Ryzen 1600X Vs i7-7700K for CAD/CAE (FEA in Solidworks & CFD)

[Amyrro]

Hello everyone 

I would like to ask about about which processor is the most fit for CAD work. The i7-7700K offers unparalleled performance in single-threaded operations, which the widely found case in CAD/CAE. However, besides the extra cores which the Ryzen 1600X offer, it offer significantly more cache. As far as I know, CFD is affected by the amount of cache and data transfer speed (between cache level and speed of the RAM). However, I do know how much that effect is, and I have no info on how multithreaded the simulation in Solidworks is. 

Besides Solidworks, I will be running some CFD simulation in Ansys Fluent/CFX, and maybe MATLAB, Scilab & OpenFoam. 

So, should I bet on high single-threaded performance, or on 16mb L3 & 3Kb L2 Cache in Ryzen (Vs 8mb L3 & 256Kb L2 Cache on i7-7700K) ?

A good overclock may improve the performance of both CPUs, but the difference will still be there. What do you think folks ?!

 

[Barney6262]

Either one would be more than enough for CAD work.

Generally most CAD programs are more tailored towards intel base platforms and it will take a few years for the programs to react to Ryzen. I have a 7700k @5Ghz and regularly use NX10 with no problems.

I would go for the 7700k.

 

[synphul]

Given most of the cad and solidworks benchmarks I've seen, the 7700k would likely be the better choice. Additional cache doesn't really have much effect provided it feeds the cores. Too little could have a negative impact but in most benchmarks there's little difference between a 5960x and a mainstream i7 like the 4790k, 6700/7700k etc provided the additional cores of the 5960x are disabled. It has 20mb of cache vs the mainstream i7's 8mb.

When looking at cad benchmarks, the ryzen chips have the benefit of the extra cache and they fall behind so it wouldn't be reasonable to think that because they have a higher cache it's going to make them magically faster.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/SOLIDWORKS-2017-AMD-Ryzen-7-1700X-1800X-Performance-908/

Here's a matlab test I found (they're not exactly abundant unfortunately) where the ryzen 1800x had a slight advantage over the 7700k. That's the 1800x though, not the 1600x. It's a bit telling that in spite of twice the cores and threads it only barely surpassed the 7700k. Not to mention the 1800x being 50% higher cost.
http://au.pcmag.com/feature/47498/testing-amd-ryzen-and-intel-kaby-lake-for-business-use

Ryzen is still new yet and compared to general tasks, web surfing, gaming, video encoding other tasks like matlab are more niche. It could be awhile to get some results on that front when it comes to benchmarks.

 

[Amyrro]

Either one would be more than enough for CAD work.

Generally most CAD programs are more tailored towards intel base platforms and it will take a few years for the programs to react to Ryzen. I have a 7700k @5Ghz and regularly use NX10 with no problems.

I would go for the 7700k.

Thanks for the input; a point to consider. However, I would like to ask about the kind of work you do in NX ? Do you frequently run FEA, CFD, or any soft of simulation, or do you just stick to CAD modeling and assemblies ?!

Given most of the cad and solidworks benchmarks I've seen, the 7700k would likely be the better choice. Additional cache doesn't really have much effect provided it feeds the cores. Too little could have a negative impact but in most benchmarks there's little difference between a 5960x and a mainstream i7 like the 4790k, 6700/7700k etc provided the additional cores of the 5960x are disabled. It has 20mb of cache vs the mainstream i7's 8mb.

When looking at cad benchmarks, the ryzen chips have the benefit of the extra cache and they fall behind so it wouldn't be reasonable to think that because they have a higher cache it's going to make them magically faster.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/SOLIDWORKS-2017-AMD-Ryzen-7-1700X-1800X-Performance-908/

Here's a matlab test I found (they're not exactly abundant unfortunately) where the ryzen 1800x had a slight advantage over the 7700k. That's the 1800x though, not the 1600x. It's a bit telling that in spite of twice the cores and threads it only barely surpassed the 7700k. Not to mention the 1800x being 50% higher cost.
http://au.pcmag.com/feature/47498/testing-amd-ryzen-and-intel-kaby-lake-for-business-use

Ryzen is still new yet and compared to general tasks, web surfing, gaming, video encoding other tasks like matlab are more niche. It could be awhile to get some results on that front when it comes to benchmarks.

That is useful info Synphul. Thanks !