Qu9ke :
I feel this has been asked many times, but I was wondering which AMD cpu would be a good match for a GTX 1080? To be more specific, which Ryzen cpu would be a good match?
Also, are Ryzen cpu prices low enough to justify getting them over their Intel counterparts, or should I just go Intel? I would prefer staying on a budget which is why I lean AMD... I just don't know what my budget is yet haha. The reason I ask about the prices is that I looked them up myself, and what I saw was like... $430. Am I in the right ball park for a cpu, or is that much too expensive for what I'm looking for?
About a year ago, people suggested i5 6600k over i7 6700k and the justification was that games use less than 4 threads so the 6700k was regarded as the "productivity" CPU. You can find the videos on youtube, even linus did one.
Now just over a year after that, we are seeing significant benefits with a i7 6700k over a 6600k not only in average frame rate, but in much more important frame times which define the smoothness of your gaming experience. Less micrto stutters and hiccups with the i7 because it has more threads.
The main reasons are 1- your PC doesn't run games in a vacuum, you always have processes in the background like windows indexer and antimalware, or other ones you have installed, that can sudennly take over and cause a hiccup while you are gaming. 2- games have started using more than 4 threads from 2016 onwards.
Looking at this trends, the gap between a 7700k and a Ryzen 1600 is far smaller in games that were release in 2016 forward than older games.
Same thing is happening right now, people say that 4 cores is enough so you shouldn't get 8 cores, even though the Ryzen 1700 is cheaper than 7700k.
Buying a Ryzen 1600 or 1700 over 7700k is a tradeoff, for the 1600 it is much more affordable. You should consider the Z series motherboad and the cooler for 7700k in the price, the 1600 comes quite a bit cheaper.
Performance wise, on the one hand you have 5-10% better gaming performance "now" on 7700k and on the other you have about 60% better multicore performance on the Ryzen 1700. The Ryzen is also on a new platform which you can just swap the cpu when the new generation is out.
If you can use the roughly 200$ price difference between ryzen 1600 and a 7700k+Z board+cooler in a better GPU/monitor/SSD, or you want to keep it and lower the budget, definitly you don't lose anything by going for the Ryzen 1600. The frame rate improvement that you would get by getting the 7700k is in CPU limited scenarios, and in the high frame rate range. Meaning that if you play games that are not demanding or you set your detail level to medium/low in 1080p, you get 5-10% more frames in the range of 100fps+. Is that worth about 200$ to you? if yes, then you should go for it.
In reality, games do fine with about 120fps, and the Ryzen can push that. I would take the 60% better multicore performance of the Ryzen over the 5-10% more fames in the high fps range in CPU bound games with 7700k any day. Mainly because 1- It is highly unlikely to be CPU bound in games, the GPU is the limit and 2- the 5-10% difference is in a range that even on a 144hz monitor I can't tell the difference, why lose the multicore performance for something that doesn't make a difference?
Any of the Ryzen 1600, 1600x(easier overclocking) or Ryzen 1700( or again x for easier overclocking) would work great for you even with a 1080ti.
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