The Ryzen 7 7800X3D is the best gaming CPU on the planet, bar none.
It isn't even close.
I should be celebrating then, yeah?
So, why do I look so mad?
Because, as far as I can tell, AMD intentionally manipulated the community in the lead-up to this launch.
First, they pushed their most rabid fans to more expensive, and arguably worse,
Ryzen 9 X3D CPUs at launch.
Although, that's nothing new, and all the major players have done this at one time or another.
But the second one is much more nefarious,
and reminds me of the way that Intel timed the release of their 10th gen HEDT processors
in a way that avoided direct comparisons to AMD's far superior Threadripper 3000.
It's yucky, and I'm gonna spell out why it's such a problem shortly.
First, I need to spell out why AMD now makes the only gaming CPUs that matter,
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It's been almost a year since AMD launched their first processor featuring 3D VCash technology,
the Ryzen 7 5800X3D.
And to say that it's been a game changer would be both an understatement
and a delightfully delicious dad joke.
The details are complex, but the result is simple.
3D VCash allows AMD to stack up the caches in their processors vertically,
increasing their capacity without increasing the die area of the finished chip.
A larger cache means that any data the processor needs is more likely to be right at hand
rather than stored in much slower system memory or, heaven forbid, persistent storage like an SSD.
There are trade-offs. Reading between the lines, 3D VCash has some downsides.
It appears to be much more sensitive to high voltages,
which makes overclocking a less fruitful, not to mention riskier endeavor,
and has forced AMD to reduce their out-of-the-box clock speeds.
It also reduces the rate at which heat can be dissipated from the cores,
meaning that 3D VCash chips have their thermal targets reined in.
But it seems to be worth it because while AMD's slide deck has the 7800X3D
competing with the Core i7-13700K in terms of pricing,
if we consider quite literally anything else, it is not even a contest,
especially in gaming where it makes such a difference to performance that,
well, I'll just let the graphs do the talking here.
Look at these margins of victory. Dang!
I mean, if you like spending $100 more for less performance from Team Blue,
then that's kind of your prerogative.
But if you're the sort of gamer looking to drive the latest 1080p high refresh rate monitors,
the only sensible choices we're looking at here are the 5800X3D
on a cheap and cheerful AM4 board with 16 gigs of memory for another 50 bucks,
or if you've got the extra cash to put into a newer platform,
AMD's 7800X3D absolutely obliterates everything in its weight class.
I mean, even its own X3D-equipped bigger brothers fall considerably behind,
which raises some big questions like, what the f***, and why?
Paulo Cojillo said that the core of beauty is simplicity,
and I think that applies well here.
The 7800X3D comes equipped with a mere eight cores on a single core complex die or CCD.
That means virtually all applications will benefit from its whopping 104 megabytes of on-die cash,
and since there's only one CCD, there's no latency penalty from pulling cached data off of another die.
By contrast, the 7900X3D and the 7950X3D have 12 cores and 16 cores respectively across two heterogeneous CCDs.
AMD's rationale for the design choice does make sense.
Half of the cores get 3D v-cash for killer gaming performance,
while the other half eschew it in favor of higher yields and higher boost clocks for productivity.
But in practice, getting applications to run on the most optimal core is a big challenge,
especially when you don't bother to build an on-chip hardware scheduler or load balancer,
and it results in lower real-world performance.
That puts the Ryzen 9 X3D chips in this super weird in-between zone,
where they fall behind their lean mean Ryzen 7 relative in gaming,
and then fall behind their own non-X3D counterparts in other applications.
Of course, as we pointed out in our review of those chips,
most people aren't buying $500 CPUs, or even $350 ones for that matter, to game at 1080p,
and if the 7800X3D can't keep its lead going into 1440p, I think...
Oh, it does.
Looking at average frame rates, the 7800X3D tops the charts almost without exception,
only losing in games where Intel CPUs tend to provide improvements in 1% lows.
Even games that are clearly GPU-bound in our testing, like Modern Warfare 2 and Red Dead Redemption 2,
see the 7800X3D generally eke out a small W.
There are exceptions.
Occasionally, even games won't benefit from 3D v-cash and would just much rather have a CPU that boosts higher,
but the overall picture is clear to the point where I'm not sure I remember ever seeing anything quite like this.
I mean, the thing is, for you the viewer watching this, 10 FPS here, 5% difference there,
it might not seem like that big of a deal.
I don't even play those games, you might say.
But that isn't the point.
Our test suite is designed to guide you toward the product that will provide the best long-term value,
not just in games today, but in games in the future.
And that 5% today can easily turn into 8% tomorrow,
or 15% a few years from now when faster GPUs arrive and need more powerful CPUs to perform their best.
Here's an edge case that illustrates my point very well.
Factorio's unit simulation update rate is capped in-game to 60 per second.
That means that any one of our CPUs is going to deliver a peak, optimal experience in this game.
But by forcing the game's engine to push beyond these artificial limits,
we can at least attempt to draw conclusions about the benefits we might enjoy in future sim-heavy games,
if we choose the right hardware today.
And the right choice isn't always obvious from the manufacturer's marketing.
