Seeking advice please about a possible swap from 14900K to 9950x3D platform

newls1 · Mar 10, 2025

Good Morning,

I've been pondering the idea of upgrading my PC from a Apex Z790 with 14900K @ 6ghz all core and mem @ 8640MT/s to whatever AMD motherboard that will support high speed mem OC's and a 9950x3D. I'm not looking to do any crazy OC's but it would be a direct die water chilled setup like my current 14900 is, but my main question here before I drop 2000$ on the main 3-4 upgrade parts is....... Would this actually be an upgrade? Will the AMD CPU be able to achieve 8600+ mem speeds and have the same sub 50ns mem latency and I know the AMD CPU's don't OC to 6ghz, so will I be actually making an upgrade here or more or less a side grade? Should I hold off 1 more more year and see what Zen6 brings or Intel for that matter too? Please give me your thoughts and opinions. Than you very much

kovyrshin · Mar 10, 2025

Wait 2 days for reviews.

But my guess:
You'd get cooler and less problematic system that will be supported for longer. Doubt about sub 50ns, but 8600 might be on the table for apex/tachyon.

If you're stable right now, I'm afraid, it's more of a side grade.

StAndrew · Mar 10, 2025

You probably will get close.

That said, two things to keep in mind with AM5:

1: AMD’s cache is better than Intel’s.

2: DDR5 bandwidth can/does exceed the total infinity fabric bandwidth to one CCD. Additionally, the chiplet architecture of AM5 introduces additional latencies.

That said, a 9950X will beat a 14900K/S in most productivity work loads and a 9950X3D will beat even a 6.0 all core 14900K in gaming.

Chips and Cheese has some great articles on AMD and Intel memory architecture.

Pushing AMD’s Infinity Fabric to its Limits

I recently wrote code to test memory latency under load, seeking to reproduce data in various presentations with bandwidth on the X axis and latency on the Y axis.

chipsandcheese.com

Discussing AMD’s Zen 5 at Hot Chips 2024

Hot Chips isn’t just a conference where companies give in-depth presentations on the architectures behind high performance chips.

chipsandcheese.com

robiatti · Mar 10, 2025

I would say wait till the reviews.. in the last few months I have bounced around between the 14900KS, 265K, 285K , 9800X3d, and now the 9950X. I will say I have been happiest with the 9950X.
Typically the sweet spot standard is 6000Mhz memory. I got lucky and my 9950X is able to do 6400 1:1 with a 2x48GB kit. I have seen others though with a 2 dimm (mostly x670E Gene) board hitting 8000+. So the Apex or Tachyon will be a great choice for memory OC.

logikju · Mar 10, 2025

newls1 said:
Good Morning,

I've been pondering the idea of upgrading my PC from a Apex Z790 with 14900K @ 6ghz all core and mem @ 8640MT/s to whatever AMD motherboard that will support high speed mem OC's and a 9950x3D. I'm not looking to do any crazy OC's but it would be a direct die water chilled setup like my current 14900 is, but my main question here before I drop 2000$ on the main 3-4 upgrade parts is....... Would this actually be an upgrade? Will the AMD CPU be able to achieve 8600+ mem speeds and have the same sub 50ns mem latency and I know the AMD CPU's don't OC to 6ghz, so will I be actually making an upgrade here or more or less a side grade? Should I hold off 1 more more year and see what Zen6 brings or Intel for that matter too? Please give me your thoughts and opinions. Than you very much

I would ask first about the purpose.

In productivity work, It performs quite great and can still be on top in some few cases. (or very few)

Gaming, there is not much debate. No need of a 9950 for the 14900 to get beaten.
I really love my 14900 but pretty much regardless of the oc, it will get beaten by the 9800. I can imagine the gap with a 9950x3d.

Someone like sugi0lover would have kept his 6.3/6.4 14900 if it was enough to compete with these x3d's.

Form my side I grabbed a z890 OCF months ago for a cheap price but remains in its box until Intel releases something that gives more.

Jason92 · Mar 10, 2025

Lets just say you could acheive the same ram speed, you will NOT! get close to sub 50ns latency and you will also have significantly less bandwidth in comparison, those read, write copy's will be notably lower even at the same speeds.

In my opinion, what you already have, is about as good as it gets, in a best case scenario, you'll get roughly the same memory clocks running, worse latency guaranteed, less bandwidth guaranteed, overall you will get equal all core performance, give or take an irrelevant and completely unnoticeable amount.

You will however, probably get better gaming performance but its unlikely to matter, because if your someone who can afford to upgrade from the high end build you already have to exactly what i would define as nothing more than a very expensive side grade, then its more than likely that your playing at 4K, in which the additional 3D cache really isn't going to be any kind of night and day special difference to you.

Thats just my own honest opinion, it just seems like a huge waste of money for something that will essentially perform more or less the same, it will have pros and cons that are opposite to the 14900K, so whichever way you go, you will be missing the other ones pros. Nonetheless, the pros are minimal on both sides, hence the side grade in my eyes, i can't see any value in going through with this, unless you either have money to waste, or theres something very specific about the 9950x3D that you absolutely need, which you beleive you can't get or is not anywhere near good enough with the 14900K.

Templar2k · Mar 10, 2025

Intel is still more responsive in general.

