Intel 8700k or Ryzen 7 2700X | Is the Ryzen really a smarter choice?

If you are gaming then the I7 8700K is the best choice.

Just marginally, both of them are quite capable of gaming and applications.

The difference can be over 10 FPS depending on the actual games played. (Stock clocks)

Same as jumping a series in GPU depending.

I would go for the 8700k.

Depends on the game, & most of the tests at stock show it more like 5 FPS, not 10, with the percentage difference usually around 5%...& that was at 1080p. Once they hit 1440p or 4K, the differences in gaming disappear.

Since the OP specifically mentioned he would not just be gaming, but would be running other tasks, Tom's review suggests that the R7 2700X is the better choice (https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-7-2700x-review,5571.html).

Which bits in that suggest the 2700x is the better choice? The 8700k wins in the majority of gaming/productivity tests that I can see?

Choose that you prefer. You cant be wrong. Both of them are fantastic. Dont loss more time.

The Ryzen processor will be better. Ryzen processors are better at multitasking. They are better for streamers than their Intel counterparts.

The other posters here were all correct that the i7-8700k is *technically* better because you'll be able to squeeze an extra 10 or 20 fps out of your games, but the Intel processors aren't quite as good as Ryzen line at running something like OBS or XSplit on top of the games. ALSO, Ryzen are better with production softwares like Photoshop and other editing softwares.

Either way, you'll be happy. It comes down to preference on the high end gaming side.

With the GPU, it won't really matter unless you're worried about costs. The 11xx series should be coming out late summer/early fall, so holding off might save you a few hundred dollars. Although, I sincerely doubt buying the 11xx series will do a whole lot for you with gaming, since you'll already be running max specs at a higher FPS than your monitor will handle on a 1080ti.

I have actually seen up to 20 FPS differences or more depending on the game.

OC the I7 8700K and the differences are even higher.

Another thing to consider: with the Ryzen you're getting a future proof platform for a couple/few years, maybe even longer. The majority of intel refreshes and new tech require new hardware, which is an additional cost down the road. Plus the 8700k doesn't come with a cooler, whereas the Ryzen 2700X comes with the Wraith Prism, worth 30-40 bucks if sold on ebay, making the overall cost of the Ryzen even less.

Just my two cents.

The Z370 chipset has another CPU upgrade down the road.

True, however the Zen CPU roadmap is showing another two upgrades minimum with Zen 2 and Zen 2+. Who knows, Zen "4?" at 5nm could be AM4 as well. With Intels history, there's little chance the next 2-3 CPU's will be able to use Z370 motherboards.

It's really a wait and see thing with AMD to see what will really happen down the road.

Always has been.

Especially with DDR5 and PCIe 4.0 coming down the road sooner than later.

Rendering: Cinebench R15 (multi-core), POV-RAY (multi-core), Corona 1.3 (multi-core), LuxMark...all tests where at stock speeds the 2700X easily beat the i7-8700K. I left out Blender 2.78c (R7 only beat the i7 by 2 seconds). Of the other rendering tests, in both of the PCMark 10 scripted workloads the R7 was only 3% lower in its benchmarks than the i7 (not exactly a "big" win for the i7). And unless you can guarantee that only single-threaded situations will be used, the single-threaded results don't really matter.

Encoding/Compression: 7-Zip 17.01 Compression (multi-core) & Decompression (multi-core), & Handbrake (using H.264 codec) easily won by the R7 with both at stock speeds. Again, not counting R7's win in LAME (only beat the i7 by 3/4ths of a second), just as the i7 doesn't really get it count its Y-Cruncher multi-core win (just under 2 seconds faster than the R7). The only significant win was in Handbrake when the H.265 codec is used...but even then, although the i7 managed to shave just under 4 minutes of the encoding time, is 4 minutes as significant when it still takes the i7 over 34 minutes to complete the job?

I'll give you the majority of the browser benchmark "numbers" show a 10% advantage for the i7...but the only 1 that had an actual real-time figure (Kraken Javascript v1.1) showed only a 61 millisecond edge for the i7, not exactly a significant number. And for the productivity (Video Conferencing, Spreadsheet, etc.), the i7 only won 3 of those, with the other 2 going to Ryzen (by roughly the same margins, BTW).

Same with the Adobe Photoshop results. Of the 5 timed tests, the i7's "win" over the R7 is measured in tenths of a second. Blink & you'll miss the difference. The 5th one showed a 5-second difference, but when the i7 takes 56 seconds to complete the job it's still within a 10% margin.

The TLR version: the i7 didn't even come close to sweeping the tests, & in pretty much every test they were both so close to each other that you can't necessarily pick a clear winner, so it comes down to whether your applications prefer higher frequencies or more cores.

AMD has said specifically that the AM4 platform will be relevant into 2020, and with the roadmap showing Zen 2 in 2019, and Zen 3 in 2020, it's got much more longevity than anything Intel has currently.

https://hothardware.com/news/amd-confirms-am4-socket-support-future-ryzen-processors-2020

Okay... OC the 2700X and the differences aren't that great. Sure, you can get the 8700k to 5Ghz while the 2700x will have a much harder time getting to 4.5Ghz, but that's irrelevant because you have to consider that OP is doing more than gaming... Production and streaming require better multicore optimization. Zen architecture is better at it. Period.

You mean, the Zen cpus tend to have more cores. Its not that the architecture is better, or the 2600x would compete with the 8700k.

In my opinion 8700K is simply better, why? Exactly because it has obvious advantage in gaming, while being more than enough for streaming and other uses.

This is especially apparent for games like MMOs which are notoriously tied to single core performance, which Intel is superior to AMD. This is also the reason why games overall favor Intel, because no matter how much multithreading chest-thumping there is going on for years, games still favor higher Intel’s core power.