The Ryzen 9 7950X3D will be the forerunner of the new Ryzen 7000X3D line of desktop processors that AMD just unveiled at CES. According to the company will be the fastest processor on the consumer marketthus beating its direct competitor, the Intel Core i9-13900K “Raptor Lake”, in the most demanding tasks such as video games.

AMD announced some news at a conference scheduled for this morning at the Las Vegas trade show. Among them we have to mention Ryzen 7000 Mobile processors for notebooks and RX 7000 graphics also for notebooks. It has also expanded its line of desktop processors, which was released last fall, with new models for the general line and other special ones, such as the one covered in this post.

If you follow us regularly, you must know them. A few months ago, AMD advanced the development of a “secret” weapon to defeat Intel’s Raptor Lake, the “3D Vertical Cache” technology. Or what is the same, use 3D stacked level three cache release Ryzen 7 5800X3D with very good performance results.

This type of L3 cache construction offers important advantages at the silicon level and at the performance level, especially in games, while allowing to keep the same socket as the standard models and all the advantages of its technology, in this case derived from the ZEN4 microarchitecture, which we have already seen in the so far presented on Ryzen 7000 market.

Ryzen 9 7950X3D, the fastest in the wild west?

AMD has come up with three variants for this platform, the 8-core 16-thread Ryzen 7 7800X3D, the 12-core 24-thread Ryzen 9 7900X3D and the 16-core 32-thread Ryzen 9 7950X3D, which is the star of the show. All three work at high frequencies with cap above 5 GHz (5.0, 5.6 and 5.7 GHz) and like all “X” models have the multiplier unlocked for easy overclocking. The trio has a TDP consumption of 120 watts and total buffer memory 104, 140 and 144 MB.

The total cache numbers of the top two processors in the live presentation surprised, although AMD later clarified this. Vertical 3D cache it only applies to one of the two chiplets (CCD), while the other contains only a flat 32 Mbyte L3 cache. That’s how the bills come out…

The goal seems to be that the first CCD with built-in 3DV cache is in charge and specifically optimized for gaming, while other workloads (such as audio stack, network stack, background services, etc.) are handled by the second CCD. .

In the era of hybrid processors, from ARM and Intel, configuration asymmetric caching should work perfectly from a software perspective. And there shouldn’t be any runtime errors coming from the ISA mismatch because the CPU core types on both CCDs are the same “Zen 4”. When AMD began shipping dual-CCD client processors with the Ryzen 3000, the company worked closely with Microsoft to optimize programming for the operating system.

The results are always excellent according to AMD. Ryzen 9 7950X3D outperforms Core i9-13900K (the highest performance from Intel) in gaming performance between 13% and 24% in the four tests that AMD performed, while delivering significantly higher values ​​in multi-threaded productivity tests. In particular, in workloads that involve big data like file compression and DaVinci Resolve, the 7950X3D would outperform the Core i9-13900K by 24-52%.

To say that Intel is already preparing Raptor Lake “Refresh” just to face these 3D from AMD. The intention would only be to increase the operating frequency between 100 and 300 MHz. We already told you.

Ryzen 7 7800X3D, best for gaming

Interestingly, AMD used this term “the best gaming processor in the world” with 7800X3D and not with 7950X3D. This should mean that, despite its lower maximum operating frequency, the 7800X3D should offer the best gaming performance of the three presented models, perhaps due to the mentioned vertical layout of the 3D cache.

In terms of performance, AMD claims a 21-30% increase in performance over the previous generation 5800X3D. This may be due to the increased IPC of the “Zen 4” cores and faster DDR5 memory. AMD says the 7800X3D should shine especially in CPU-constrained gaming scenarios, such as high refresh rate settings for low-resolution gaming, which is most commonly used in competitive gaming or esports, for example.

We will explain the specific technical foundations of this technology and the used cache design to you in time. Ryzen 7000X3D processors will available from February from 2023 and will be compatible with existing motherboards that use socket AM5. Some of them will need a BIOS/UEFI update, which manufacturers like GIGABYTE or ASUS will surely provide. Also, the USB BIOS Flashback feature is standardized by AMD across all motherboard brands that work on their platform, so it shouldn’t be a problem.

Other Ryzen 7000 processors

AMD used CES to announce additional processors that expand the already existing Ryzen 7000 processor family:

As you can see in the picture, these are three new models that do not use 3D cache or have an unlocked multiplier, but are significantly cheaper, with versions of 6, 8 and 12 cores, operating frequencies above 5 GHz and a fairly satisfied TDP. of 65 watts.

Include a fan of stocks Wraith Prism RGB in a box for retail purchase. The three new CPUs are compatible with existing socket AM5 motherboards without the need to update the BIOS and, of course, have all the technologies of the ZEN4 microarchitecture. They will be available in the retail channel from January 10.