Best CPU options for 3dvision in 2019/2020?

[Necropants]

Well, I think it's time for a new CPU/motherboard combo for me going into next year.
I would like opinions and some discussion about optimal options for us going forward.

Unfortunately, we have the 3 core bug to contend with meaning core speed is probably the most important thing here. I guess technically the i9 9900ks is the best option but there's another factor...

The fact the more windows 10 is updated the more issues we will encounter.
I personally am finding more and more problems in windows 10 that do not exist in windows 7 including games refusing to start in 3D or exclusive fullscreen mode at all and just a generally better level of gaming performance, So I currently utilize a Dual boot system and Windows 7 and I would recommend you do the same.

Windows 7 is EOF next year, so I will keep it as a gaming only isolated partition.
So the issue is, unfortunately, I will need a CPU/motherboard combo that's significantly more powerful than my existing i7 4950k but still supported in windows 7 or at the least has a stable workaround.
So options will be severely limited and I assume that eliminates the 9900k series.

Thoughts?

[Obveron]

I'd say overclock a 9600 9700 or 9900, lots of people are using z390 on windows 7.

[john105]

Unfortunately, we have the 3 core bug to contend with meaning core speed is probably the most important thing here. I guess technically the i9 9900ks is the best option but there's another factor...

True. There are single thread performance benchmarks like https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html to give an idea how CPUs compare without taking the core count into account. Even though top AMD CPUs are slightly faster, I read that Intel is still better for performance in games.

I will need a CPU/motherboard combo that's significantly more powerful than my existing i7 4950k but still supported in windows 7 or at the least has a stable workaround.
So options will be severely limited and I assume that eliminates the 9900k series.

Not true. Check https://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic. ... 05&t=23414

[RAGEdemon]

Leaving aside completely the Win7 Legacy factor for the time being, you're right Necrpants, - in my humble opinion, a 9900KS right now is spot on...

...However, if you can wait a little bit longer, Intel will be releasing new CPUs with 18% better IPC soon. These CPUs will also have hardware mitigation for a lot of flaws built in so hopefully a further boost there too.



AMD too are launching a brand new architecture next year (IIRC) which ought to be a significant jump from their current offerings. It may well be that AMD might be close to, on par with, or even exceed single core performance of Intel. (Already, AMD IPC is significantly superior to Intel's IPC - only clock speeds let AMD down).

There is always a crowd that argues that one shouldn't wait. But, in my humble opinion, there are great things on the horizon compared to your current i7 4950k.

Sadly, with the 3 core bug, you're only looking at a ~12% increase in performance going from a i7 4950k to a 9900K, if single core performance is any indicator.

Next year onwards however, you are looking at possibly 30% improvement...

[john105]

...However, if you can wait a little bit longer, Intel will be releasing new CPUs with 18% better IPC soon. These CPUs will also have hardware mitigation for a lot of flaws built in so hopefully a further boost there too.

Are you talking about Ice Lake? I read that Intel won't release a desktop version of it until 2022.

[Obveron]

It's going to be a long wait for sunny cove at 5ghz.

[RAGEdemon]

It's going to be a long wait for sunny cove at 5ghz.

I believe laptop chips have already been released, but Unfortunately, what you and our friend john105 say is very true. Right now, Intel are having huge trouble even supplying old chips.

Leaving aside any Win7 issues: Personally speaking, to me, the Ryzen 3950X looks superb and has decent overclocking potential. The price of this 16 core beast is about the same as the price of the 8 core 9900KS which only has half the cores.



I am [very cautiously] expecting the '4x' generation Ryzen chips with a new architecture over the next couple of years, to be 16 cores AND close to on par in gaming performance with 9900KS. I would see myself upgrading to a hypothetical 16 core Ryzen 4950X capable of supporting DDR5 as a more 'future proof' chip.

For me personally, I would not consider going from a 7700K (or 4950k) to a 9900KS for gaming to be a worthwhile investment, especially since PS5/new XBox are confirmed to have 8c/16t Ryzen chips. Consoles = ~30 fps aim. An 8 core 9900KS would give you maybe 40fps in next gen console games (majority of PC games are console ports), which, to me, is wholly unacceptable as any kind of 'upgrade'.

Having double the cores in a hypothetical 16c/32t Gen 4x Ryzen *might* alleviate that bottleneck somewhat.

Of course, it likely won't do anything for our 3 core bug... dark days ahead in that regard.

[Necropants]

Don't forget the main thing here. I need Windows 7 compatibility. I've hit a few issues with 10 lately enough to make me realize I won't be dropping 7 any time soon regardless of EOL

I know there's a lot of people having good results with getting modern cpu's running on W7 with some work arounds but I've equally seen claims otherwise.
As long as USB is the only factor I could probably live with getting a PCI USB controller.

Btw thanks for the thread link RageDemon, not sure how I missed that. More to look into I guess.
I guess ultimately I should wait a little longer and see what the future brings...

