- This might just be the absolute best bang
for the buck gaming CPU you could buy.
And it's exclusive to our long time friends
and sponsors over at Micro Center.
Meet the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D.
The 3D is important.
This is a brand new CPU launching tomorrow,
and essentially what you're getting here
is the gaming performance of some of the absolute best CPUs
on the market at a fraction of the price
or at least that's what the story goes.
Let's actually see how this thing works.
Let's play some games, fool.
The secret sauce on why this is better for gaming
has to do with the 3D V-cache built into the processor.
Now, to understand what that does
let me give you a little bit of an analogy
on how an actual computer works.
So when it comes to gaming,
we have to feed our CPU,
but the problem is,
is our CPU is right here,
(box thuds) and all our data
is all the way over here in our SSD.
So as you can see,
we have an expert visualization,
which is,
this is data.
Some people, I call it "Orbies."
I call it ones and zeros,
except they're all zeros.
But don't worry about that part.
So when I'm playing a game,
I gotta get my data from my SSD all the way down to my CPU.
Well, the first step is,
I take it from here
and I dump it into my RAM.
Now the RAM is much closer to the CPU
and significantly faster,
but it's still very slow compared
to the actual cache built-in.
So again, I'm gonna take my data from here.
I'm gonna bring it over and load it into my cache.
As you can see, the cache is very close to the CPU
and I can dump that pretty quickly.
The problem is, is that the cache on a normal CPU
is quite small.
So on the standard Ryzen 5 5600X,
this is about 32 megabytes,
actually pretty big in all things considered,
but nowhere near as big as this.
So if I get rid of this,
(glass shattering) we don't need that.
(glass shattering) I upgrade to myself
to the 3D V-cache.
You can see that I can now load my CPU up much faster.
With my 3D V-cache, what I can do is
I can just load up all kinds of data from my RAM.
Look how much of that is,
that's so much data.
And then I can fire up my CPU really quickly.
- [Joanna] Oh, oh, okay.
- So basically what this means
is that now my CPU was fed with all kinds of data.
96 megabytes of cache built-in,
which means that while you might have orbies on your floor,
you have more of them in your CPU
than if you had to take them bit by bit.
The idea here is that with 3D V-cache,
you have about triple the size of the cache,
which means that while it won't speed up everything.
And we'll get into some of the pros
and cons a little bit later.
But specifically for gaming,
having this larger cache to work with compared
to the smaller one on a standard chip,
means that certain games can see
a significantly higher level of performance.
And this is the first time that this kind
of tech has been brought down to a Ryzen 5,
specifically this 5600X3D.
Does that make sense?
I hope so, cause I,
there's a lot of orbies on the floor
that I'm now gonna have to clean up,
because of my analogy.
(color bars beeping)
So now I'm going to be building myself
a gaming PC-based around this 5600X3D.
Now the real star of the show
is actually going to be pairing it with the 6950 XT.
This is AMD's last generation flagship GPU
that launched like a thousand dollars.
Thankfully, it's come down a lot in price
and why I don't think a lot of people
are going to build this specific system?
What I do wanna find out
is by throwing a very high-end GPU with 4K
and super high frame rate gaming at it,
can this CPU keep up?
Because let's keep in mind,
this only costs $230.
Although right now, Micro Center have a bundle
where in addition to the 5600X3D,
you can also get yourself an ASUS B550-PLUS TUF motherboard,
as well as 16 gigs of G.SKILL for only $330.
And because it is a Ryzen 5000 Series processor,
it still is fully compatible with AM4 motherboards.
So obviously, we have a brand new one here,
but if you're maybe upgrading
from a slightly older Ryzen system,
assuming you have a BIOS that is compatible with this,
which most somewhat newer boards will,
you could theoretically get yourself a major boost
to gaming performance without having to upgrade
to a new motherboard to have to pay a lot of extra money
for a DDR5 and whatnot.
This is essentially a drop in upgrade
and of course, it's exclusive to Micro Center.
So let's put the system together
and see exactly how well it performs.
(upbeat music)
Say hello to Big Red.
- [Voiceover] Wow!
- Now this total system costs just under $1,600
from Micro Center.
I'd say it actually looks pretty nice.
So we've got it in the Hyte Y40 case specifically in this red,
which I think looks terrific.
It's also, of course, paired with the Phantom gaming version
of the 6950 XT, which we have hopefully coded to be,
not RGB, just R,
because Radeon,
(upbeat music)
we're also rocking 32 gigabytes
of CORSAIR Vengeance RGB RAM,
one terabyte Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD,
and we've also got a Fully-Modular
850 Watt Powerspec Power Supply.
So when you put this all together,
I'll fully admit, it's not a configuration
that I think a lot of gamers would choose.
