AMD has already closed the Intel gap in gaming with the Ryzen 9 7950X3D and is ready to go one step further. The Ryzen 7 7800X3D was the chip everyone had been waiting to benchmark after his previous Ryzen 7 5800X3D dominated gaming CPUs for a long time. The 7800X3D arrived over a month later than the 7950X3D, but I can confidently say it was worth the wait.
The new Ryzen 7 7800X3D is priced at $449 and features 8 cores, 16 threads and boost clocks up to 5 GHz. Competes with Intel’s flagship Core i9-13900K (around $589), AMD’s flagship Ryzen 9 7950X3D ($699), and even Intel’s $699 Core i9-13900KS processor running at up to 6 GHz It is designed to
Impressed with AMD’s 7800X3D many. At $449, it offers some of the best PC gaming performance available today in a package that consumes far less power than Intel’s counterparts. This is very impressive and should be the next gaming PC CPU for most people.
I’ve been testing MSI’s Meg X670E Ace motherboard, 32GB of G.Skill DDR5 6000 RAM, and AMD’s 7800X3D with Nvidia’s RTX 4090. This is one of the latest AM5 motherboards, with a single PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot and three PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots, providing plenty of storage options for PC gaming.
Unfortunately, we don’t have a 5800X3D in the lab right now, but we tested AMD’s Ryzen 7 7800X3D, 7950X3D, Intel’s Core i9-13900K, and 13900KS with a variety of workloads, synthetic benchmarks, and games. All tests were performed on the latest Windows 11 2022 Update with VBS security disabled on all systems. With resizable BARs enabled, tests were primarily run at 1080p resolution to avoid potential GPU bottlenecks and analyze raw CPU performance.
AMD’s Ryzen 7 7800X3D outperforms Intel’s Core i9-13900K at 1080p and all seven games tested at max or ultra settings.both F1 22 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider 7800X3D runs over 15% faster, Watch Dogs Legion 9% faster on this latest AMD CPU.
I was surprised to see Nvidia’s RTX 4090 pushing 366fps at 1080p. Shadow of the Tomb Raider The 7800X3D surpasses the best performance I’ve seen on the 7950X3D.flat Metro Exodus Both the 13900K and the 7950X3D definitely improve the performance of the 7800X3D.
All of these results are impressive for AMD at 1080p, but I typically run a handful of games for CPU testing, so I wanted to test some of the games I normally use for GPU reviews as well. The CPU impressed me so much that it will be my main rig for testing future GPUs here. The Barge.
That’s why I wanted to put the 7800X3D more head-to-head with Intel’s Core i9-13900KS in our extended gaming tests at 1080p. The 13900KS is a powered-up version of the 13900K, featuring a maximum boost speed of 6 GHz and fine-tuned base clocks designed to boost PC gaming performance. This is currently the best Intel has to offer for his PC gaming, but at $699 compared to his $449 price tag for the 7800X3D.
In our 16 games test at 1080p, the 7800X3D came out on top 10 times. Most losses are very close, but the exceptions are: CS:GO, Intel’s 13900KS beats the 7800X3D by nearly 8%. Every other time he’s outdone by the 7800X3D, but Intel’s lead is less than 3%. It’s a similar story at 1440p, where in most tests he beats the 7800X3D or beats the 13900KS by a small margin.
Where AMD doesn’t win is in productivity. The 7800X3D is well behind Intel here. Both of AMD’s top X3D chips are beaten by Intel in PugetBench’s Photoshop test, Geekbench 5, and Cinebench R23. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, as the 7800X3D wasn’t really designed to take on productivity tasks. For that, you really need a 7950X3D or Intel’s Core i9-13900K instead.
However, if you’re only interested in gaming, the 7800X3D is the obvious choice given the combination of improved performance, price, and power consumption. It’s really impressive how efficient AMD’s 7800X3D is. I tested the 7800X3D in action Cyberpunk 2077 At 4K with ray tracing settings maxed out, the CPU package power peaked at 67 watts. Intel’s 13900KS peaked at 275 watts for the same task.
I also saw the 13900KS hit 329 watts while running Cinebench, while the 7800X3D only reached a peak power consumption of 86 watts. The 13900KS has far superior Cinebench performance and cyberpunk 2077, It offers better performance in most games without consuming extra power.
The 7800X3D maxed out at 84 degrees Celsius while running Cinebench, compared to the 13900KS’ maximum of 101 degrees Celsius. Just like the 7950X3D, the 7800X3D has a TDP of 120 Watts, down from the original Zen 4 7950 chip’s TDP of 170 Watts. Intel used a base power of 125 Watts on the Core i9-13900K and bumped this up to 150 Watts on the 13900KS. All of Intel’s latest chips exceed 250 watts at maximum turbo power, and more if the motherboard allows it.
The efficiency of AMD’s latest X3D chips comes from the latest Zen 4 architecture combined with the impressive 3D V-Cache technology. 3D V-Cache works very well in games as it doesn’t require a lot of CPU cores and power. Instead, favor a CPU that can process data quickly with a large cache. Productivity apps typically don’t like large amounts of cache, so you won’t see the same performance gains on these tasks.
The 7800X3D, like the 7950X3D, requires the new AM5 motherboard. These boards support DDR5 memory and up to 24 PCIe 5.0 lanes. The first PCIe 5.0 consumer SSDs will be available soon, but for now most SSDs will continue to use PCIe 4.0 SSDs. PCIe 5.0 support on AM5 boards is great for future proofing, but isn’t needed any time soon for GPUs. Nvidia’s latest RTX 40-series cards don’t support this latest standard and have yet to reach the limits of PCIe 4.0 for GPUs.
Existing AM4 coolers should also work fine with AM5 boards. I have been able to use Corsair’s H150 Elite LCD on the 7800X3D, 7950X3D, and his regular 7950 without any modifications required. It’s worth checking with cooler manufacturers that existing AM4 models can easily be used with these new AM5 motherboards, though.
Also, new BIOS options need to be set for reasonable boot times. During our review of the Ryzen 9 7900X, we noticed early issues with the DDR5 memory training process. Boot time will be longer by about 30 seconds. AM5 motherboards come with a “Restore Memory Context” BIOS option that needs to be enabled for faster boot times.
Enabling this on MSI’s Meg X670E Ace motherboard significantly reduced boot time, but then the system started shutting down with Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) memory related errors. I immediately reverted the settings to regain stability and reported the issue to both AMD and MSI. I’m confident these early issues will be resolved with a BIOS update, as we’ve seen improvements since his initial 7900X review.
AMD’s 7800X3D is a truly impressive gaming CPU. AMD has closed the gap with his 7950X3D, but now exceeds it with efficiency gains. If I were building a gaming PC right now, he would definitely choose the 7800X3D.
If you use your PC for both gaming and productivity apps like Photoshop, Premiere Pro, etc., the 7950X3D is a better option for those who need the performance of both. It packs great PC gaming performance into a less expensive processor.
The 5800X3D has become a popular choice among PC gamers. I think the 7800X3D will shine for 2023 and beyond.