[bo3bber]

Don't forget the main thing here. I need Windows 7 compatibility. I've hit a few issues with 10 lately enough to make me realize I won't be dropping 7 any time soon regardless of EOL

I know there's a lot of people having good results with getting modern cpu's running on W7 with some work arounds but I've equally seen claims otherwise.
As long as USB is the only factor I could probably live with getting a PCI USB controller.

Btw thanks for the thread link RageDemon, not sure how I missed that. More to look into I guess.
I guess ultimately I should wait a little longer and see what the future brings...

USB is the only factor. I'm running an 8700K, which is theoretically not supported at all on Win7, but I dual boot that just fine. 9700K or 9900K is not going to be different.

With the Asus motherboard, this was actually quite easy, they have a utility to slipstream the USB support into a Win7 USB installer, so I could just boot off the USB stick.

I think the sweet spot for CPUs is the i7-9700K or more likely, the KF. It's 8 core, no hyper threading. Not necessarily the best choice if you only care about the latest games, but for last generation stuff it's going to have the best headroom for overclocking.

The heavy emphasis on core count is still not a real thing for the vast majority of gaming. It might be some day, but not today. If you look at the big game engines like Unity and UE4 and CryEngine, they don't support high core counts, so the majority of games will not benefit from expensive CPUs.


One tip I can offer from recent benchmarking is that 32GB is not a waste of money. Windows does a pretty good job of using the extra ram for caching, so second launches of anything can be dramatically better.

[Chtiblue]

Hi,
With 2080Ti, for 4k 3Dvision or VR at 2160p, is it really worth to change my old i53570k @4.2Ghz to an i7-9700K?
Which fps gain could I expect?

In the meantime I have a great sale on cdiscount with "Pack Ryzen 9 3900X + Gigabyte X570 AORUS Elite AM4" for 629€ (plus more 50€ gygabyte Elite cashback so 579€)!

https://www.cdiscount.com/informatique/ ... b-_-169249

Is it the time to go with AMD CPU?

[Chtiblue]

For what I see on Benchmark, i7-9700k leads hands on in1080p, again with less marge in 1440p and are more about equal in 4k but this is because in 4k we are GPU limited…

So for now I would see no difference in 4k VR nor 4k 3dvision (8k) but if I think about future higher GPU then I7-9700k will certainly win in 4k or 8k when we won't be GPU limited.

So after all perhaps i7-9700k is a better investment?!!

[bo3bber]

Hi,
With 2080Ti, for 4k 3Dvision or VR at 2160p, is it really worth to change my old i53570k @4.2Ghz to an i7-9700K?
Which fps gain could I expect?

In the meantime I have a great sale on cdiscount with "Pack Ryzen 9 3900X + Gigabyte X570 AORUS Elite AM4" for 629€ (plus more 50€ gygabyte Elite cashback so 579€)!

https://www.cdiscount.com/informatique/ ... b-_-169249

Is it the time to go with AMD CPU?

I'm less sure about the 3D Vision difference here, because it's difficult to tease out how significant the 3-core bug is, and also I'm not sure you'll be CPU bound when driving 4K. You definitely will be at 1080p, but 4K is enough pixels that it might be switching over to GPU bound. The 3-core bug does not hit every game, but where it does hit, the older CPU is much worse choice than i7-9700K.

However- for VR, you definitely want a better CPU. There is a lot of jibber jabber on the internet about multi-core cpus and blah blah blah, but for VR the only thing that matters is single-core thread performance. Pretty much the same as 3D Vision, but it's more notable in VR. There are a small handful of games that work on multiple cores in VR, but the vast majority, easily 90% are single core experiences.

The main reason is because nearly everything is built using either UE4 or Unity, and neither of those big game engines do multi-threading worth a damn. It's possible to get some small advantages in Unity for drawing, but the main game code that runs the physics and the world has no support at all for multi-threading. I'm less sure about current UE4 state, but a couple of years ago it was the same. Some hardcore developers develop their own multi-threading but it's rare.

Because of that, I don't think the Ryzen CPUs are a good choice. Lots of cores is meaningless, even today in 2020, except for some very specialized workloads like video editing. Anything more than 8 cores is currently skipped, even by big games that do multi-threading well.

On VR specific forums you'll also hear jibber jabber about DX12 being magical and solving all performance problems. It won't. Software is hard. Multi-threaded software is really, really hard. And one thing most VR enthusiasts keep forgetting is that the world building code that updates the physics, moves objects, figures collisions, and all that needs to run at 90 Hz... otherwise you drop a frame. None of that code runs on the GPU.

Single best CPU at present for single-core performance is the i7-9700K. That will definitely help 3D Vision in cases where you are CPU bound, and will dramatically improve your VR experience.

[Chtiblue]

Hi Bo3b
Thanks a lot for your awesome explanation as always!

Indeed VR is why I have decided to change my CPU as I saw it completely overloaded.

I7-9700K will be my next move tomorrow

Cheers

[Pure Mana Supreme]

Is 9700k a worthwhile investment over 8700k? Right now I could simply upgrade to 9700k with Z370 motherboard and it wouldn't be that big of a deal. Not sure if there is any performance to be had though, 6 logical cores with HT vs 8 physical cores no HT, is the latter going to do 3D Vision better?

