AMD’s 5800X3D has been out in the wild for a while now and we’ve already seen reviews from all of the
big tech channels at this point. But as cool and informative as those initial, day-1 reviews are,
they can’t predict the future. Things change. Technology changes. And this is just a dumb way
to explain that this review isn’t late, everyone else’s reviews were just early.
And that’s because in this review, we’re not just going to look at the 5800X3D as
it stands right now, although we’re obviously doing that too. No. We’re
also going to dig into a brand new feature certain motherboard-makers have been rolling out recently
that pushes past AMD’s limits and could make the 5800X3D even more interesting than it already is.
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Now, for those who need a little refresher, AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800X3D brings with it almost
everything that makes the regular 5800X great. We’ve got 8 cores, 16 threads, a big IPC boost,
105W TDPs, and all of the other tasty Zen 3 improvements and features.
Oh, and it also lands at the same launch price of $450.
Curiously, what we don’t have is the same raw clock speed (or the ability to overclock
but we’ll get to that later). The regular 5800X starts at a base clock of 3.8GHz and boosts all
the way up to 4.7GHz, while the 5800X3D starts at 3.4GHz with a max boost of just 4.5GHz.
But even with those lower clocks, AMD claims that the 5800X3D is
up to 15% faster than Intel’s beastly Core i9-12900K in certain games.
So what gives? Well, 3D V-Cache gives. And it apparently gives a lot.
In massively oversimplified terms, 3D V-cache is a technology that lets AMD stack multiple chiplets
on top of each other and has them all working together as a team, and that’s a thing that
totally works because… science. In the case of the 5800X3D, we’ve got a tasty sandwich made up of L3
cache, 96MB of L3 cache to be precise. That’s 64 more megabytes of cache than on the regular 5800X.
This extra cache should be good for games because reading game data from cache memory is a lot
quicker than reading it from RAM. So, the more data we have in cache, the less time the processor
needs to fetch that data, which translates into more performance and more frames per second.
Or at least that’s what AMD wants us to think. There’s no way to know
for sure until we see this thing in action, so let’s get into it.
The system we’ll be using to do just that includes MSI’s X570 Ace motherboard,
32GB of Crucial’s Ballistix RGB RAM running at 3600MHz, CL16,
MSI’s RTX 3070 Gaming X Trio, Crucial’s P5 Plus as our main storage,
MSI’s CoreLiquid 360R keeping the chip cool, and Antec’s EAG Pro 750W to power all of the things.
Now, before we see what that sexy new motherboard feature I mentioned earlier is all about,
we should first put the chip to the test the way the PC gods (and AMD) intended,
that being without any hacky features turned on.
And let’s kick things off with productivity benchmarks, starting as always with a couple of
Cinebench drag races. And here’s the part where I should probably explain that the 5800X3D’s
cache advantage is only really an advantage in applications like games that can make good use of
it. Applications that don’t benefit much from it will benefit much more from higher clock speeds,
which is why we also see the 5800X3D fall slightly behind in our Blender Benchmarks.
Pugetbench’s Photoshop benchmark bucks the trend a little, with the 5800X3D coming out on top,
but then it loses ground again in the Premiere Pro Benchmark. But in either case, the score for
both of the 5800X versions is so close that you probably won’t notice any practical difference.
Jumping into our gaming benchmarks, I really expected to see the X3D
absolutely dominating here, but that didn’t quite work out… at first.
In Unigine’s Superposition, it scored higher than its non-3D counterpart
but fell short compared to Intel’s 11700KF. It also lagged slightly
behind the regular 5800X in 3DMark’s Time Spy, and well behind the Intel competition.
In Civilization 6 and Cyberpunk the 11700KF came out on top again,
and the regular 5800X narrowly beat out the X3D.
But then things started to turn around for the 5800X3D,
and not just because I don’t have numbers for the 11700KF for the rest of the games.
In every other game I tested, the 5800X3D
completely turned things around and came out on top every time.
Of course, in games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, Borderlands 3,
and Horizon Zero Dawn, the 5800X3D’s lead over the non-3D version was fairly negligible.
That being said, in other games like Hitman 3, Metro Exodus, God of War, and Forza Horizon 5,
that lead stretches out well beyond what you’d consider “margin of error” territory.
But this is still not really the performance bump I’d expected to see.
Luckily the bump I expected to see actually popped up in our final three benchmarks.
In The Witcher 3, the 5800X3D managed to come out ahead of the 5800X
with a much more impressive 10% lead. That’s more like it. Oh, did I say impressive,
no. Our average FPS numbers in Far Cry 6 and Far Cry New Dawn are impressive, almost suspiciously
so. But I tested, and retested, tested some more, and I kept getting the same results.
The 5800X3D absolutely dominated the 5800X, with a huge 17% uplift in Far Cry 6,
and an even huge-er 33% uplift in Far Cry New Dawn… that’s pretty nutty.
Clearly, some games don’t care all that much about L3 cache,
or at least just enough to offset the 5800X3D’s lower clocks,
but in other games, better designed to make full use of it, it can be an absolute game-changer.
The 5800X3D also beat the 5800X overall while drawing less power and running cooler,
with it maxing out at 130W and 85 degrees respectively during testing.
