Ryzen upgrade?

[jhansman]

So, my Phenom II 1090T/16GB DDR3/850 EVO system is feeling, well, old, even though I built it about 6 yrs. ago. The Ryzen CPUs have created quite a stir, and I'm getting the upgrade urge again, probably for the last time (did I say that the last time?). I'm just wondering if the new CPU, DDR4, M.2 storage, USB 3.1, etc. delivers mind blowing performance, or will it all feel, umm, incremental. I'd like to hear from those of you who took the plunge and ditched your older systems for today's cutting edge. TIA.

 

[scannall]

So, my Phenom II 1090T/16GB DDR3/850 EVO system is feeling, well, old, even though I built it about 6 yrs. ago. The Ryzen CPUs have created quite a stir, and I'm getting the upgrade urge again, probably for the last time (did I say that the last time?). I'm just wondering if the new CPU, DDR4, M.2 storage, USB 3.1, etc. delivers mind blowing performance, or will it all feel, umm, incremental. I'd like to hear from those of you who took the plunge and ditched your older systems for today's cutting edge. TIA.

Mind blowing. Just do it.

 

[UsandThem]

It depends what you do with the PC. If you're just checking email or browsing the web, not as much as you would think (since you already have a SSD).

That said, having a much newer system is nice. Just about everything is instantaneous with a NVMe drive, as there is almost zero pause opening up browser tabs, anti-virus scans take like 20 seconds, and it just feels really responsive. Things like NVMe drives are overkill for the most part, as a 850 EVO is still pretty fast.

But I do think coming from a Phenom II build to a Ryzen or Coffee Lake build will be noticeable.

There are lot of YouTube videos where people compare the before and after results, but since they all play annoying, generic techno music while showing them, I couldn't stand to watch them.

So here is a reading link showing the difference:

https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2898-amd-phenom-ii-cpu-revisit-in-2017-x6-1090t-1055t?showall=1

 

[Excelsior]

I'd say it's better than incremental. However, I'd wait for the 12nm Ryzen refresh. Also not necessarily sure if NVME is much better in day to day use but I'm enjoying a 960 Evo as my startup and an 850 EVO for games and apps.

 

[jhansman]

Thanks. Yeah, I avoid those YT vids like the plague. And while I seem to be getting the hang of all this newfangled hardware out there, it all sure adds up. Looks like the only part I could bring over from my current rig would be my Radeon HD7700 vid card. I fall into the "enthusiast" category, and in the past my upgrades have always been somewhere in the middle of the pack, so no reason to veer from that lane. Every time I do this, it's a re-education in hardware compatibility; fun to fantasize, but expensive to pay for.

EDIT: Heh, the more I look into this idea, the less appealing it becomes, money-wise. Think I'll just stay where I am for now.

 

[Zstream]

Thanks. Yeah, I avoid those YT vids like the plague. And while I seem to be getting the hang of all this newfangled hardware out there, it all sure adds up. Looks like the only part I could bring over from my current rig would be my Radeon HD7700 vid card. I fall into the "enthusiast" category, and in the past my upgrades have always been somewhere in the middle of the pack, so no reason to veer from that lane. Every time I do this, it's a re-education in hardware compatibility; fun to fantasize, but expensive to pay for.

EDIT: Heh, the more I look into this idea, the less appealing it becomes, money-wise. Think I'll just stay where I am for now.

As the previous poster stated, it depends on your activity levels. Playing games, or 3D modeling type activities will certainly benefit from a new CPU, but other than that, it’s not worth it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I would put an upgrade from a Phenom II-class CPU, to a Ryzen family CPU, to be much closer to the "Mindblowing" category, than the "incremental upgrade" category. I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, that there's like a 40% IPC uplift in single-threaded tasks, and unless you were one of the lucky ones, and had hardcore cooling, and clocked your Phenom II at 4Ghz, then the Ryzen might be at a higher clock than your CPU too. (Most Ryzen CPUs will do 3.8Ghz easily. Some will do 3.9 or 4.0, very few might do 4.1. Best of all, for those 65W Ryzen CPUs, you can use the stock cooler to get to 3.8Ghz.)

So, yeah, if you have the budget for it, DO IT!

I like mine so much, I bought a few more. And then built a few to sell. (Still got them, check my FS thread and PM me if interested in a custom pre-built with a 3.8Ghz R3.)

