The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D Review: AMD’s Fastest Gaming Processor

Final 12 months, AMD launched its Ryzen 7 5800X3D to the market with 96 MB of L3 V-Cache. The buyer implementation of AMD’s then-new 3D stacked V-Cache expertise, which allowed for enormously increasing the overall L3 cache accessible on a CPU, the 5800X3D was primarily aimed on the gaming market, the place the extra 64MB of L3 cache may very well be uniquely helpful to enhancing efficiency in CPU-bound gaming workloads. Whereas hit-and-miss relying on the precise recreation at hand, in the suitable video games and the suitable situations, the extra cache might present a efficiency enhance that even the highest-clocked CPUs could not match.

AMD’s preliminary implementations of V-Cache within the 5800X3D and its server counterpart, Milan-X, had been simply the tip of the iceberg for the corporate. Although the advantages of this stacked cache manufacturing technique had been restricted with the preliminary era of merchandise, AMD’s eye has been on the lengthy recreation: V-Cache is forward-looking design that may repay with greater dividends for AMD over time, as they will finally be capable of produce the V-Cache dies utilizing older and cheaper manufacturing processes, optimizing their manufacturing prices whereas nonetheless having the ability to supply what’s by CPU requirements an absurd quantity of L3 cache. Finally, this multi-generational technique for V-Cache was specified by better element in AMD’s 2023-2024 desktop CPU roadmap, which outlined their intention to carry it to AMD’s not too long ago launched Ryzen 7000 sequence chips.

That brings us to right this moment, and the upcoming launch of AMD’s second era of V-Cache geared up shopper chips, the Ryzen 7000X3D household. Tomorrow morning AMD will probably be releasing a pair of their latest-generation Ryzen 7000 chips with the additional cache stacked on, together with the Ryzen 9 7950X3D (16C/32T) and the Ryzen 7 7900X3D (12C/24T). Each chips construct upon their X-series predecessors by including an additional 64MB of L3 cache, bringing them to a formidable whole of 128 MB of L3 cache.

In the meantime, a 3rd SKU, the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, is within the works for April sixth. That half will supply 8 CPU cores and 96 MB of L3 cache, making it essentially the most direct successor to the Ryzen 7 5800X3D.

Finally, all three chips will serve to replace AMD’s product stack by combining the strengths of the Zen 4 CPU structure with the efficiency advantages of the additional L3 cache, which throughout the overlapping interval of the final a number of months, has been cut up between the Ryzen 5000 and Ryzen 7000 households. Briefly, PC avid gamers will lastly be capable of have their cake and eat it too, getting access to AMD’s Zen 4 microarchitecture and its myriad of advantages (increased IPC, increased clockspeeds, DDR5, PCIe 5) with a pleasant serving to of extra L3 cache slathered on prime.

From that stack, right this moment we’re reviewing the brand new flagship Ryzen 9 7950X3D. The 7950X3D affords 16 Zen 4 cores unfold over two CCDs (8C/16T per CCD). AMD needed to elect one of many CCDs to stack the extra L3 cache onto, leading to a new-to-AMD heterogeneous CPU design, however they do have some particular sauce as a garnish to make it work. We intention to find out if the Ryzen 9 7950X3D is the chip avid gamers have been craving for and the way it stacks up in opposition to different Ryzen 7000 chips (and Intel’s thirteenth Gen) in our take a look at suite.

The Ryzen 9 7950X3D: 128 MB of L3 Cache, 16-Cores, Designed For Avid gamers

Up till now, we have had a wave of Ryzen 7000 sequence SKUs launch, together with the flagship Ryzen 9 7950X and different X-series SKUs such because the Ryzen 9 7900X, Ryzen 7 7700X, and Ryzen 5 7600X, in addition to their 65 W SKUs which have stuffed out the product stack properly. Providing totally different configurations of core counts, frequencies, and finally worth, the Ryzen 7000 stack is loaded with chips for customers of all ranges.

