Part Recommendations

[HappyKumquat]

Hello,

I'm going to upgrade my AM4 System (Ryzen 3600 CPU and Nvidia 3060 GPU). The computer is in use for gaming and photo editing.

For gaming the 5800X3D would be the obvious choice. My research has shown that games profit a lot from the additional cache of the 5800X3D. Also this CPU would be some 100 EUR cheaper. Nontheless the computer lacks in performance with photo editing. The 5950X might be the CPU with the best productivity benchmark scores, but there were specific benchmarks for photoshop that shows only a small difference between the 5800X3D and the 5950X.  So I'm asking myself, if photo editing tools can also benefit of the additional L3-Cache. 

Since this will be an upgrade that should last the next years I'm looking for high performance for the am4 socket. Is there any information, if the 5800X3D might be a good choice or if the raw performance of the 5950X would have the bigger impact in boosting the performance?

Some additional information of my use-case:

I take photos for focusstacking (30 to 100 pictures to be stacked to 1 picture in the process). These pictures are edited before the stacking. That's my bottleneck! It would take some 30 to 60 minutes to process the raw images. I work with Luminar Neo which uses the GPU but most of the time the CPU for the calculation.

Thank you in advance for your help! I hope I can make up my mind with your input. 

[mengelag]

I would say the 5950X is the better choice for something that can do everything well. If you were more gaming-focused, the 5800x3d is a good choice, but given you're doing other picture editing and processing. 5950x would be your best bet in my opinion

[eebiii]

agreed

[johnnyenglish · Accepted solution]

Time is money, so I have an ambiguous view.

The 5950X is still BIG regarding productivity and we don't have a Jack of all trades like the 7950X3D that can do both on AM4.

However, if you enjoy gaming to the full extent and don't mind waiting a bit longer to render, the 5800X3D could actually be a better choice.

But if gaming is somehow limited, plus, you don't want to wait for rendering times, then 5950X is the choice.

Browse youtube for the games you play or will play and check it for yourself.

My personal experience, I have a 7950X and ..  Oh Boy! Its blazing fast rendering my videos. But I used to had a 2700X and even though I had to wait SO MUCH LONGER, I can live with that.

Because, I'm not a PRO and time is not money to me.

[HappyKumquat]

You made a good point with "But if gaming is somehow limited,...". There are only a few cases when I was gaming and thought the performance of the computer could be better. Instead rendering the images can be quite annoying. I'm not a professional - I'm just an ambitious beginner. Nonetheless I have limited time for this hobby and waiting for the rendering will shorten the time I have to take pictures and edit them. So I'd go with the 5950X and will have quite a while till the next upgrade.

[johnnyenglish]

Awesome! Good Luck with the new CPU 😉

[Shrapnel_xM]

I had the 5900x then the 5800x3d now i have the 5950x. In my opinion, the 5950x is the best all-around-use chip for gaming, productivity, work station etc.  My Win11 OS felt kinda slow when I have the 5800x3d, the 5900x i was experiencing weird boost throttle so i went back to exchange it for another 5900x and ended up walking out with the 5950x for an extra $75 and I can game, stream, work and multitask without breaking a sweat and averaging 275FPS in Warzone which is CPU heavy but again its all personal preference.

The 5800x3D was struggling with OBS for some reason even though I use NVENC encoding I couldnt figure out what the issue was unless maybe the L3 Cache was fully allocated to Warzone or something but thats above my knowledge

[BigAl01]

Funny thing.  I generally just build another computer in place of swapping out the CPU.  I don't like messing with a computer that is running well.  But there have been a few builds that I upgraded the CPU after doing a BIOS update.  The Windows 10 to Windows 11 upgrade forced one of those.