IMHO, unless you are a "competitive" FPS gamer, with a greater-than-60Hz refresh monitor, then go Ryzen, due to the overwhelming value proposition. Otherwise, consider Coffee Lake if you are a pro gamer, and only game at 1080P.

 

[ao_ika_red]

At very least, your power bill will be reduced. 95W 1800x vs 125W 1090T (stock) with extra 10 Threads.

 

[UsandThem]

Here is a comparison using Anandtech's bench tool, however it doesn't display any data with any CPU newer than Intel Kaby Lake (it doesn't work with Ryzen or Coffee Lake CPUs), but I think the differences are pretty dramatic, and over twice as fast in some tasks:

https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/146?vs=1826

And to add to what ao_ika_red said above, if you went with a 65w CPU (like the Ryzen 1600 or Intel i7-8700, that's almost half of the power of your current one. So less heat and power usage.

 

[epsilon84]

What exactly is 'mind blowingly' better anyway?

In terms of that super snappy responsiveness feeling, a super fast M2 SSD drive like a Samsung 960 series would probably do more for you than a CPU upgrade. Of course you would need a new motherboard for that anyway, so its kind of a moot point. That being said, the 850 EVO is no slouch, like you I'm still running on an older platform and I don't find my SATA SSD to be a bottleneck in terms of system responsiveness or load times.

Gaming would be improved, but will it be mind blowing? I doubt it. It will definitely be a smoother experience, with higher miminum framerates being the most noticeable improvement. Night and day 'wow' experience? Probably not. A lot depends on the GPU you are running too. The faster the GPU, the bigger the difference you would see.

I'm going to go against the grain here somewhat and say - its more of an evolutionary upgrade, not a revolutionary one. In a best case scenario, you may get close to a doubling in performance if you upgraded, to say, a Ryzen 7 chip. In many real world scenarios the improvement would probably be closer to 50%, not 100%.

 

[DrMrLordX]

OP if you wanna upgrade, wait until March, and then decide.

The only thing that's really going to be expensive for you will be the DDR4. Video cards aren't *that* bad, 580 prices are coming down for example. And you can probably get a hell of a deal on a 390 or 390X.

 

[frozentundra123456]

What exactly is 'mind blowingly' better anyway?

In terms of that super snappy responsiveness feeling, a super fast M2 SSD drive like a Samsung 960 series would probably do more for you than a CPU upgrade. Of course you would need a new motherboard for that anyway, so its kind of a moot point. That being said, the 850 EVO is no slouch, like you I'm still running on an older platform and I don't find my SATA SSD to be a bottleneck in terms of system responsiveness or load times.

Gaming would be improved, but will it be mind blowing? I doubt it. It will definitely be a smoother experience, with higher miminum framerates being the most noticeable improvement. Night and day 'wow' experience? Probably not. A lot depends on the GPU you are running too. The faster the GPU, the bigger the difference you would see.

I'm going to go against the grain here somewhat and say - its more of an evolutionary upgrade, not a revolutionary one. In a best case scenario, you may get close to a doubling in performance if you upgraded, to say, a Ryzen 7 chip. In many real world scenarios the improvement would probably be closer to 50%, not 100%.

I agree. It really depends on what you do with the PC. For everyday, light use, I think it would be a moderate upgrade. For gaming, it would be a serious upgrade, but would depend on the video card. For multi-threaded productivity tasks is where it would be the biggest upgrade. There is a lot of recommendation for Ryzen on these forums, but dont forget to consider Coffee Lake either, if your uses are anything other than highly parallel productivity. The i3 8100 and i5 8400 ave excellent values as well if you can find them at list price. And for an all out gaming system, I would definitely go for the 8700 or 8700k.

 

[SPBHM]

for regular use the PII X6 should still feel quite fast, so unless you have something in mind that needs more performance, I don't really see a big benefit.
I also don't think going from a decent sata ssd to nvme makes much of a difference in regular use.


if you are doing some work that uses the CPU 100% (maybe also 100% of 1 core very often), or playing the latest games with a GTX 1060 or higher, I can see the benefit.

 

[DrMrLordX]

but dont forget to consider Coffee Lake either,

OP didn't mention those chips, and he's certainly going to be aware of them (Example: i5-8400 is being discussed on CPU/Overclocking front page). Looks like he's just going from one AMD system to the next. Though it's impossible to know without the OP chiming in on the subject.

But he did specifically mention Ryzen.

