The day has finally arrived when we can see official, non-AMD benchmarks of its new Zen 4 flagship CPU. The Ryzen 9 7950X3D goes on sale on Feb. 28 and is the company’s first 32-thread V-Cache CPU. That’s exciting news for hardcore gamers with a big budget waiting to upgrade. However, it’s not a clean sweep over its rivals from Intel or competing chips from AMD, for that matter. Its $699 price tag is also tough to swallow, given its niche position in the market, as it’s not the fastest chip in productivity. It can top the charts for gaming, but it depends on the game. This puts it in a precarious position that might have AMD fans waiting for the less expensive 7800X3D to arrive in April.
As a quick recap, AMD is launching three Zen 4 V-Cache CPUs. The 16-core, 32-thread Ryzen 9 7950X3D is reviewed here and costs $699. There’s also a 12-core, 24-thread Ryzen 9 7900X3D that costs $599. It looks like AMD didn’t send that out to reviewers. Finally, the eight-core, 16-thread Ryzen 7 7800X3D costs $449. That’s coming out in April, and it seems like it’ll offer a tempting combo of price-to-performance–otherwise, AMD wouldn’t be holding it back for so long. However, these chips differ in the amount of overcall cache they offer: 144MB, 140MB, and 104MB, respectively. All three CPUs are 120W TDP CPUs too, which is a tad lower than their non-X counterparts. AMD had to drop the clocks a bit to compensate for the extra heat generated by the additional cache. They also have a lower maximum temperature of 89C compared with 95C for the previous CPUs.
Productivity Tests
Our colleagues at PCMag ran the numbers on this spicy bit of silicon. AMD previously marketed the Ryzen 7 5800X3D as purely a gaming CPU. The additional cache can offer a significant boost in certain types of games, so it wasn’t just marketing. With the Zen 4 versions of the Ryzen 9 chips, it’s taking a different approach by having two chiplets. One chiplet has the V-Cache on it, and the other doesn’t. Theoretically, this allows a best-of-both-worlds scenario. Apps that don’t benefit from the extra cache, like productivity apps, can run on the standard chiplet at high clocks. Games can run on the V-Cache die. However, as these tests show, the reduced clocks and operating temperature of this CPU slow it down in standard CPU benchmarks. The non-V-Cache 7950X beats it in every test except one, showing the extra cache isn’t helpful for these productivity tests.
Gaming Tests
Here’s where the rubber meets the road, and in the games used by PCMag, it’s not a decisive victory. The 7950X3D is at the top of the benchmark charts, but at $699, it needs more significant margins than it’s showing. The Core i9-13900k costs around $580, and the Ryzen 9 7950X is also around that price. Despite costing more than $100 more, it either loses to both of these CPUs or is very close, making it a tough sell. Overall there’s no knockout victory to be had here, as we saw with the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, which was the undisputed gaming champ.
Power and Thermals
This is one area where AMD’s newest CPU shines. It shows the benefits of the extra cache in that it can go toe-to-toe with Intel in benchmarks while using much less power. When running Adobe Premier and Cinebench, we see total system power at a shocking 130W less than the Core i9-13900K. It’s using 160W less than the flagship and notoriously power-hungry i9-13900KS too. For thermals, it’s sitting toasty at 90C despite being billed as an 89C max temp CPU. That’s hot but 10C less than its rivals from Intel. Overall AMD’s decision to lower TDP seems to have paid off.
Conclusion
The only portion of PCMag’s tests we didn’t analyze is a big win for AMD and its iGPU performance. For someone buying a $699 CPU, that will not matter, so we’re leaving it out. Overall, though, this is not the triumph people expected when AMD announced these CPUs. It didn’t mop the floor with Intel’s CPUs or non-V-Cache versions either. The lack of numbers for the 12- and eight-core versions might also give people pause. AMD certainly has a fast and efficient CPU on its hands, though. The price guarantees that only the most hardcore will spring for it, especially given the price of AM5 motherboards and DDR5 memory.
Now Read:
- AMD Reveals Ryzen 7000 V-Cache Pricing and Availability
- Rumored AMD RDNA4 Specs Indicate 3.5GHz Clocks, Double RDNA3 Performance
- AMD’s Ryzen 7950X3D May Be Slower Than the 7800X3D
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