Regardless, the Core i5-12600K had as much as a 12% performance advantage in select tests, and the two chips effectively tied in the best test-case scenario for the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. And that will have a far more visible performance impact than any potential gains the Ryzen 7 7800X3D might bring. With just one of the two CCD's armed with 3D V-Cache, the 16-core 7950X3D is heavily dependent on Windows addressing the correct core complex die, and that doesn't always happen. Game testing as of 5 December, 2022, by AMD Performance Labs using the following hardware: AMD Socket AM5 Reference Motherboard with AMD Ryzen™ 9 7950X, Ryzen™ 9 7950X3D and G. com is a leading authority on technology, delivering lab-based, independent reviews of the latest products and services.

Right off the bat with our cost per frame graphs, we have to highlight the fact that we're not including the more affordable but just as effective non-X Ryzen processors.We use a Kill-A-Watt power meter to measure the power consumption of our test beds to gain an idea of how power consumption varies from one processor to another. Update 4/16/2023: These chips are now at retail for roughly two weeks, but we haven't heard of any reports of this issue, which is a positive sign. AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800X3D struggled outside of gaming in the previous generation, and AMD focused on improving that area with its new 3D V-Cache processors. We have made a second Cost per Frame calculation with motherboard and memory pricing included, to picture a total system platform cost.

Not a huge difference, but previous GeForce drivers handed AMD a significant advantage in this game. Of course, there are games where the performance uplift is far more substantial, but there were also titles where we saw no uplift whatsoever.

A second chip, known as the I/O die, is produced on a 6nm process, and this chip has the circuitry for many of the CPU's specialized functional parts, including the integrated graphics processor (IGP), the memory controller, and the PCI Express controller. The one area where the Ryzen 7 7800X3D has a hint of success is in the gaming market, but it's walking a thin line there. Even with the extra cache boosting gaming performance, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D is still limited to eight cores. Higher-capacity RAM kits often run at slower speeds, and the overabundance of cache on the Ryzen 7 7800X3D forces it to run at slower speeds, too.

It also shows that the Core i9-13900K is 15% faster than the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, which is flat-out false. AMD has also unlocked the 7800X3D for basic overclocking and undervolting, another advantage over the prior-gen model.

If the E-cores can get a nibble out of the processor's power-budget, they can handle background tasks. The 7950X3D is still broken in the Factorio benchmark, if you manually disable the second CCD it can match what we're seeing here from the 7800X3D, but failing to do so sees the gaming run on the second CCD. Each Zen 4 CCX, by design, has 32MB of L3 cache to begin with, which means other Ryzen 7 7000 processors (for example, the AMD Ryzen 7 7700X) have in total 32MB of L3 cache. AMD’s exotic second-gen 3D V-Cache tech powers the 7800X3D’s incredible gaming performance by boosting the chips' L3 cache capacity to an incredible 96MB via a 3D-stacked chiplet, assuring it a top spot on our list of the best CPUs for gaming. Those chips will give you all that and more, but if you're looking for a low-profile, low-power gaming PC build that doesn't suck, AMD has made exactly the processor you've been looking for, and while it's not cheap, as a value proposition, it really can't be beat as a gaming processor.

At the end of the day, arguing about which is the fastest gaming CPU, between these Zen 4 3D V-Cache parts or the 13900K - it's the very definition of a waste of time - they're all very fast gaming CPUs and there's no chance any gamer will be able to tell them apart when actually gaming, unless they stick their hand in the case and then you might notice that extra 100 watts or so from the Core i9. As for power usage, officially the 7800X3D has a TDP of 120W, but it didn't even come close to this in my testing, often using a full third less power than it's rated for. That said, Intel isn't sitting idly on the sideline, either, as its Raptor Lake alternatives offer their own advantages. You can tinker with the performance profile to a degree in the Ryzen Master utility if you need to eek out some extra non-gaming performance, but how effective that will be will take a lot more testing on my part than I have time for in this review. We still don't like it, but the fact that a Zen 5 CPU will be a viable update on the same board should be a big deal, but we guess we'll find out next year.I wish I could say you don't notice the difference, but you do, though it isn't too egregious and the tradeoff for the extra gaming performance more than makes up for the slower clock speeds.