But in your case the extra cores are going to get used by Blender so I would imagine that would be one hell of a difference, effectively more than doubling the processing power available.

It’s one hell of an outlay, I think only you can answer the value for money aspect. The 3900X is on offer at Scan at the moment for £468, may be easier to swallow for still a huge boost in cores.

[D-Dan]

Well, bearing in mind I have 8C 16T now, and the jury is out on whether my MB supports the 3950X (though ASUS say it does), is the performance difference worth £500? That’s my dilemma, though I could, of course, sell the 1800X. £225 new, so I reckon I could get £125 for it. Still a £375 investment.

Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.

[D-Dan]

Y’know, I guess I was asking for justification since I can’t find it myself. I may await the next gen and go for the full MB/CPU/GPU upgrade instead. No point chasing rainbows when there’s no pot of gold.

Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.

[Ed P]

+1 to all the answers. I think that you have to sit back and examine the causes of your dissatisfaction.

My usage pattern is perhaps somewhat similar to your own but my Ryzen is one of the earlier ones with less cores and core speed. Despite that I would say that there has only been one situation where the CPU has pinched, but the GPU pinched very early and I know I could get advantages from upgrading that. I would recommend that you look at AMD’s new range of workstation graphics cards, although these are fairly ordinary gaming GPUs they are optimised for Blender operations, (they are also seriously expensive!) The other area that I have problems with are on the i/o bus as that definitely pinches and could probably warrant my looking at ways of adding more bus capability.

Bottom line, I suggest that you add some monitoring programs and find out where the choke points are for your personal modus operandi.

[keith with the teef]

One thing to take into consideration is clock speed. You aint gonna get whats advertised with latest AMD. Its probaley fair to say that the latest AMD chips, when it comes to multi thread heavy load tasks will run over 200MHz slower than advertised MAX so try and do some maths on that and where you wanna be.

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