In the beginning, a story AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D To go out like a night candle. We entered it Our review Innovation award for the effort, but the stable, long-term asking price of €499 made the purchase not very pleasant. Now that the price of this processor has dropped sharply all of a sudden, the discussion about this CPU is increasing All sideways Related Loose article, which is when we talk Even Pricewatch’s most popular product. Time for a second opinion: Is the Ryzen 7 5800X3D a good deal?

What makes 5800X3D special

In the summer of 2021, AMD announced the arrival of 3D V-Cache. This is an additional L3 cache that is not located in the processor chip itself as usual, but in an additional chip literally on top of the regular one that. AMD uses chip-on-chip technology from chip maker TSMC for this. So the 5800X3D does not have 32MB L3 cache, like the regular 5800X, but 96MB: triple. The L3 cache is the largest cache in the processor and if the data needed for an arithmetic operation cannot be found, it must use main memory, which is an order of magnitude slower.

In particular, tasks that work on a lot of data at the same time or for which it is difficult to predict what data is required will generally benefit greatly from adding more L3 cache. Games are an excellent example of this. However, if the data required for a particular application already fits in the existing cache at any given time, then adding more cache does not make sense. In addition, the cache is relatively “expensive”; The chip’s 64MB of additional L3 cache is more than half the size of the entire original chip for the 5800X. So the amount of cache in the CPU is always a balancing act.

Given the large amount of cache, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D performs particularly well in games, especially compared to other models of its generation, and it performs quite efficiently. Additional cache memory is more economical than alternative methods of increasing game performance, for example increasing the clock frequency.

Borders 5800X3D

One downside to the 5800X3D is that it’s the first Ryzen desktop processor you can’t overclock or underclock. AMD removed these settings because new manufacturing technology limits the scalability of clock speed with respect to voltage. Since the characteristics of the cache and the processor cores themselves are related in different ways, it is not possible to manually overclock or overclock the CPU cores either.

Users already have it I found a way You’ll still be able to use Precision Boost Overdrive 2 on the 5800X3D, but it’s not user-friendly and is clearly not recommended by AMD.

The current price-performance ratio

The price is the most important thing that has changed on the 5800X3D since we discussed it on Tweakers when it was introduced. At the time, I thought it was quite expensive at €499. what about now? It’s time to dig into the price-performance charts, starting with gaming performance. After all, this is what 5800X3D is all about.

The trendline indicates the average price-to-performance ratio in a segment, while the Ryzen 7 5800X3D scores well above its new price. The difference with the regular 5800X, which is cheaper, but finishes below the trend line, is very significant here. The Ryzen 5 7600X scores similar to the 5800X3D for less money, but of course that requires a system based on the AM5 platform, which I’ll get into in more detail later.

However, if we look at performance across all of our tests, the 5800X3D comes out a little less rosy. Many applications other than games do not or benefit much less from the additional L3 cache, while you pay for it, of course.

Based on the prices of the processors in relation to the performance provided, we can conclude that the 5800X3D has indeed become an interesting option for gamers, but for non-gamers it still doesn’t make sense to buy.

In addition to performance, power consumption makes the 5800X3D a special processor. Due to the slightly lower clock speeds, this is lower than the regular 5800X, while the performance, especially in games, is much higher. For example, when playing in Metro Exodus, the 5800X3D is almost as economical as the Ryzen 7 5700G, while of course it’s a lot faster.

This becomes very clear when we plot the number of watts needed by the processor for each frame per second generated in the graph. It outputs 5800X3D with an efficiency of 0.50 watts per frame per second. This was already exceptionally good for its generation, but compared to the Ryzen 7000 and 13th Gen Core chips, the difference is really huge. For example, i7 13700K is twice as efficient.

the whole picture

In any case, we have only considered the prices of the processors. From a practical point of view, it is more appropriate to look at the whole picture. After all, choosing a Ryzen 7000 processor by definition requires an AM5 socket motherboard and DDR5 memory, and those who don’t have such a processor probably don’t have it. On the other hand, the 5800X3D can be used with DDR4 memory and almost any AM4 motherboard since 2017. Many tweakers will already have the Ryzen architecture, effectively capping the cost on just the purchase price of the new processor. This quickly makes the price-performance ratio unbeatable.

Upgrading to the 5800X3D is probably the most fun if you still have a system with a Ryzen 1000 or 2000 processor, from the early days of the AM4 platform. There probably isn’t 3200MT/s or 3600MT/s ultra-fast memory in it yet, but with the 5800X3D you have that according to Our tests Not much bothered. The extra-large cache already relieves working memory, so the impact of fast memory is visibly less than other Ryzen 5000 CPUs.

Are you building a completely new system or don’t have an AM4 board yet and does the upgrade already include a new motherboard (and memory) for you? Then 5800X3D is still not an obvious choice. I put together a complete upgrade kit for both the 5800X3D and Core i5 13600K at Pricewatch. The 13600K is slightly faster than the 5800X3D in games and much faster in almost all other applications. The kit with the new i5 is only 15 euros (2 percent) more expensive than the kit with 5800X3D and is clearly the better option. The AM4 system certainly isn’t helped by the fact that several B550 boards have gone up in price in recent months.

conclusion

The Ryzen 7 5800X3D has been on the market for just over six months, but now that it’s €150 cheaper, it’s definitely worth a second look. When it came out, I thought the innovative production technology was great, but the price was just too high for me to recommend buying it.

For the current price of €369, I think the 5800X3D is a great choice as a final upgrade to my existing AM4. If you updated the bios earlier, you can always continue to use your current motherboard and memory. In the case of the 5800X3D, it makes less of a difference if you’re using some older, slower DDR4. The icing on the cake is the tremendous efficiency in gaming. Compared to the latest AMD Ryzen 7000 and Intel 13th Gen Core processors, they deliver significantly more frames per watt. In addition, the processor is easier and quieter to cool due to its lower consumption.

If you look purely at the price-performance ratio, don’t forget that processors such as the 5800X, 5700X and 5600(X) have also fallen in price recently. Compared to the Ryzen 5 5600, for example, the 5800X3D is 12 percent faster in games, but of course 12 percent more expensive. This in itself isn’t surprising, as more expensive processors almost always have a worse price-performance ratio, but don’t overwhelm the 5800X3D without realizing that a cheaper Ryzen 5000 processor can also be a very good upgrade for your AM4 system.

For a completely new system or a complete CPU, motherboard, and memory upgrade, the 5800X3D is a less obvious choice. A new build based on one of the new generations of processors is faster for about the same money and of course also offers all the secondary benefits of a more modern platform.