The companies Intel and AMD are rivals for a very long time now, both of them hold their ground in their own perspectives. Intel however, managed to win couple of times before. Today, we’re testing their best CPUs, Intel Core i7 8700K vs AMD Ryzen 1800X, which one is better for gaming.
Any of them could beat other in different perspectives but, we’re solely focusing on their gaming performance. So, let’s get started.
Intel Core i7 8700K vs AMD Ryzen 1800X Specifications:
The 1800X (8 cores, 16 threads @3.6GHz) has more cores than 8700K (6 cores, 12 threads @3.7GHz). But, lots of benchmarks show that Intel 8700K beating 1800X because of its clock speed. With Turbo boost, this difference can go up many scales. Turbo frequency of Intel Core i7 8700K is also 17% faster than 1800X. For gaming performance, things always turn out for Intel, in the end.
Gaming
This benchmark, shows that SC (single core) performance of Intel Core i7 8700K is 28% faster. This is actually a winning start, as in gaming, SC performance is required by most of the games. These days, latest games started requiring Dual/Quad cores performance. Here, 8700k again beats 1800X in QC Mixed performance by 26%. More than this, multi-core performance, are only utilized by server based works unless you’re going for 200+ fps. So, for gaming we can neglect it.
Benchmark
Here are some screenshots of the benchmarks from Hardware Unboxed. He actually ran games on 720p resolution to avoid bottleneck, pretty clever.
1. Battlefield 1
The two main processors we are comparing here show significant performance difference. Intel Core i7 8700K has 41fps more than AMD Ryzen 1800X, which pretty much proves 8700K is better.
2. Civilization VI
1800X shows promising performance here, compare to 8700K. The difference of 10 fps can be considered good for a cpu who completely knocked out in Battlefield 1 test by 8700k.
3. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III
This time, again we see performance drop of 1800X compare to 8700K. 17 fps difference is marginal, but, 1800X barely went ahead of 8700K in last test, and here it lost again.
4. Overwatch
Intel is clearly winning against AMD Ryzen, 220 fps compare to 194 is still a lose. To be honest, I think 8700K is the best CPU out there for gaming. With marginal fps difference, occasionally, and when beating 1800X, A win is a win.
5. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds
Yet again, 8700K beaten 1800X with fps difference of 21. It is safe to say that 8700K is the best CPU out there for gaming.
Disclaimer: Not considering Core i9 series and extreme processors.
So, this was our last benchmark chart. In all five benchmark charts, AMD Ryzen 1800X won against Intel Core i7 8700K only one time. Whereas Intel Core i7 8700K, won 4 times against its rival. I skipped other benchmark charts as they showed similar performance difference or equal. If you’re still interested in learning more, you can watch it here.
Price
The Intel i7 is a cheaper (359.99$ vs 400$) choice but, unless you wanted high end motherboard, you’d probably get B350 for Ryzen, which is cheaper than Z370, Intel Motherboard. So, what i’m saying is if the whole package is considered, AMD Ryzen gets a bit cheaper price. Also, Intel i7 8700K requires a decent cooling system as its gets a bit hotter than Ryzen.
If you’re interested in overclocking, then, you’ll be getting liquid cooling for any of them and thus, the total price exceeds. In price comparison, I’d go for Ryzen but, this is not considered a major issue here.
Streaming
Not many would like to compare them in this category but, streaming is becoming necessary for gamers. These days, gamers either want to stream or record their gameplays so they can post them it on social media.
This video shows the performance drop between 8700k and 1800X while streaming. More base cores are always better for multitasking, and here is a good example of it. So, basically, if you’re a gamer with lots of other interests like editing, rendering, animation etc then 1800X is your best choice. Since the difference between these CPUs is marginal in gaming, you can grab the better for multitasking which is AMD Ryzen 1800X.
Conclusion
If you’re a gamer, solely playing games and love stability and performance, Intel Core i7 8700K is your best option. With higher SC speed and clock speed, you’ll never going to get disappointed. With previous record of Intel, it is safe to assume that this will stick with you for quite a while.
The performance charts were also quite favourable for Intel Core i7 8700K, as majority of the games were running best on it. AMD Ryzen 1800X was completely blown off by 8700K and with that, our winner was chosen.
However, if you’re a gamer with an art of other dimensions especially streaming and gameplay recording, then, AMD Ryzen 1800X is your best choice. 1700X is also considered in this range, a bit cheaper and with some tweaking overclocking, you can get same results of 1800X.
In the end choice is yours. Do let me know in comments section below about your choices and best between these two.