Blameless · Mar 10, 2025

newls1 said:
Would this actually be an upgrade?

For some things it will be faster, but it's mostly a side-grade.

newls1 said:
Will the AMD CPU be able to achieve 8600+ mem speeds and have the same sub 50ns mem latency

No, not that this will have a major impact on the final performance of much of anything outside synthetics.

Running 2100/2100/4200 (8400MT/s) would be a reasonable target with a high-end board and a typical dual-CCX Granite Ridge sample (I seen no reason to expect the 9950X3D to have significantly better FCLK/IFOP binning than the non-X3D parts). If you get lucky, you might get 2200/2150/8600, but that still won't get 50ns first-word latency, even if you sacrifice the fabric prefetchers (by enabling 'legacy' or 'gaming boost' mode, which is, ironically enough, often slower in games) to try to reach that arbitrary target.

Jason92 said:
its more than likely that your playing at 4K, in which the additional 3D cache really isn't going to be any kind of night and day special difference to you.

Plenty of titles are still CPU/memory subsystem limited enough at 4k for their to be wide differences between different CPUs and platforms. A heavily OCed 14900K with fast memory just isn't that much slower than Granite Ridge-X, and wouldn't show a nigh and day difference at any resolution, outside a few choice titles that heavily prefer the v-cache parts.

Cryptedvick · Mar 10, 2025

For a 6Ghz all core with that kind of high speed memory, it will be a side grade, slight upgrade in some scenarios, at best. Definitely not worth it.
The 14th gen platform is a great platform if you can tweak it with a direct die and very fast RAM, which you both have. So no, 100% not worth it. Your system is plenty fast.

Hold off for at least 2 generations from both parties and then upgrade to something thats at least 50-75% faster overall.

StAndrew · Mar 10, 2025

Its so hard to know what difference you will see but I kind of agree; I don't think it'll be worth the money or effort. My delidded 13900KS got bit by Intel's voltage bug so I'm upgrading (no warranty after delidding

); I never got 6Ghz all core but I'll let you know how my 3090 feels at 4k later this month and maybe you can make a more informed decision.

Except for Framechaser (I don't like Framechaser and recommend you take this video with a grain of salt), no one really reviews overclocked CPU's these days. Framechase does show some great performance increases in CPU bound gaming (1080p), however, benefiting the 9800X3D vs a 6GHz 14900. I think HW unboxed even showed how X3D had uplifts in the 1% lows at 4k.

Framechaser:

There's also this one but again, HUGE grain of salt. Show the 00X3D matching or beating a 6.3GHz 14900.

newls1 · Mar 10, 2025

thank you very much for everyones valued input here.... obviously ill be watching the reviews of the 9950x3D but will more then likely just hold off till next year, and just concentrate on acquiring a 5090 in a few months to upgrade this 7900xtx

StAndrew · Mar 10, 2025

newls1 said:
thank you very much for everyones valued input here.... obviously ill be watching the reviews of the 9950x3D but will more then likely just hold off till next year, and just concentrate on acquiring a 5090 in a few months to upgrade this 7900xtx

Skip the 5090 too. Next architecture will come with a substantial node shrink and performance uplift as well as increased competition based off Intel and AMD roadmaps.

newls1 · Mar 10, 2025

StAndrew said:
Skip the 5090 too. Next architecture will come with a substantial node shrink and performance uplift as well as increased competition based off Intel and AMD roadmaps.

okay than! money savings today was substantial!

Falkentyne · Mar 10, 2025

newls1 said:
okay than! money savings today was substantial!

Just wait a year for Nova Lake. If Nova Lake has 16 P cores and improves on the shortcomings of Arrow Lake, then you can decide what to upgrade to. If not, you can always upgrade later. It's nice to have extra money saved for when the getting is good.

Evir · Mar 11, 2025

wrong thread idk why i posted this here sorry!

bombastinator · Mar 11, 2025

newls1 said:
Good Morning,

I've been pondering the idea of upgrading my PC from a Apex Z790 with 14900K @ 6ghz all core and mem @ 8640MT/s to whatever AMD motherboard that will support high speed mem OC's and a 9950x3D. I'm not looking to do any crazy OC's but it would be a direct die water chilled setup like my current 14900 is, but my main question here before I drop 2000$ on the main 3-4 upgrade parts is....... Would this actually be an upgrade? Will the AMD CPU be able to achieve 8600+ mem speeds and have the same sub 50ns mem latency and I know the AMD CPU's don't OC to 6ghz, so will I be actually making an upgrade here or more or less a side grade? Should I hold off 1 more more year and see what Zen6 brings or Intel for that matter too? Please give me your thoughts and opinions. Than you very much

Depends. the x3d cache isn’t actually useful for a lot of things, but gaming is one of them. If you are doing things that make use of the huge cache on the x3d chip, yes. If not, no. Either is plenty fast though. This seems like gilding the Lilly.

Seeking advice please about a possible swap from 14900K to 9950x3D platform

newls1

kovyrshin

StAndrew

Pushing AMD’s Infinity Fabric to its Limits

Discussing AMD’s Zen 5 at Hot Chips 2024

robiatti

logikju

Jason92

Templar2k

Blameless

Cryptedvick

StAndrew

newls1

StAndrew

newls1

Falkentyne

Evir

bombastinator

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