i9-7900X or Ryzen Threadripper 1950X for video editing?

[FoxUlisse]

Hi, if you were me, which would you buy between i9-7900X and Ryzen Threadripper 1950X for video editing? And ... in your opinion which could possibly give more problems?

Thanks

[ir_cow]

Hmm.. well looking around at different benchmarks, Synthetic ones the AMD 1950X crushes it but in real world applications both CPUs trade blows per benchmark. Unless you plan on upgrading the CPU in the future I would say get whichever you like more.

[FoxUlisse]

Unless you plan on upgrading the CPU in the future I would say get whichever you like more.

 

But I wrote this post because I like both. ahahaha If you were me, which would you  buy?  Thanks for your reply.

[Guest_Jim_*]

I specifically got the 1950X because I wanted something more capable for video editing and have been very happy in all regards. Maybe the clock speed is not as high, but it can do everything I throw at it, and fairly often all at the same time. Right now it is processing some video and I can comfortably game or do whatever else I want without worry (except maybe record more video; haven't tried actually). Anyway, to give you an idea of what it lets me do, I have it encode three video streams using x264 in OBS Studio. One of these is set to a max VBR of 50 Mbps with a CRF of 12 and the resolution is 2048x1152. Another is also 2048x1152 but is lossless (CRF 0) and the third is 780x490, also lossless. All of these are at 60 FPS and using the veryfast preset, but maybe I can improve that. It handles all of that while playing the game I am recording without any hitch. (The VBR stream is the game and the other two are overlays I apply later.) I also had it streaming and recording (two different encoder instances) 2560x1440@60FPS not too long ago using the fast preset for both, again without any issue.

For me at least, it is exactly what I wanted. (Okay, almost, but that's on me. I didn't realize some of the FFmpeg filters I use are single-threaded, but on the bright side I now can use the veryslow preset when applying the overlays, because the filters are the bottleneck, not the encoder.) I don't know if I will ever be able to put all of the accessible 60 PCIe lanes to work (4 lanes are chipset exclusive), but I have them if I ever want to go with a multi-GPU solution or start replacing all of my SATA drives with NVMe drives.

The decision is still yours. All I can say is I am happy with my decision, and that waiting to see what is announced at CES might be a good idea. I personally doubt AMD is going to update Threadripper to Zen+, but we still might see new motherboards and/or price reductions, depending on what is coming.

Since you asked about problems, I will admit that there is something weird, but it is easy enough to work with. It is also something that might be my fault, and not the chip's. For some reason, x264 really does not like it when I run at 4 GHz. The computer can hard lock as a result, so I use the Ryzen Master software to drop down to 3.7 GHz (it was one of the already listed profiles and I haven't tried dialing it up) and everything is fine. Don't know why, but I experienced something similar on my previous rig, hence why it might be my fault. Still happy with it.