06-20-2017, 07:21 AM
http://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/296...ere/page-6
Quote:That aside, we can look at the i9-7900X from the perspective of our benchmarks. Intel claimed that the CPU would excel in multi-stream output scenarios, and it appears that the company was accurate in this statement. Our game stream testing shows fewer than 1% dropped frames with reasonably high quality streaming to two services, which is more than can be said for most other CPUs on the market. Intel’s done a good job here; however, this does come with its caveats. One of them is that, as is always the case with encoding on the gaming system, frametime variability goes up and potentially impacts the playback fluidity. This would mostly be noticeable for competitive streamers who are working with games like CSGO, DOTA2, or Overwatch. In these instances of demanding consistent frametimes, we’d still recommend a secondary capture machine to remove all doubt. In instances where the capture and gaming must be done on the same system, the i9-7900X makes it possible to multi-stream while still carrying gameplay at a reasonable clip. It’s just a matter of that frametime consistency.
For a single stream output, Ryzen still does quite well. The R7 1700 would overclock to readily match an 1800X in our tests and didn’t drop frames in our Twitch-only testing. The 7900X is a bit superfluous for single-game streaming, but does make multi-streaming possible in a way which hasn’t been as affordable before.
Intel gets praise here, as it is deserved. The lowered 10C price makes that performance all the more reasonable for streamers working with a single box. If that frametime consistency isn't a concern, or if working with lower framerate games than what we've tested so far (again: DOTA, CSGO), then Intel has managed to build and price a CPU that would allow a cheaper streaming+gaming build than two individual machines. There's just still a reason for a capture machine, depending.
But there are plenty of use cases where the 7900X makes no sense. VR gaming is one of those, despite Intel’s marketing. The i9-7900X is a monumental waste of money for VR gaming, given its performance is not only imperceptibly different from both the i7-7700K ($330) and R7 1700, but also technically worse than the $330 7700K. “Technically,” of course, because that objective lead by the 7700K isn’t really relevant -- no user will ever see or experience that difference, as all three CPUs output 90Hz to the HMD and do so within runtime limitations. That said, there’s no reason to buy a worse product for more money. We made that exact point with the 1800X review, and we’re making that point again now. The i9-7900X has no place in a machine built only for VR gaming. Buy any $300 CPU instead. Maybe there’s something to be said for “VR content creation,” but then you’re really entering into the realm of a productivity/office machine – there are other benefits to that, like reduced encode/rendering times, that are proven to be beneficial.
And speaking of those productivity tasks, we did see a substantial uptick generationally for Intel’s *900 series HEDT CPUs. The 7900X completed our Blender render in approximately 26% less time than the stock i7-6900K, and in approximately 23% less time than an overclocked R7 1700 CPU. Overclocking the i9-7900X to 4.5GHz (1.275 Vcore) furthered that, improving us another ~12% over the 7900X stock CPU. That time is valuable to the right audience, like a production studio or environment where money is made on time regained. For a lot of folks, though, like enthusiast artists, part-time freelancers, and folks not pulling a full salary on this kind of work, the R7 1700 CPU isn’t too terribly far behind and runs significantly cheaper on both the CPU and platform. It’s also a lot more memory and platform-limited, naturally, but that’s where you’ve got to use your own judgment. If the $700 is worth the additional memory support and speed, it probably means you’re making enough money on this work to write it off as an important expense. If that’s not the case, save the money and go with an R7 1700 CPU, spend 15 minutes on a trivial overclock, and be happy with competitive performance at one-third the price.
Both CPUs have their use cases and audiences, is the point.