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I upgraded from my 2500K @ 4.5Ghz to the 7700K, and you can color me impressed!

I was running a 970 with my 2500k, and I was noticing some jittering in the newer games. I am now pretty confident in suggesting that a 2500k bottlenecks a 970, at least at 1440p.

I was seeing benchmarks with up to 30% more FPS due to 7700k vs 2500k. That's like going from 970 to 1070 (in some cases), and is about the same price (mobo + cpu + ram vs. GPU).

Games like BF1 are running A LOT smoother now, which makes my g-sync monitor very happy.

Just wanted to share my experience, as a there's a lot of discussion about "is kaby lake finally good enough to upgrade"?

I would say yes

Out of curiosity did you OC your 2500k? Since it is a K I'd sort of imagine you at least attempted a slight OC, or were you running stock?

It was so easy to OC my 2500K to 4.3 from 3.3 that I actually forgot that I OC'ed it about a year+ ago, on stock cooling with no voltage increase. I only ask to get perspective on your 2500k to 7700k upgrade.

I am running a Haswell i7 at the moment with 32GB of some pretty pedestrian 1600MHz DDR3.

I'm curious what memory you had on the 2500K compared to what you're running now.

I'm convinced that gaming stutters are memory bandwidth-related because the 4.2GHz Haswell really isn't significantly slower than a 7700K in most benchmarks, but they usually test with 2133 or 2400 RAM.

Welch wrote:

Out of curiosity did you OC your 2500k? Since it is a K I'd sort of imagine you at least attempted a slight OC, or were you running stock?

It was so easy to OC my 2500K to 4.3 from 3.3 that I actually forgot that I OC'ed it about a year+ ago, on stock cooling with no voltage increase. I only ask to get perspective on your 2500k to 7700k upgrade.

It's written in the first line of his post, 6th word.

Just upgraded from a 3570K to 7700K and it...swept away some significant game bottlenecks.

It could be memory performance, but I'm mostly convinced that the lack of HT is just as big of a deal when it comes to 'feel'. This is something that you'd only be able to really quantify with frame-time analysis, and even that is difficult because many of your most demanding games are multiplayer.

Well here's how a 6700k does on DDR3 vs DDR4 memory http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/ha ... son-5.html
And here's how Skylake scales with ddr4 frequency http://www.legitreviews.com/ddr4-memory ... d_170340/4
Based on those two things buying those high speed 3600mhz+ ddr4 kits is a total waste of money for the minimal performance difference you gain, unless you like to run memory bandwidth benchmarks all day long.

Memory prices have jumped up sharply since Ryzen arrived.
PC4-17000 (DDR4-2133) 15-15-15-35, 1.2 V: $6.25/GiB
PC4-17000 (DDR4-2133) 13-15-15-28, 1.2 V: $7.06/GiB
PC4-19200 (DDR4-2400) 15-15-15-35, 1.2 V: $6.50/GiB
PC4-19200 (DDR4-2400) 14-14-14-34, 1.2 V: $7.22/GiB
PC4-21300 (DDR4-2666) 15-15-15-35, 1.35 V: $7.03/GiB
PC4-22400 (DDR4-2800) 15-15-15-35, 1.35 V: $6.87/GiB
PC4-22400 (DDR4-2800) 14-14-14-35, 1.35 V: $7.81/GiB
PC4-24000 (DDR4-3000) 15-15-15-35, 1.35 V: $7.50/GiB
PC4-24000 (DDR4-3000) 14-14-14-34, 1.35 V: $8.44/GiB
PC4-25600 (DDR4-3200) 16-18-18-38, 1.35 V: $7.50/GiB
PC4-25600 (DDR4-3200) 14-14-14-34, 1.35 V: $9.37/GiB
PC4-26600 (DDR4-3333) 16-16-16-36, 1.35 V: $9.37/GiB

I think R7 1700 is a much better deal, it's both cheaper and future proof. In applications with HTT/SMT support, the 8-core R7 1700 blitzes i7 7700K completely. i7 7700K has 30% higher clock speeds, but I think core-count and more threads make the 1700 a much better deal. Also, you can overclock the R7 1700 to 4Ghz, which is still shy from the 5GHz i7 7700K but it's absolutely great for an 8-core monster.