AMD’s 3D V-Cache packaging slide (Zen 3): AMD makes use of the identical methodology for Zen 4

These latest chips from AMD, in flip, develop the Ryzen 7000 stack additional by including a trio of elements incorporating AMD’s 3D V-Cache expertise. The essential concept behind 3D V-Cache is to stack extra cache reminiscence on prime of the prevailing processor die. The cache reminiscence is then related to the die utilizing through-silicon vias (TSVs), that are vertical interconnects that go by way of the silicon substrate. This permits for a a lot bigger quantity of L3 cache reminiscence to be added to the processor with out requiring that AMD mint a separate, bigger CCD.

The 3D V-Cache packaging course of labored nicely with the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, and we did see good points in body charges throughout among the video games we examined; some video games are reminiscence/cache-bound, and thus could make good use of the extra L3 cache for a efficiency enhance, whereas different video games are unfazed by the extra cache as they’re extra outright compute-bound. Finally, the advantages of the extra cache don’t make for a one-size-fits-all scenario, because it varies from title to title, generally considerably so. As issues stand, there sadly is not something fairly like a whitelist of video games that may profit from the extra cache, which implies the most effective steerage we are able to supply is that avid gamers will need to take the time to perform a little further analysis to see if the precise video games they care about are any quicker on these X3D chips.

Wanting on the most important specs of the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, it has 16 Zen 4 CPUs cores and operates at a TDP ranking of 120 W; that is some 50 W decrease than the common Ryzen 9 7950X. In line with AMD, the extra related Bundle Energy Monitoring (PPT) ranking is 1.35x the TDP, which places the socket energy output at as much as 162 W. The Ryzen 9 7950X3D additionally shares the identical turbo frequency because the Ryzen 9 7950X, which is 5.7 GHz, however AMD has lowered the bottom frequency by 300 MHz, making it 4.2 GHz on the 7950X3D. Reminiscence assist stays unchanged from the remainder of the Ryzen 7000 household, with JEDEC-compliant speeds topping out at DDR5-5200, whereas overclocking (AMD EXPO, and so forth) can take it over DDR5-6000.

Though we’re solely reviewing the Ryzen 9 7950X3D right this moment, the 2 different Ryzen 7000 X3D SKUs are value mentioning. The opposite SKU launching right this moment is the Ryzen 9 7900X3D, a 12-core/24-thread half with the identical 128 MB of 3D stacked L3 V-Cache. It additionally incorporates a 120 W TDP/162 W PPT, and has the identical 5.6 GHz turbo clock velocity because the Ryzen 9 7900X. Just like the variations between the Ryzen 9 7950X3D and 7950X, the bottom core frequency is decrease on the Ryzen 9 7900X3D than its counterpart, with a base frequency of 4.4 GHz, a 200 MHz drop over the Ryzen 9 7900X.

The third SKU with 3D V-Cache is the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, which is not accessible till the sixth of April, nevertheless it’s nonetheless a really fascinating half. Not solely is it the one chip to make use of the 7800 mannequin quantity, nevertheless it’s very related in specs to the unique Ryzen 7 5800X3D, a really profitable SKU that’s at the moment (nonetheless) the quantity 5 best-selling CPU on Amazon on the time of writing. Just like the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, the soon-to-be-released Ryzen 7 7800X3D shares a turbo frequency of 5 GHz. The Ryzen 7 7800X3D has a 4.2 GHz base frequency, nevertheless it advantages from AMD’s newest Zen 4 structure, constructed upon TSMC’s N5 5 nm manufacturing course of. As we noticed in our Ryzen 9 7950X and Ryzen 5 7600X evaluate, AMD has boosted efficiency per watt effectivity and improved IPC efficiency properly.

A Story of Two CCDs: One with 3D V-Cache, One With out

The Ryzen 7000 and 5000 households are constructed upon a chiplet-based design, with top-end chips such because the Ryzen 9 7950X that includes two core advanced dies (CCD) in addition to a singular I/O die (IOD)  Chips within the household with decrease core counts, such because the Ryzen 7 and 5 households, usually carry this down to 1 energetic CCD (and doubtlessly one fused-off CCD if the chip was salvaged).

