AMD has announced a raft of new Ryzen processors at its CES 2023 showcase, including the long-awaited Ryzen 7000X3D processors that should provide a stern rejoinder to Intel’s 13th-gen desktop CPUs and could let Team Red reclaim the gaming performance crown.
The idea here is pretty simple: take the ‘3D V-Cache’ technology that made AMD’s last-gen Ryzen 7 5800X3D so fast that it challenged even next-gen flagship CPUs, and pair it with some of AMD’s fastest Ryzen 7000 processors. The result is three new chips, the Ryzen 7800X3D, Ryzen 7900X3D and the Ryzen 7950X3D. All three come with dramatically increased cache sizes – 104MB of L2 and L3 cache on the Ryzen 7 and up to 144MB on the Ryzen 9 – which minimise the time CPUs spend waiting for data to be copied into the cache, increasing performance considerably in some games.
In AMD-provided benchmarks, the 7800X3D was between 10 and 25 percent faster than the 5800X3D at 1080p in games like Cyberpunk 2077, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Borderlands 3 and F1 22 – slightly less than I would have expected, given that the 7800X3D is also using DDR5 RAM versus the DDR4 on the 5800X3D. Perhaps a more interesting comparison is that of the 7950X3D against the 13900K, where AMD showed between a nine and 24 percent performance lead in Watchdogs Legion, Dota 2, Rainbow Six Siege and Horizon Zero Dawn.
| CPU design | Boost | Base | L3 cache | TDP | RRP | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ryzen 9 7950X3D | Zen 4 16C/32T | 5.7GHz | 4.2GHz | 128MB | 170W | TBA |
| Ryzen 9 7950X | Zen 4 16C/32T | 5.7GHz | 4.5GHz | 64MB | 170W | $699/£739 |
| Ryzen 9 7900X3D | Zen 4 12C/24T | 5.6GHz | 4.4GHz | 132MB | 120W | TBA |
| Ryzen 9 7900X | Zen 4 12C/24T | 5.6GHz | 4.7GHz | 64MB | 170W | $549/£579 |
| Ryzen 9 7900 | Zen 4 12C/24T | 5.3GHz | TBA | 64MB | 65W | $429 |
| Ryzen 7 7800X3D | Zen 4 8C/16T | 5GHz | 4.XGHz | 96MB | 120W | TBA |
| Ryzen 7 7700X | Zen 4 8C/16T | 5.4GHz | 4.5GHz | 32MB | 105W | $399/£419 |
| Ryzen 7 7700 | Zen 4 8C/16T | 5.3GHz | TBA | 32MB | 65W | $329 |
| Ryzen 5 7600X | Zen 4 6C/12T | 5.3GHz | 4.7GHz | 32MB | 105W | $299/£319 |
| Ryzen 5 7600 | Zen 4 6C/12T | 5.1GHz | TBA | 32MB | 65W | $229 |
These X3D chips will no doubt cost a pretty penny, with no prices mentioned in the AMD announcements – despite a tiny footnote stating that prices were given in US dollars, perhaps hinting that the prices were removed at fairly short notice? There’s no firm release date either, just February.