Mikael33 wrote:

unless you like to run memory bandwidth benchmarks all day long.

or you play Arma 3

http://techreport.com/discussion/31410/ ... 02#1021702

drfish wrote:

Here are some additional results:

i7-7700K @ 4.8 w/ DDR4-3733 - 56.5
i7-7700K @ 4.8 w/ DDR4-3200 - 49.6
i7-7700K @ 4.5 w/ DDR4-3200 - 48.8
i7-7700K @ 4.2 w/ DDR4-3733 - 48.1
i7-7700K @ 4.8 w/ DDR4-2400 - 46.4
i7-7700K @ 4.2 w/ DDR4-3200 - 45.5
i7-7700K @ 4.5 w/ DDR4-2400 - 43.9
i7-7700K @ 4.2 w/ DDR4-2400 - 40.2
i7-2600K @ 4.2 w/ DDR3-2133 - 31.0

xDoritox wrote:

I think R7 1700 is a much better deal, it's both cheaper and future proof. In applications with HTT/SMT support, the 8-core R7 1700 blitzes i7 7700K completely. i7 7700K has 30% higher clock speeds, but I think core-count and more threads make the 1700 a much better deal. Also, you can overclock the R7 1700 to 4Ghz, which is still shy from the 5GHz i7 7700K but it's absolutely great for an 8-core monster.

This is mostly true if your target framerate is around 60FPS; if it's more, the 7700K is where it's at simply because no AMD product (nor higher core-count Intel product) can get there.

xDoritox wrote:

I think R7 1700 is a much better deal, it's both cheaper and future proof. In applications with HTT/SMT support, the 8-core R7 1700 blitzes i7 7700K completely. i7 7700K has 30% higher clock speeds, but I think core-count and more threads make the 1700 a much better deal. Also, you can overclock the R7 1700 to 4Ghz, which is still shy from the 5GHz i7 7700K but it's absolutely great for an 8-core monster.

No guarantee of that, though. According to siliconlottery only the top 26% of R7-1700s, and 29% of 1700Xs make it to 4GHz, and it requires pretty hefty voltages to boot. 1.44V for 1700, 1.424 for the 1700x. The majority of chips top out at 3.8-3.9.

Looks like there's some serious binning going on, and if you really want 4GHz you'll have to shell out for the 1800X (73%, 1.408V).

Kretschmer wrote:

Just upgraded from a 3570K to 7700K and it...swept away some significant game bottlenecks.

That would be my exact upgrade path, so good to know it's worth it. Now to find $550 to replace the CPU, MOBO and RAM...

Any particular games you can note? I know that in my trial of Battlefield 1 with my RX 480 I was getting random stuttering that just didn't feel like GPU related slow down. This is all at 1080p.

Airmantharp wrote:

xDoritox wrote:

I think R7 1700 is a much better deal, it's both cheaper and future proof. In applications with HTT/SMT support, the 8-core R7 1700 blitzes i7 7700K completely. i7 7700K has 30% higher clock speeds, but I think core-count and more threads make the 1700 a much better deal. Also, you can overclock the R7 1700 to 4Ghz, which is still shy from the 5GHz i7 7700K but it's absolutely great for an 8-core monster.

This is mostly true if your target framerate is around 60FPS; if it's more, the 7700K is where it's at simply because no AMD product (nor higher core-count Intel product) can get there.

The Ryzens are only optimal if you can use all those threads in specific tasks that apply to you. For general purpose tasks, single-threaded performance is almost always your best investment. And I agree 100% on the "60 FPS" comment; if you're investing in one today's 100+Hz displays and the GPU to drive it you're doing yourself a disservice to purchase a "60 FPS" CPU.