I think typically when you get
to this 15, $1,600 price point,
you're gonna be running with a Core i7 or a Ryzen 7,
or even like an i9 or a Ryzen 9 or something.
But what I really wanna know is,
is this 5600X3D powerful enough
to properly feed our GPU when it comes to 4K
and 1080p high frame rate?
Let's test the system out with some games
that are very sensitive to frame rate,
which is typically where the CPU makes
the biggest difference.
So we're gonna start out with Apex
not only running at 1080p,
but we're also gonna try it at 4K to see the difference.
(Austin vocalizing)
TSAA is fine.
Ultra, ultra, ultra.
Yeah, I mean, there's no reason why we can't run this
on very, very high.
So here, we're basically capping out at 140 FPS.
So here it seems pretty clear
that we are running up against the 144 FPS cap
that's running by default.
So I actually wanna try to see what we're getting in 4K,
'cause that I think will be a lot more demanding.
Oh, my God, we're still 144 at 4K?
Oh, wait, no, no, we're dipping slightly below.
I'm seeing like 138, 140.
Oh, wow, okay, actually, you know what?
I didn't think I would need to do this.
I actually need to go and fully uncap
the frame rate in Steam.
I will admit, I have never had to do this before.
So I'm going to set it as max unlimited fps.
(upbeat music) Tryin' to run unlimited fps.
All right, you know what, I'm actually kind of excited.
To be fair, I'm playing right now on a 4K 120 Hertz monitor.
So I can't see 4K at 200 FPS.
Dude, this looks phenomenal in 4K
and like everything like maxed out.
Like the level of detail you get here with this map,
oh, that frame rate's coming up now.
We're up to 180 FPS at 4K?
Yo, and we're running on ultra settings.
Let's turn it down to 1080p
and let's see what happens to our frame rate.
'Cause this'll be an even bigger test
of what the CPU can do.
(Austin laughing) (Austin applauding)
300 FPS.
And in fact, it is,
is it capped at 300 FPS?
I actually think that Apex is running up against a cap,
'cause it is pretty much stuck at 300 FPS.
So we're gonna try CS:GO.
We'll start out 4K.
I don't know anyone who plays CS:GO at 4K,
but,
science.
All right, let's do,
oh, my God.
Well, I immediately say,
we're at 350, 370 FPS at 4K.
My dude, that's a lot of frames.
Like, obviously I'm gonna try 1080p,
but (chuckling)
I'm gonna switch my settings real quick to 1080p
and laugh at how hilariously high my frame rate is.
Wait, we're 1080p.
It's basically the same frame rate.
(Austin chuckling)
We're still at 400 FPS.
You know what, what we're running into right now?
We're running into a pure CPU bottleneck,
which makes sense at 400 FPS.
Okay, let's do this, let's do this.
I'm gonna see what it looks like at 400 FPS.
How do you do fellow 400 FPSers?
Okay, we got this.
We got this fam, we got this.
(soft upbeat music)
Nope, nope.
Okay, that's fine, that's fine.
You know what?
I was there for team support.
Anyway, apparently,
oh. (gun firing)
(gun firing) (alert chiming)
Okay, so I guess what we've learned here,
is that this game is playable at 400 FPS at 1080 or 4K,
because that's such a ridiculous number
that we're completely CPU bound.
So for Fortnite, I already know
that this game will run well on this system.
That's not a question,
but what I wanna see is how high we can push the frame rate
in a more esports sort of context.
So I'm gonna start at 4K,
I will switch to 1080p in a second,
but what I've done is I've set the settings
to be basically epic
but I've turned off the extra bells and whistles.
So things like Nanite, Ray Tracing,
those are all off.
I'm running just standard at FXAA.
I wanna see what we can get
with a nice looking image without all the extra stuff,
'cause this game will look terrific by turning everything on.
But even with this 6950 XT,
we will not be crushing like crazy,
crazy frame rates.
So I wanna try this
and then we will settle the resolution down.
But I really wanna hit well above a hundred FPS
like I think that's really what I wanna know.
But yeah, at 4K, we're 80, 90 FPS,
which looks terrific, but let's try 1080p.
So I'm gonna give you about a hundred FPS in 1080p,
which is interesting.
So while every game is different,
a good rule of thumb is that for lighter weight titles
that are a little bit more esports in nature
where you really care about every frame per second,
doing things like turning your resolution down,
will actually make a fairly big difference.
Whereas, when you crank it to like 4K and whatnot,
you're putting a little bit more of the stress
on your GPU instead of your CPU.
