Advice please. 13900k or 7950x3d CPU for Skyrim LE?

[Mookeylama]

Building a new pc and was hoping for help. The main thing I’ll be playing for awhile will be good ole oldrim classic. Yeah, I’ve played sse for quite awhile and will likely get back to it again (or AE) but for now I’m on le and would like to know which you think would be better for LE. The gpu will be a rtx 4090.

From what I’m reading the AMD 7950x3D has a great benefit in SSE because of it’s 3D cache, but not sure if that benefit would also apply to oldrim.
The intel 13900k has quite a bit better single core performance, which should help oldrim, but not sure if it’d be a better boon than that Ryzen 3d cache. Also the 13900k runs  quite a bit hotter.
Was hoping someone who still plays classic skyrim might have some advise. Thanks!
 

[27X]

the Cache benefits the engine period; any SKSE plugin is automatically loaded into cache.

 

13 minutes ago, Mookeylama said:

intel 13900k has quite a bit better single core performance,

 

5% is not even kind of quite a bit. That's the KS btw, not the K.

 

Buying anything for one game is the apex of Just No. This game might have made your peepee the largest it's ever been, maybe it found your wife AND your dog; no game should EVER determine specs... EVER. Anyone doing this should not be adding to the genepool.

Edited July 1, 2023 by 27X

[NoNickNeeded]

I'm pretty sure that any and all CPUs current sold are already over-performing for Skyrim LE, unless we're talking microcontrollers or specialist hardware.

The more important thing is to properly set up your SKSE, so the game can actually use all the available memory.

 

Before upgrading to my current hardware, I've been playing heavily modded Skyrim LE on an AMD 6300 and a GeForce 1080 Ti for near enough a full decade and never had any issues with slowdowns, stuttering or anything.

Edited July 1, 2023 by NoNickNeeded

[t.ara]

Money waste here for some few more performance, which will be mostly consumed by unprofessional ENB-update creations.

The push of performance will be in compare with ten year older stuffed i9/i7 a seriously not relevant minimum.

Little story aside:

Some days ago I was using windows ten (10) on an i5 2500K with a 1080gtx on a small gigabyte board, the processor is in between about $20-30, the board is a crazy cheap H61 from gigabyte and the RAM you´ll probably can get for free somewhere.

On that computer, I created ZAP 8 and with that computer I played GTAonline with just a g-force gtx980 lot of years and having lot of FUN.....

BTW: The i5 offers a perfect relation between power consumption and effectivity of gameplay and even producing music or doing other serious stuff-I also had a hackintosh with osx 10.8.5 on that cheap system. 4 cores do start windows 10 perfect fast, so MUCH more faster compared to all my other builds later on.

I only wanted to describe this here to show the relativity of computer-power and this useless hunt always behind to get the last and most expensive computer-parts itself.

Computer-shopping is beside new cars-shopping the most best way to loose endless $$$ for a promissed "nothing". You can spend your money mostly better to use it for other stuff which makes more sense.

Computers have to run 10 years or longer, until they amortize their costs. All the parts later have to become recycled, which is mostly out of focus...same is for the mountain of old handys, btw.....the same run there, to get the latest new one....I gues with old handys all together behind each others, you would be able to build a street to the moon....

The parts you now have in mind will mostly cost in some few years only 1/3 or less of their prices...keep all this in mind and be sure you won´t feel a difference if you only invest a half of money for a GPU, BOARD, RAM and CPU. And maybe "used". You´ll switch your computer "ON", while intel and others will bring a new CPU on the market which again will be little more faster.....in two years you´ll get the GPU for the half price and so on and so on....

 

It´s nowadays mostly a best way to pick up USED computer-parts. It´s not only sparing your money....

 

Happy handycrafting...

 

Hope this helps and give you some alternative ideas:-)))

 

[t.ara]

13 minutes ago, NoNickNeeded said:

I'm pretty sure that any and all CPUs current sold are already over-performing for Skyrim LE, unless we're talking microcontrollers or specialist hardware.

The more important thing is to properly set up your SKSE, so the game can actually use all the available memory.

 

Before upgrading to my current hardware, I've been playing heavily modded Skyrim LE on an AMD 6300 and a GeForce 1080 Ti for near enough a full decade and never had any issues with slowdowns, stuttering or anything.

Exactly !!!!

[Mookeylama]

so 1 vote for 7950x3d. i was leaning that way, but i guess i don't get how the 3d cache is better than a faster single core performance. this test has the 13900k about 10% better than x3d at single...

https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-cinebench_r23_single_core-15

 

i'm not using anything 3d or VR so how would the 3dcache be better?

and i've never mixed intel and amd before. how would an AMD cpu and motherboard work w/ an nvidia gpu. any special considerations? thanks

[NoNickNeeded]

I am a bit off my hardware game, but if I remember correctly the 3000 generation nVidia cards had some kind of module or architecture in them, that made them work better with AMD processors than with those from Intel, as in slightly better performance.