[RAGEdemon]

IMHO, No noticeable difference if even there is any beyond margin of error.

[Pure Mana Supreme]

IMHO, No noticeable difference if even there is any beyond margin of error.

Thanks Rage, yeah I just revisited all of the benchmarks and comparisons between 8700k, 9700k and 9900k and man, 9th series Intel is a total letdown, they need to get off of 14nm! You would think AMD would have put sufficient pressure on them to move to 10nm but NOPE, we have one more garbage iteration of 14+++++++++++++. They keep adding cores whilst keeping IPC relatively constant. It's as though everyone is conspiring to kill 3D Vision. What I need is a CPU as fast as 9900k with 4 Cores with this stupid 3 core bug!!!!

Tried to get into Middle Earth: Shadow of War last night and was really enjoying the opening segment, performance was great turning only a few settings down at 2560x1440 with 2080 Ti @ 2070 MHz under full water block (Shadow Quality and Shadow Distance, turned down from Ultra to High and it was pretty much 60 FPS everywhere on the GPU side) until I reached the large city with the large ivory tower and then the CPU bottleneck reared it's ugly head and it was like 40 FPS @ 60% GPU Utilization with 8700k @ 5.0 GHz and I just said screw it and uninstalled the 3D fix and went back to 2D on the AW3418DW.

Speaking of which, has anyone here been able to get TimFX7's Start3D.exe / DX12 fix to work with Shadow of the Tomb Raider with 8700k or another hexacore CPU? I'm trying to rule out the CPU, but the 3D was completely broken for me trying this again last night. Right shutter in the 3D Vision 2 glasses was black and Laura was missing her hair and there was some weird fog obscuring everything. I'm on 445.87 clean installed and 3D is installed via 3D Fix Manager 1.75, I'm on 1809, all other games work thus far (The Witcher 3, Resident Evil 2 Remake, etc.).

I really want to get this game to work in 3D Vision with DX12 but I don't think it's going to happen and TimFX7 has pretty much given up trying to help with it.

[Pure Mana Supreme]

https://youtu.be/QuUwLuQGPj4

[RAGEdemon]

Personally speaking mate, I have never come across any scenario where a CPU broke 3D. It has to be something else IMO.

There is a half-way solution for fixing the 3DV CPU bug if your only other alternative is to play in 2D or not at all, which is Compatibility Mode. All the performance of 2D without the 3 core bug, and no double load on the GPU either. In many games, it's very playable.

I love 3DV and shall always be eternally grateful to the people who make it happen. But if my only alternative has been to play in 2D or not at all because of the CPU bug, then this half-way solution has worked very well for me personally, especially when combined with Helifax's CM:Unleashed.

Unfortunately, the CPU core problem will likely only get worse as new games start to be made for 8c16t ZEN CPUs as the base aim for next gen consoles.

[Pure Mana Supreme]

Personally speaking mate, I have never come across any scenario where a CPU broke 3D. It has to be something else IMO.

There is a half-way solution for fixing the 3DV CPU bug if your only other alternative is to play in 2D or not at all, which is Compatibility Mode. All the performance of 2D without the 3 core bug, and no double load on the GPU either. In many games, it's very playable.

I love 3DV and shall always be eternally grateful to the people who make it happen. But if my only alternative has been to play in 2D or not at all because of the CPU bug, then this half-way solution has worked very well for me personally, especially when combined with Helifax's CM:Unleashed.

Unfortunately, the CPU core problem will likely only get worse as new games start to be made for 8c16t ZEN CPUs as the base aim for next gen consoles.

I just have no idea why I can't get TimFX7's DX12 to work in 3D Vision, the way I understand it is that Start3D.exe doesn't work with CPU's with greater than 4 logical cores.

What is CM: Unleashed? Thanks for the reply!

[RAGEdemon]

https://3dsurroundgaming.com/CMUnleashed.html

I do not have any knowledge of TimFX7's DX12. Have you tried artificially limiting the number of cores from windows (or Bios)?

[3DNovice]

Is 9700k a worthwhile investment over 8700k? Right now I could simply upgrade to 9700k with Z370 motherboard and it wouldn't be that big of a deal. Not sure if there is any performance to be had though, 6 logical cores with HT vs 8 physical cores no HT, is the latter going to do 3D Vision better?

Anyone thinking about upgrading, should wait for Intel to shrink their die for better thermals and power consumption.

Their recent i9-10900K while attractively priced is said to still be supporting PCI Express 3.0 only. Also it requires a new z490 motherboard.
https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/i ... iew,2.html

Nvidia's next GPUs will be PCI Express 4.0 and there are also SSDs on the market taking advantage of the increased bandwidth, with incredible read/write speeds.

Of course Ryzen already supports PCI Express 4.0, if a person were to opt to buy AMD.

[Necropants]

I am a little bit leery about the new-gen of GPU's as it is we are very limited in driver options and I suspect Nvidia broke 3d surround when they released the required 2080ti options as it is. I could be wrong but my system just mysteriously stopped working in 3d surround when I went to a 2080ti. (hopefully, Helifax's testing will uncover something here though)