I find a lot of people justifying Ryzen on "future multithreading," just like Bulldozer. This is more or less wishful thinking, as parallelism is either inherent to a task or isn't. You could have 1,000 threads at your disposal and still choke if your application or game depends on one particular thread. Core-count is only as useful as the parallelism of the software that you use it for, and you have to put up with an immature platform to get all of those questionably-useful cores. I'd consider Ryzen as a strict downgrade to Haswell or earlier for my tasks.

southrncomfortjm,

The games that really blew me away on the 7700K are ones that involve a lot of character models on the screen at once: Diablo3 and Heroes of the Storm went from spending a good chunk of time at 60FPS or below to being a constant 100+++ FPS. MMOs also love the extra horsepower. Again, I just built and only tried out a few games.

I went from a 4.9ghz 4790k DDR3-2133 to 5.1ghz 7700k DDR4-3600 and saw massive (unexpected) smoothness gains. I'm pretty confident that the memory jump gave me the most seat-of-the-pants gains, but I can attest that it was a real doubling of my low fps numbers (like MMOs in packed ares, BL2 with heavy physx, etc).

Also considering I have never seen any gaming use more than 30-50% range of my CPU, I would not benefit switching to a slower 8 core currently.

Edit: 144hz monitor too

I went from DDR3-1333Mhz memory (checked my current CPU-z signature to confirm), to DDR4-3200Mhz memory (partially on some of the memory related gaming results from TR).

I am also running a 144hz G-sync monitor. I was able to push up my video quality settings on BF1 and Titanfall 2, and still had a framerate increase, not to mention a much MUCH more consistent framerate.

Now I just need to get a GTX 1070 to complete the upgrade and I might even start looking at using ULMB instead of G-sync mode for my monitor. It has both options (Dell S2716DG monitor, which i also recommend as a low-cost G-sync. The TN panel is quite excellent, and I never plan to view it from anything other than optimal viewing position, so the TN-ness doesn't really bother me. I came from a 27" IPS Korean knockoff).

Sorry, that last paragraph was a bit off topic, I do realize i'm in the Processors thread.

Sputnik7 wrote:

Dell S2716DG monitor

I have the same monitor with a 1070, I actually like it better than the Acer XB270HU and very happy with my purchase.

Airmantharp wrote:

It could be memory performance, but I'm mostly convinced that the lack of HT is just as big of a deal when it comes to 'feel'. This is something that you'd only be able to really quantify with frame-time analysis, and even that is difficult because many of your most demanding games are multiplayer.

I went from a 2700K at mid-4 GHz to a stock 6700K and had a similar experience (massive boost in "smoothness", even in lightweight games). DDR3-2400 on the former, DDR4-2400 on the latter, so no real difference in memory bandwidth.

I still can't explain it.

ColeLT1 wrote:

Sputnik7 wrote:

Dell S2716DG monitor

I have the same monitor with a 1070, I actually like it better than the Acer XB270HU and very happy with my purchase.

Even though current IPS and VA monitors are "144Hz", the TN panels are still more responsive. It's a trade-off.

Waco wrote:

Airmantharp wrote:

It could be memory performance, but I'm mostly convinced that the lack of HT is just as big of a deal when it comes to 'feel'. This is something that you'd only be able to really quantify with frame-time analysis, and even that is difficult because many of your most demanding games are multiplayer.

I went from a 2700K at mid-4 GHz to a stock 6700K and had a similar experience (massive boost in "smoothness", even in lightweight games). DDR3-2400 on the former, DDR4-2400 on the latter, so no real difference in memory bandwidth.

I still can't explain it.

This is very similar to my experience going from a 2600K @ 4.6GHz to my current 5775C at stock clocks. The memory is exactly the same between the two and both were with a GTX 1070. I know the 5775C is a bit of a unicorn but the difference in performance was much bigger than I anticipated.

Firestarter wrote:

Mikael33 wrote:

unless you like to run memory bandwidth benchmarks all day long.

or you play Arma 3

http://techreport.com/discussion/31410/ ... 02#1021702

drfish wrote:

Here are some additional results:

i7-7700K @ 4.8 w/ DDR4-3733 - 56.5
i7-7700K @ 4.8 w/ DDR4-3200 - 49.6
i7-7700K @ 4.5 w/ DDR4-3200 - 48.8
i7-7700K @ 4.2 w/ DDR4-3733 - 48.1
i7-7700K @ 4.8 w/ DDR4-2400 - 46.4
i7-7700K @ 4.2 w/ DDR4-3200 - 45.5
i7-7700K @ 4.5 w/ DDR4-2400 - 43.9
i7-7700K @ 4.2 w/ DDR4-2400 - 40.2
i7-2600K @ 4.2 w/ DDR3-2133 - 31.0

I've seen that, obviously not typical at all, but I would be interested to know why it scales so well with memory bandwidth.