So what we've seen here is solid performance
and games that are really dependent on the FPS.
But now actually let's go ahead
and try some more triple A graphically demanding titles
to get a little bit of a better picture
of how the system performs.
Importantly, how the 5600X3D performs.
So first of all, I'm gonna hop into Forza Horizon 5.
So this is a game that I would say
is not massively challenging to run,
but when you crank it all up especially at 4K,
it looks really nice.
So we'll try on FPS,
motion blur's fine,
V Sync off, 4K unlocked,
yada yada yada.
I think this should be totally reasonable.
So let's actually hop into a game and see what it does.
Okay, so inside of Forza Horizon 5
on extreme settings at 4K,
we're getting about 90 to a hundred FPS.
It looks like 4K is just no problem here.
Gonna hop into the settings.
Let's see what happens when we pop it up to 1080p.
So hopping down to 1080p
we've now jumped our frame rate up actually
by not like a huge amount by about 180, 190 FPS.
Next up, let's try Cyberpunk 2077.
We're running it both 1080 and 4K.
I'm running it basically ultra settings,
but without the extra bits of bobs.
So I don't have any like FidelityFX turned on
and I don't have any Ray Tracing.
This system can handle it,
but if I turn on all of that,
honestly what it's gonna do
is it's just gonna make this a pure GPU test.
And while I love the 6950 XT,
I know what this gen of graphics card can do.
I wanna see what more of what this CPU performance
is actually gonna be like.
Whoa, wait a minute.
Wow.
So we are at about 45 FPS right now.
Let's hop on the bike
and give this a little bit of a stress test.
Oh wow, okay, so that actually,
uh-huh,
that's actually not crushing it
if I'm being honest with you.
So we're getting about 30 to 35 FPS,
especially, it's a little bit more demanding
as I'm sort of riding around on the bike,
but we're actually,
we're getting some severe frame drops here.
Let me actually open up the settings here
and let's try it 1080p.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Hold on a second.
Switching from 4K to 1080p,
literally quadruple my frame rate.
That's really interesting.
So that's a really extreme scale
and to me, what it sounds like
is that we are 100% GPU-bound, right?
Because, I mean, 4K is four times the pixels of 1080p
but I guess that just,
to me, just means that we're entirely relying
on the 6950 XT here,
and at the CPU, it's not really stressed all that much.
That is wild.
I had never seen Cyberpunk scale like that.
That's crazy, to see almost a perfect linear scale
between resolution and frame rate,
which really just does go to show
that you can't just look at a couple of benchmarks
and just decide that, "Oh, that's it,"
and that sort of decides the whole thing,
because every game is different.
And the way that the CPU actually interacts
with these things,
it's really, really interesting.
But that I will say,
hands down, one of the most extreme graphics scaling
I've ever seen.
(air whooshing) I wanna be clear,
this 3D V-cache is not a gimmick.
Now, is it going to be a magical be all end all
that's gonna, you know, fix all performance issues?
No, of course not.
It's an additional cache built into your CPU,
which is going to be helpful in certain situations.
I think it's just worth considering
that it's not going to give you a huge uplift
in every game, right?
It is going to be game dependent.
And a lot of games these days are not massively CPU-bound
especially some of that sort of more triple A titles
that the games that are super graphically demanding
where you're going to see more of the benefit here
are games that are going to be pushing high frame rates
than you wanna push even higher.
The kinda games where you're going to be really caring
about every frame per second.
And that I think is where this really shines.
Because if I'm thinking about who should buy this 5600X3D,
it's gonna be someone who either
is going to be playing a lot of games
that are very CPU dependent
and you wanna be pushing crazy frame rates
to make sure that you're super competitive
or someone who is potentially
on an older Ryzen based system
and they want a CPU upgrade.
I think this is really cool
that Micro Center have this exclusive CPU.
And I think for certain people
this is going to be absolutely perfect.
The 5600X3D is a solid option
and of course, it's exclusively available
at your friendly local Micro Center,
which of course, I'll have more information on that.
The link in the description,
as well as all the other parts I use for this build.
And of course, Micro Center is expanding.
So not only is the Indianapolis store
right around the corner,
but two new stores will be coming soon,
Charlotte as well as Miami.
And you can still get your hands on a 128 gig Flash Drive
by signing up at the link in the description.
In addition, if you're a brand new customer
you can get yourself $25 off of any new CPU,
including the one from the bundle.
(clears throat) The one that you should probably grab.
And it is back to school month at Micro Center
which means that they have tons of deals on nice keyboard,
Chromebooks, you name it.
So let me know what you think about the 5600X3D
in the comments below.
And until next time,
I will see you at Micro Center.