With their first-generation Ryzen 7 5800X3D, AMD averted any complexities involving mixing V-Cache with their multi-CCD designs by solely ever producing X3D elements with a single CCD. Nonetheless for this era, AMD is taking the subsequent step by making multi-CCD X3D elements accessible – they usually aren’t placing V-Cache on each CCDs.

This quandary over utilizing two CCDs with V-Cache has raised many questions with customers since AMD initially revealed their new Ryzen 7000X3D elements. The lengthy and in need of issues is that for this era, AMD has taken steps to have the most effective of each worlds – to have a V-Cache-equipped CCD whereas additionally having one other, unencumbered CCD so as to supply the best compute efficiency.

Pertaining to the design of the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, AMD is using an uneven chiplet design, the place one of many CCDs is a vanilla Zen 4 CCD, and the opposite is a Zen 4 CCD with 64 MB of V-Cache stacked on. Which means that the Ryzen 9 7950X3D has one CCD with 96 MB of L3 cache, whereas the second “vanilla” CCD nonetheless has the same old 32 MB accessible. AMD’s Infinity Material Interconnect retains every thing flowing, which connects each CCDs to the centralized IOD in a die-to-die join circulation.

Notably, simply as the 2 CCDs are unequal in cache, they’re additionally unequal in peak clockspeeds. Attaching a V-Cache die to a CCD limits the best clockspeeds it might attain, capping it at round 5.25GHz. Thus, in comparison with the 5.7GHz max clockspeed of a plain Zen 4 CCD (as used on the 7950X/7950X3D), this represents a roughly 8% frequency handicap for including V-Cache. Which is why AMD is together with each forms of CCDs on their Ryzen 9 7000X3D elements, guaranteeing that functions have entry to no matter kind of CCD higher suits their processing wants.

Finally, AMD states that having one CCD with V-Cache and one commonplace CCD supplies the most effective stability for maximizing efficiency in each gaming workloads and normal heavy workload compute duties. Purposes and video games that may profit from the bigger pool of L3 cache will be loaded up on to the V-Cache CCD, whereas every thing else is loaded up on the usual CCD (and rising out to the second CCD as wanted).

Drivers & OS Scheduling: PPM Provisioning & V-Cache Efficiency Optimizer

This extra layer of complexity signifies that, for the primary time on a shopper AMD platform, AMD’s CPUs at the moment are heterogeneous. Relying on which CCD they’re on, the CPU cores inside a 7950X3D are dissimilar, and that is one thing that must be taken under consideration when scheduling which CPU core/CCD a thread will go on. To that finish, AMD has developed a pair of Home windows drivers for the 7000X3D sequence to assist the Home windows scheduler extra intelligently place threads on the most effective CCD for the duty.

Underneath the hood, AMD is actually hooking into Home windows’ Sport Mode (and Combined Actuality Mode) to let the OS decide when a recreation is energetic, after which use that trace to vary how Home windows thread scheduling works. The ensuing layers of BIOS options, Xbox Sport Bar software program (which controls Sport Mode), and AMD’s drivers add up to an entire management mechanism for allocating work on the 7950X3D and 7900X3D.

Diving into AMD’s software program stack, the primary of AMD’s drivers is the AMD PPM Provisioning Driver. This comes included throughout the 5.01.03.005 model (or newer) of AMD’s chipset driver. This driver steers threads by parking what AMD determines is the least performant CCD, leaving solely the extra performant CCD initially energetic. This retains the entire threads for a recreation on the identical CCD, lowering (if not eliminating) the necessity to attain throughout the IOD to entry the L3 cache on the opposite CCD, and thus enhancing the cache hit price and ensuing efficiency.

Technically, the PPM driver can park both CCD. However in follow it will nearly at all times be the vanilla CCD, pushing video games on to the V-Cache CCD. Although ought to a recreation ask for extra CPU cores (and technically, threads) than a single CCD can present, then the PPM will permit the opposite CCD to go energetic. Parking the CCD does not stop its use – so all 16 CPU cores can be found  – it simply discourages utilizing greater than 1 CCD (8 cores) when in any respect attainable.