 

[aigomorla]

I fall into the "enthusiast" category, and in the past my upgrades have always been somewhere in the middle of the pack, so no reason to veer from that lane.

Sorry but i think your getting that catigory a bit confused.

Enthusiast catigory typically meant you were on the X79 X99 chipset.
Even the Z series chipset did not make the original enthusiast...

Bascially Enthusiast catigory was created by intel to sell enterprise level hardware with overclocking, to the consumer and rip them off by adding the tag "GAMER" at the end... :T

AMD had no enthusiast line back then, and now TR would probably just make the cut into being considered Enthusiast as the EYPC is a sister of Thread Ripper.

 

[mattiasnyc]

I just got an r7 1700 with an ASUS x370 board, and I'm upgrading from a Phenom 9950 CPU!

So if you have any specific tests you want me to run you have until tomorrow or Sunday before the old guy gets decommissioned and the Ryzen takes its place.

EDIT: Heh, the more I look into this idea, the less appealing it becomes, money-wise. Think I'll just stay where I am for now.

 

[VirtualLarry]

That's quite the upgrade. My understanding, is the the Phenom (not Phenom II) is basically AMD's first Monolithic quad-core, and that they performed similarly to Intel's Core2Quad CPUs, clocked similarly. Although, the "TLB bug fix" for the affected CPUs, could cause a big performance loss if enabled.

So, that's kind of like going from a Q6600 to a Ryzen 8C/16T CPU. Nice!

 

[DrMrLordX]

I have an old undervolted Phenom slaving away in a mining rig about 10 feet to my left.

That must have taken a lot of patience to last that long on such an old, blighted chip.

 

[mattiasnyc]

Well, I've been pretty conservative on my computer. No massive amounts of games, no bloatware, no illegit software, mostly 7-10 frequently used apps. What surprised me though is how long I managed to actually do content creation on it. I had to adjust my workflow of course, but I still managed to mix both shows and commercials for broadcast on the thing.

I was torn between a 1920x / Designare and something like this, and I basically figured that I want to make this rig pay for itself doing new things (video work), and if it does I'll go X399 (or x499?) next year. Another factor was that I use a Lynx (legacy) PCI card for audio, and it still sounds and functions exceptionally well. So... legacy PCI was a plus.

I'm excited to see what I can do on the new rig. If only video cards weren't so insanely stupidly ridiculously frustratingly expensive!.....

 

[moonbogg]

Sorry but i think your getting that catigory a bit confused.

Enthusiast catigory typically meant you were on the X79 X99 chipset.
Even the Z series chipset did not make the original enthusiast...

Bascially Enthusiast catigory was created by intel to sell enterprise level hardware with overclocking, to the consumer and rip them off by adding the tag "GAMER" at the end... :T

AMD had no enthusiast line back then, and now TR would probably just make the cut into being considered Enthusiast as the EYPC is a sister of Thread Ripper.

True. When I bought my 3930K, that made me a true enthusiast. Funny though, because when I bought my 6800K that just kind of made me an idiot. From hero to zero, just like that. Thanks Ryzen!

 

[mattiasnyc]

lol....

 

[StinkyPinky]

It depends what you do with the PC. If you're just checking email or browsing the web, not as much as you would think (since you already have a SSD).

That said, having a much newer system is nice. Just about everything is instantaneous with a NVMe drive, as there is almost zero pause opening up browser tabs, anti-virus scans take like 20 seconds, and it just feels really responsive. Things like NVMe drives are overkill for the most part, as a 850 EVO is still pretty fast.

But I do think coming from a Phenom II build to a Ryzen or Coffee Lake build will be noticeable.

There are lot of YouTube videos where people compare the before and after results, but since they all play annoying, generic techno music while showing them, I couldn't stand to watch them.

So here is a reading link showing the difference:

https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2898-amd-phenom-ii-cpu-revisit-in-2017-x6-1090t-1055t?showall=1

Compared to my old 840 evo boot drive, my 960 evo nvme is noticeably faster imo. Nowhere near the difference of going from a HDD to any half decent SSD granted, but I do notice it. Boot up, while fast with a good sata SSD, weren't near instant like they are with a nvme. I'd say it now takes longer for me to get a picture of my tv than it does to get into windows from a cold boot.

Either way you can see a nvme is quite a bit faster under some conditions compared to a sata ssd

https://youtu.be/S4zdft1HDbY