But I don't remember how much the extra performance is, other than it being only a little bit, and I don't know if that's still the case with the 4000 series.

 

Apart from this tiny potential performance boost, it really makes no difference whether you pair an nVidia card with AMD or Intel processor. I doubt you'd even notice a difference in practice between equivalent Intel and AMD CPUs, unless your eyes are constantly glued to the FPS counter and care about whether it's low single digit FPS higher or lower, if it's even that much. In terms of stability there will not be an issue either way, nVidia has full compatibility with CPUs from both companies.

 

In the past I went with AMD CPUs, because whenever I bought new hardware, AMD always had the better price/performance value and lower power consuption than their equivalent Intel product. But I haven't checked in more then 2 years I think, so who knows how it's going right now.

Edited July 3, 2023 by NoNickNeeded

[faky]

okay let's start from the beginning

 

the party trick of x3d CPUs is a much larger cache compared to other CPUs, which makes them (unreasonably) better in most games compared to what you would expect based on their single core performance in 'simple' computational tasks (like cinebench)

 

as far as i remember, ryzen 7950x3d doesnt make sense for gaming when 7800x3d exists (this one is cheaper, has fewer cores but also has only one chiplet, meaning there wont be any issues with core utilization and such)

 

there are no downsides to pairing amd cpu with nvidia gpu or intel cpu with amd gpu (although amd had some special feature when using their newer cpu and gpu, idk if it is still relevant in any way - resizable bar?)

 

if you wish to compare cpus/gpus for gaming i would recommend looking up hardware reviews from a reputable source ("hardware unboxed" for example) - they compare cpus/gpus in actual games so you can see their relative performance (across various games, game engines, graphic apis, resolutions) - synthetic single core performance does not determine the best gaming cpu

 

with that out of the way:

for older games and simulation intensive games i would recommend x3d zen cpus. the bigger cache does wonders for old, unoptimized engines and complicated simulation style games (and im convinced skyrim scripting/engine benefit greatly as well - my 5800x3d is working out great) - this info might not be as widespread but you would have to find factorio benchmarks or similar. but x3d cache works well for high FPS in other games as well, as proven by gaming benchmarks.

 

skyrim LE with mods/physics/ENB can be quite CPU intensive and both 13900k and 7800x3d are great for gaming all around. I think the 3d cache *might* make the 7800x3d slightly better in heavily modded skyrim. At this point you can start looking into other features to make your final decision (platform longevity and lower power consumption on ryzen, board features for either cpu, available memory kits)

[Mookeylama]

On 7/3/2023 at 6:08 AM, faky said:

 

 

as far as i remember, ryzen 7950x3d doesnt make sense for gaming when 7800x3d exists (this one is cheaper, has fewer cores but also has only one chiplet, meaning there wont be any issues with core utilization and such)

Sorry for late reply, been hectic. Thanks so much for the helpful, informative replies folks! And Faky, that's just the kinda info I needed. You're a saint. Was curious about your statement here tho...

"has fewer cores but also has only one chiplet, meaning there wont be any issues with core utilization"

how might that benefit oldrim? I know it's cheaper, but would 7800x3d be better than 7950x3d for oldrim?
I am leaning toward 7950x3d (or 7800x3d), especially because of lower heat, and I'd like to air cool

 

again, thanks much Faky and Nick
 

[faky]

yes, 7800x3d will be just as good or better than 7950x3d for oldrim and games in general because of the way it is engineered. "x3d" ryzens have much larger cache (operational memory for a CPU) that is stacked on top of the 'processor' (literally, hence the "3d" name).

 

7800 has only one chiplet, so the extra cache is stacked on top of it

7950 has two chiplets and the extra cache is attached to only one of them

 

the result is that in 7950, one chiplet (containing 8 cores...) is much better at gaming than the other chiplet (with other 8 cores but only regular cache, not the big one)

 

i dont think windows is aware of that (and sometimes does not run games on the 'gamer' cores, located in the chiplet with extra cache) so your gaming performance could vary (depending on windows whims)

 

7800 wont have that problem, since the 8 "gaming" cores with extra cache are the only cores available, giving you 100% performance at all times

 

how that translates to oldrim - on 7800, oldrim will always benefit from the large cpu cache, which will help with the sphagetti code and janky scripts. on 7950, it might not always be the case.

 

games are not yet at the point where 16 cores would bring any benefit over 8 cores. gaming hardware reviewers nowadays ignore 7950x3d in favor of 7800x3d as well

[Mookeylama]

bless your heart for doing this Faky. exactly the info i needed. you're a saint. so i got the cpu and gpu set, now gotta figure out mobo and ram. i really wanna air cool too, as i'm old and can't wrap my noggin around sticking liquid in electronics lol