What all of this shows is that the 5800X3D is absolutely a worthy successor to
the regular 5800X, especially if you’re playing titles optimized for the X3D’s extra cache
like Far Cry, The Witcher 3, and probably a bunch of others I wasn’t able to test. Hopefully,
we’ll see even more developers optimizing for higher-cache CPUs in the coming years.
But hey, this isn’t the end of the 5800X3Ds story. I promised that we’d take a look at
that new motherboard feature, and now seems as good a time as any.
The feature in question is called Kombo Strike and it’s only found on certain MSI motherboards after
updating to the latest beta BIOS. The feature supposedly dances around AMD’s “no overclocking”
rule for the X3D by doing… something. MSI hasn’t really gone through the trouble of explaining
how the feature works other than saying it’s “used for gaining extra performance”,
but luckily the numbers I got during testing paint a fuller picture.
As this graph comparing all three levels of Kombo Strike shows, the feature almost
definitely undervolts the CPU, and in all three cases plays around with clock speeds too.
Both levels one and two show higher all-core max clock speeds accompanied (weirdly since
they’re using less power) by higher temps. Level three sees an even bigger bump to max all-core
clock speed, while also drawing significantly less power and running substantially cooler.
So, great news for anyone worried about temps and power draw,
but what about performance? Well, here’s where things get a little boring.
So boring that I’m not going to waste your time with another mountain of charts.
The TLDR is that gaming performance using Kombo Strike 3
was in most cases about in line with the performance we saw with Kombo turned off.
There were one or two outliers where Kombo 3 added or subtracted two or three FPS,
but other than that, you’re looking at a less than 1% difference overall. Oh, and definitely don’t
use Kombo 1 or 2, since both of those resulted in noticeable performance drops in my case.
All of that sort of makes sense considering Kombo Strike seems to be targeting higher
all-core performance, rather than single-core performance,
where there seemed to be no difference regardless of the level used.
That higher all-core performance did count for something though, as in all-core heavy workloads
like Cinebench, Blender, and Premiere Pro, we did see a nice little uplift across the board.
Even though it’s a little disappointing that Kombo Strike didn’t boost gaming performance in my case,
the uplift in production workloads and more importantly the lower power draw and
temps that came with Kombo 3, I think makes it a very nice feature to have.
Whether it’s worth updating to a Beta BIOS to unlock it, well, that’s up to you.
Okay, so we’ve seen what AMD’s best gaming CPU ever can really do,
but is it actually worth your time and hard-earned cash?
Well, the short answer after taking everything into account is not really.
Even though the 5800X3D is a phenomenal chip for gaming, uses less power, and runs cooler
than the regular 5800X, even more so with the help of MSI’s Kombo Strike which also boosts its
production performance, it’s very pricey and stuck on a platform destined to be replaced very soon.
At its current price of $440 (or R8,300 here in South Africa), it's $140 more expensive than the
5800X, and about $50 more than the 5900X which is kind of insane. I mean, yes, the X3D is the
better gaming chip overall, but unless you’re looking at a small handful of games where we
saw some legitimately mind-blowing improvements, the difference as a whole is unfortunately not
all that impressive. Or at least certainly not impressive enough to justify that price.
The only way that price makes sense is if you’re looking at the most direct competition
from team blue. Compared to the 12900K which trades blows with the X3D in some benchmarks,
and the 12900KS which comes out slightly on top, the X3D seems like a friggin’ deal.
And that’s fair enough. AMD’s fastest gaming CPU
is massively cheaper than Intel’s and nets you a very similar gaming experience.
But just because the pricing for one thing is stupid, doesn’t mean the pricing for another
thing isn’t also stupid. Both are stupid. Unless you don’t care about value at all,
and just want the absolute best of the best, there are waaaaay
cheaper options from both teams that will get you about 90 to 95% of the way there.
And even if wanting the best of the best regardless of price is exactly what you’re into,
it’s probably a good idea to hold off for a while anyway. The AM4 platform that we know and love
is officially “dead”. The 5800X3D is sort of the last big hurrah for AM4,
which should be replaced within the next couple of months by AM5 and the Ryzen 7000-series.
Obviously, none of this means that the 5800X3D is a bad chip. It’s not. It’s great. And for
people who already have an AM4 board and something like the Ryzen 3600 or older,
it’s a massive upgrade that doesn’t come with the cost of a brand new platform,
one that will also see you having to buy expensive DDR5 memory.
But if you already have something like the Ryzen 5600 or better,
or an equivalent setup from team blue, then it just doesn’t make sense to buy right now.
And if you’re planning on putting together a brand new system,
maybe just wait a month or two until we see how the launch of Ryzen’s next-gen goes down.
And that’s all folks. Let me know in the comments what you think about the 5800X3D,
and whether you’d upgrade to it with next-gen knocking on the door.
Big thanks to AMD for letting me play around with the 5800X3D,
and remember to check out Crucial’s P5 Plus SSDs if you’re finally ready to speed up your PC life
or need more storage for your PS5. Oh, and remember to grab all of the
things at Takealot linked down below if you’re a fellow South African.
And yeah, hope to see you all in the next one.
Cheers.