On Monday Tweakers posted the rest of the world AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D Reviews But today we have something exclusive for you: the first review of its cheaper 12-core sibling, the Ryzen 9 7900X3D. In addition, we also look at the performance of a half-powered 7950X3D, effectively converting it into a simulated 7800X3D, and run some tests with faster memory to see how that affects it.
Ryzen 9 7900X3D
The Ryzen 9 7900X3D has twelve cores, which are evenly divided by two CCDs. Therefore, only the 6 cores of the remote controller with 3D V-Cache can take advantage of the additional 64MB cache. The processor has a suggested retail price of $599, which would be €679 including VAT, over €100 cheaper than the €789 the 7950X3D should cost.
AMD has not sent out any review samples for this processor and official sales of both the 7900X3D and 7950X3D are only beginning at the time this review is published. Don’t ask how, but take advantage of it ;-).
‘Ryzen 7 7800X3D’
The Ryzen 7 7800X3D is probably the most interesting of the 7000X3D chips on paper. It has a single micro-communicator with eight cores, all of which have access to the extra 3D cache, eliminating the need for all the software tricks to get games to use the correct cores. Plus, with a suggested retail price of $449, about €512 including VAT, it’s by far the cheapest processor built specifically for gaming.
To actually show you roughly how this chip performs, we’ve disabled the second ccd of the 7950X3D, the ccd without 3D V-Cache. Since the 120W TDP is the same between these processors, we didn’t have to adjust anything at this point. However, the 7800X3D’s clock speeds are not very clear, in the presentation AMD gave us before the release, “4. XGHz” is still mentioned for Ryzen 7, so at this point, the performance achieved using the auto-boost algorithm will still be slightly lower. It may deviate from the performance we’ll see “real” in April. We only did game benchmarks and in-game flow testing with this simulated chip, because the time available was limited and these are the most interesting scenarios for this chip.
Tests with faster memory
In the comments on our 7950X3D review, some Tweakers have asked for tests with faster memory. Now, testing with the official memory speed is a deliberate, long-running starting point for our CPU tests, but we’re certainly not the worst, so we tested the simulated “7800X3D” again with faster DDR5-6000 memory. Spoiler alert: The “7800X3D” is faster in most games than the 7950X3D and 7900X3D, so in theory you should expect the biggest gain from faster working memory with this CPU.
Where DDR5-6000 is already a challenge for some Ryzen 7000 chips – you have to be a bit lucky with the quality of the memory controller in your copy – the DDR5 controller in 13th Gen Intel processors is capable of quite a bit more. We got stable DDR5-7200 quite easily with the Core i9 13900KS. So in the gaming charts you will find the fastest AMD and Intel processors with the highest memory speed practically possible, as well as our benchmark tests with the official memory speeds of both processors.
Tweakers CPU performance
We start by looking at our performance scores, which are weighted averages of the standards we run. On the following pages you can view in detail all the tests that are part of it. You can find more information about our testing method in our previous 7950X3D review.
We completely passed the Ryzen 9 7900X3D through our test suite and have the full CPU Performance score for this processor. The 7900X3D scores 96.7 points, which makes it 1.2 percent faster than the regular 7900X. This makes the difference between the 3D version and the regular version with this model a little smaller than the 2 percent we saw with the 7950X (3D).
CPU gaming performance tweakers
The Ryzen 9 7900X3D performs almost on par with the 7950X3D in games. In one game it’s marginally slower, in the other it’s just a bit faster. In Total War: Warhammer III in particular, the 12-core model fares better; This game seems to be choking on the base configuration of the 16-core-7950X.
memory speeds
By default, we test all processors at the maximum speed stated by their manufacturer. For Ryzen 7000 CPUs, that’s DDR5-5200 (CL36); For 13th Gen CPUs it is DDR5-5600 (CL38). As a bonus, we also tested the fastest AMD and Intel processors in games with memory speeds close to the memory controller’s maximum capabilities: DDR5-6000 CL30-38-38 for AMD and DDR5-7200 CL34-45-45 for Intel.
The emulated Ryzen 7 7800X3D achieves a new high score of over 247 fps and mercilessly beats even the best power-hungry Intel models. As you can see detailed on page 3 of this article, the “7800X3D” outperforms the Ryzen 9s in Total War: Warhammer in particular, but it also sees regular performance gains of 10 to 20 percent in several other games. Only in Warhammer and at 1440p with ultra settings in Red Dead Redemption 2, the Intel Core i9 13900KS remains faster; In all other tests, the emulated AMD processor wins.
Even with the 7800X3D emulated, which as a better CPU should benefit the most from faster memory, the effect of faster DDR5-6000 memory is minimal. On average, a processor with this memory is only 0.9 percent faster than the DDR5-5200 memory we usually use and AMD officially specifies these processors. With the 13900KS, faster memory provides a slightly higher performance gain; On average, the chip performs 3.4 percent better in games with DDR5-7200 than DDR5-5600, but that doesn’t change its position in the chart.