I must agree with OP. I just went from a 2500k @ 4.4GHz + 8gb 1600MHz to 7700k @ 4.5GHz + 16gb 3000MHz
GPU: MSI 980ti

The difference was how I felt going from 1080p to 1440p.....so beautiful. Now BF1 is so smooth.
Before: CPU 100% GPU 60-100%
Now: CPU variable GPU 100%

Bottleneck solved. Now I am able to play Ultra with excellent fps at 1440p. Never a single hiccup or slowdown. It is almost too smooth.

Not too different then my recent upgrade as well. Went from a 2600K@5Ghz to a 7700K at stock, and the stock 7700K is definitely faster. Getting specific is tough though because none of the hardware carried over from the old machine to the new. While the new machine is many times faster then the old, most of that is due to faster ram, super fast M2 SSD, modern chipset, modern GPU, etc.

Kretschmer wrote:

This is mostly true if your target framerate is around 60FPS

I find a lot of people justifying Ryzen on "future multithreading," just like Bulldozer.

I won't argue that in gaming the 7700K is a better deal right now. For everything else, I'm not so sure. And I can't tell you if part of the problem is NVs driver optimizations or not.

I justified Ryzen on that it's a solid all around performer, though it does have room for improvement. It might be all I do that really requires power, but gaming is definitely not all I do. (Yes, I see the contradiction.) Still sad that I didn't wait for the 1600X tho o.o

I run a 75hz 1440p monitor myself...heat is a concern, as is the amount of money I'd have had to spend to push either 144hz or 4k.

The "future multithreading" thing is just another way of future proofing a machine. Maybe it works out the way you hope it will, maybe not. Maybe it takes 7 to 10 years for the things you were anticipating to become commonplace, and by then you need another new machine anyway.

Redocbew wrote:

The "future multithreading" thing is just another way of future proofing a machine. Maybe it works out the way you hope it will, maybe not. Maybe it takes 7 to 10 years for the things you were anticipating to become commonplace, and by then you need another new machine anyway.

IMO 'Future' would be buying a machine for HSA support or something.
...

Anybody delid their 7700k? I just got the Rockit 88 and will delid soon. With good cooling, the 7700k at stock runs hot.
In gaming, 78C, with 24C room. Too hot.

tpe2012 wrote:

Anybody delid their 7700k? I just got the Rockit 88 and will delid soon. With good cooling, the 7700k at stock runs hot.
In gaming, 78C, with 24C room. Too hot.

I delid 3 of them. Here are the results:
viewtopic.php?f=33&t=119137

My personal 7700k is running at 5.1ghz @ 1.386v, on a waterloop so runs pretty cool (max temp <80c, games in the 50s)

Rza79 wrote:

Welch wrote:

Out of curiosity did you OC your 2500k? Since it is a K I'd sort of imagine you at least attempted a slight OC, or were you running stock?

It was so easy to OC my 2500K to 4.3 from 3.3 that I actually forgot that I OC'ed it about a year+ ago, on stock cooling with no voltage increase. I only ask to get perspective on your 2500k to 7700k upgrade.

It's written in the first line of his post, 6th word.

Still waiting to hear if OP OC'd though.

I'd just like to add to the chorus of voices that moved from Sandy to Sky/Kabylake. A year and change ago I moved from my trusty i5-2500K (at 4.4GHz) to the current i7-6700K and the smoothness improvement overall was massive, particularly in games. Just like posters above described, games where I had uneven framerates and/or hitching just became smooth as silk.

Back when I wrote about this in the forums, there was no small measure of incredulity as "in theory it wouldn't be a huge jump." Well, as it happens, 5-10% IPC generational improvements over some four (five?) generations do add up.