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If we're talking about this being AMD's take on the perfect gaming processor, we need to step outside of the 1080p gaming environment. We traditionally test at this lower resolution for our CPU game benchmarking so we are able to highlight the difference in performance down to the actual processors. As you go higher in the resolution scale you end up relying ever more on the power of the graphics card, to the point where you cease being able to discern meaningful performance deltas between chip architectures. The chipset drivers also install the AMD PPM Provisioning File Driver, which improves performance by parking the slowest cores when Game Mode or Mixed Reality Mode is active. In effect, this shuts down the ‘standard’ CCD when Game Mode or Mixed Reality Mode is active, thus constraining latency-sensitive workloads (like games) to the 3D V-Cache chiplet. This improves the cache hit rate and reduces high-latency communication between the two CCDs, resulting in faster performance for workloads that don’t need access to (or benefit from) all the cores.
The Ryzen 9 7950X3D pretty much matches the 7950X in Blender and Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere tests, though it lags a bit in VRay 5 (though not by that much). Where it really shines though is with HandBrake 1.6. This is one of the creative tests we use where we get to measure it's true real-world performance on a creative workload, especially one that is highly CPU dependent.Gaming performance measures how well the processor calculates gaming operations like in-game physics by running several games' integrated benchmark tools like Returnal, Total War: Warhammer III, and F1 2022. In all cases, I run the benchmarks on the lowest graphics settings available at 1080p and using the most powerful graphics card I have available (in this case, an Nvidia RTX 4090) and with 32GB DDR5 RAM to isolate the actual CPU operations I am testing without having to worry about inteference from excessive memory or graphics management.
Synthetic single and multi-core benchmarks test the performance of specific instruction sets and processor operations like floating-point calculations using benchmark tools like GeekBench, Cinebench, and PassMark. The Xbox Game Bar contains a KGL (known good list) of games that it detects when active, thus triggering Game Mode (you can also instruct the game bar to recognize unknown games and/or other applications as games). The driver communicates with the Windows Game Mode feature, which becomes active when the Xbox Game Bar detects a game is running. I’ve tested something like 30+ games in my Steam, Battle.net, Origin, GOG, Ms-Store, Ubisoft and everything was recognised and worked without issue. And this test highlights that even at 1440p the extra L3 cache of the 7950X3D tangibly makes a difference to the gaming performance of the system at the highest graphical presets. But, as always, at 4K it's all about the GPU. Metro is the only benchmark that displays some difference between the three chips attached to the RTX 4090, and then that's more down to some vagaries in optimisation and drivers.The amount of cache on CPUs has grown over time usually by very small steps, but there have also been a few times when AMD and Intel have significantly jumped up the amount of cache in an effort to boost performance. These efforts in the past have seen mixed results with, at the best of times, a modest performance gain occurring and, at the worst of times, nothing really changing. In part, the mixed results are due to software development, as apps need to be explicitly programmed to take advantage of the added cache for a noticeable improvement to occur.
Cache has been an essential and highly influential part of computers for decades now, and its importance is unquestionable. What is questionable, however, and what has been questioned since the beginning, is how much cache is enough. Some argue that you can never have enough, but this is illogical. More cache means a larger, or in this case, an extra, chip—and that leads to higher costs. Past a certain point, it becomes questionable if the CPU will even be able to use or take advantage of all the cache you have. Cache is simply a very direct form of working memory that the processor keeps close by for instructions and data that it is using at that very moment. The more cache a processor has, the fewer trips to RAM it needs to make for data or instructions, which greatly improves performance for many common tasks. Generally, more cache is better, and the 7950X3D has more cache than any consumer processor available today.
A chip that delivers on the title of best gaming CPU better than any I've tested before, but it's not quite the one chip to do it all.
While prices are high, we were very impressed by the Ryzen 9 7950X3D in our review, praising it for its high performance and low power draw. You can read our full review, HERE. When it comes to the synthetic benchmarks, there's very little difference between the 7950X3D and the 7950X. Both chips are phenomenal multitaskers, and though the 7950X has consistently stronger single core scores than the 7950X3D, the 7950X3D performs better with multi core performance than its non-3D V-Cache counterpart. Perform a clean installation of Windows. Things will work better rather than using an old OS that was used for a different CPU. This bit is important, so don't overlook it, otherwise you might need to use something like Process Lasso. I recommend the latest Windows 11 22H2 build, which I use with my 7950X3D. I've tested Windows 10 vs 11, and 11 is clearly faster in gaming so if you are on 10 take this into consideration. AMD designed the Ryzen 9 7950X3D based on its Zen 4 microarchitecture, which I went over in greater detail in my review of the Ryzen 9 7950X, linked above. Instead of going over the Zen 4 nuances again (hit the review for more detail if desired), let’s focus on what’s unique with the Ryzen 9 7950X3D.
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