You might quickly skim a headline or two and go,
oh, okay, 3D vCache is great.
I'll just get the best one with that.
But as you can see, when we force Factorio to run on the 3D vCache cores by disabling the other ones,
it performs right neck and neck with the 7800X3D.
But when we leave it at default with all the cores enabled,
it falls way back in line with the rest of the pack.
Pretty questionable behavior for a gaming CPU, don't you think?
And pretty questionable behavior from AMD.
When they split up the launch of the 7000X3D product line,
I believed that they simply wanted to capitalize on early adopters
who were willing to pay for more cores than they needed in order to get the latest shiny 3D vCache chips.
I mean, why play an ace if a tool do?
It's not an unusual strategy and is absolutely the reason that Nvidia slow-rolls their product lineups
top to bottom over time.
But the thing Nvidia doesn't do is launch a 4090 at halo-tier pricing,
only for buyers to end up ticked off when the 4070 arrives a few months later
and is not only cheaper, but actually performs better in games.
And it wouldn't have bothered me so much if AMD had seeded review samples of the chips at the same time,
then simply staggered availability,
like we did with our screwdriver that is now live shipping on lttstore.com.
But by splitting up the launches,
they created an environment where users who are seeking a review today of the Ryzen 9 X3D chips
are going to find countless articles comparing against Intel 13th Gen,
but very few comparing against the cheaper, superior gaming product in AMD's own lineup.
Now, I doubt this strategy will make any kind of material difference to their sales.
In spite of Intel jumping a day ahead of AMD's release, 10th Gen Core i9 was a sales disaster.
But I just don't like being played, and I feel a little played right now.
Though, of course there is the argument that none of this matters anyway
by the time you get into Ultra HD gaming,
which is likely where many of those Ryzen 9's are headed.
We didn't test as many games at this resolution,
since there's only so many times you can try to split the same hair.
But the bottom line is that the worst we're looking at across the entire range of chips we tested
is about 6-7%.
However, that is due to the massive 20% range in F1 2022.
If you're the kind of gamer then who prefers high fidelity experiences over a competitive edge,
than GPU-bound games like Cyberpunk and Shadow of the Tomb Raider,
you're just not gonna notice a difference.
And the same is true in our ray-traced 4K games where the difference is even smaller.
I'm still a bit irritated, it is kind of my job,
because I could make that exact same,
well it doesn't really matter anyway argument,
about the Ryzen 9 X3D chips as I move into our productivity results.
If a few percent FPS here and there doesn't matter to you in games,
well then you still shouldn't be paying the premium for these X3D chips,
because you would still be more than happy gaming on the regular X variants for cheaper.
And those non-3D chips will perform anywhere from about the same as their X3D equivalents,
to even better outside of games.
Sorry, this has gotten a bit derailed, the video is supposed to be about the 7800X3D,
and as you see on all of these charts, it isn't a top performer here,
but we never expected it to be.
Though it did crush another metric that we did expect.
In our review of the Ryzen 9 X3D chips, we took issue with AMD's marketing.
They called them gaming CPUs,
but we felt that their strength was actually in their efficiency,
and we are seeing the exact same thing here,
except that it is also a standout gaming value.
I know that the average gamer doesn't salivate over better performance per watt,
but this chip is so exceptional that I gotta slow you down and talk through this.
If you game two hours a day in California,
your 7800X3D is going to cost you about $7.50 a year to run.
For context, AMD's closest non-X3D,
the 7700X is going to cost you more like $9.50,
and an Intel 13600K, about $9.
Now watch this.
Let's add an hour a day of video encoding or 3D rendering, some other heavy load.
Then let's assume a five-year lifespan for this system, and holy crap.
The total cost of ownership goes from a boring metric for data center architects
to a serious consideration for enthusiasts and gamers,
especially if they live in a region where energy costs are spiraling out of control like in the UK.
Of course, though, value over time isn't the only consideration when specking out a new PC.
How much is this thing costing me today, Linus?
Less than you'd think.
At launch, AMD's AM5 platform took a lot of flack
for being poorly positioned compared to Intel's relatively inexpensive LGA 1700 socket.
They did have the benefit of a supposedly longer support roadmap,
but AMD's record on that is imperfect these days at best,
and the chips, the RAM, and the motherboards were very expensive.
Nowadays, though, the story is quite different.
A solid B650 board is going to run you around $200 US dollars,
16 gigs of high-speed DDR5 will set you back under $100,
and the fastest gaming chip on the block, the 7800X3D, is going to cost you $450.
Throw in a GPU and some other bits and bobs,
and you're looking at an absolutely killer machine for less than $1,500.
It's still not cheap, but if you want to save a buck,
the 5800X3D is still out there for $100 less,
and the market is flooded with dirt-cheap AM4 motherboards and DDR4 memory.
I wouldn't say then that Intel is down for the count,
but they do need to counter hard,
or it's going to be hard to come up with a reason to build blue.
That is, at least for now, almost as hard as a reason to segue to our sponsor.
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If you enjoyed this, check out our video on the 7900 and 7950x3D.
We get quite a bit deeper into the trade-offs that are being made
between 3D vcash and lower boost frequencies
and how that affects some applications versus others.