In the meantime, customers can manually override this characteristic of their motherboard’s firmware underneath the AMD CBS part of the Ryzen overclocking settings. Whereas every motherboard vendor’s firmware is totally different in design, options, and styling, altering the setting to auto will be switched to both ‘cache’ for workloads or video games benefiting from the 3D V-Cache, or set it to ‘frequency’ wherein it is going to permit the quicker CCD to do the heavy lifting.

Shifting on, the second of AMD’s new X3D drivers is the AMD 3D V-Cache Efficiency Optimizer Driver. Once more, this comes bundled into the chipset driver, and it operates because the counterpart to the PPM driver, altering how Home windows ranks the efficiency of the varied CPU cores.

Sometimes, Home windows will rank CPU cores by clockspeeds, which is often the proper strategy to go for bodily homogenous CPU cores. Particularly within the case of issues like favored/most popular cores and “prime” CPU cores (e.g. Home windows on Arm), placing heavy workloads on the quickest CPU core will internet you the most effective efficiency. Nonetheless having heterogeneous cores with totally different quantities of L3 cache adjustments this calculus – it is attainable (and even probably) for a slower CPU core to be quicker because of its entry to a bigger native L3 cache pool.

The AMD 3D V-Cache Efficiency Optimizer Driver working within the background

The web consequence, then, is that the 3D V-Cache Efficiency Optimizer Driver will change Home windows’ efficiency rankings when Sport Mode is energetic in order that Home windows will attempt to use the CPU cores on the V-Cache CCD first. Coupled with the PPM driver, these two methods are how AMD will attempt to make sure that video games and their threads are despatched to the V-Cache CCD first, whereas every thing else continues to favor the normal, higher-clocked CCD.

Ryzen 9 7950X3D robotically detecting Whole Warfare: Warhammer 3 as a recreation in Xbox Sport Bar

Lastly it is value highlighting that Sport Mode inside Home windows 11/10 should be enabled for the AMD PPM and Efficiency Optimizer drivers to work seamlessly. AMD states that the Ryzen 7000X3D chips and their related software program stack will work underneath each Home windows 10 (1903 or later) and Home windows 11 (21H2 or later). However AMD fairly strongly recommends customers go together with Home windows 11, as if nothing else, there are some potential beauty reporting bugs that stay on Home windows 10 when Virtualization Based mostly Safety (VBS) is enabled. In the meantime VBS is an outright requirement on Home windows 11.

Ryzen 9 7950X3D: No Unlocked Multiplier, However Helps Curve Optimizer, Precision Enhance Overdrive, and AMD EXPO Reminiscence

AMD, with its Ryzen 7000 65 W processors, confirmed spectacular power-to-performance effectivity in contrast with its present Ryzen 7000 chips. AMD is trying to exhibit its capabilities additional whereas drawing much less energy. In fact,

In contrast to AMD’s common X-series SKUs, The Ryzen 9 7950X3D does not have an unlocked multiplier; which means manually overclocking the cores is disabled. However the chip does nonetheless profit from a few of AMD’s overclocking expertise. Whereas the Ryzen 7 5800X3D was restricted to reminiscence overclocking, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D has AMD’s Curve Optimizer and Precision Enhance Overdrive enabled. The Curve Optimizer permits customers a straightforward one-click choice to no less than, in idea, ship a lift to core efficiency. This may be enabled in AMD’s Ryzen Grasp overclocking utility, whereas AMD’s Precision Enhance Overdrive may also be enabled equally.

Reminiscence overclocking can also be nonetheless accessible on these X3D SKUs. This goes for each handbook overclocking, and utilizing EXPO reminiscence profiles on reminiscence kits that include these overclocking profiles. There are quite a few EXPO-enabled kits in the marketplace proper now, particularly from Corsair and G.Ability. And even XMP kits work to an extent, although their timings is probably not ideally suited for AMD’s Ryzen 7000 sequence processors.

For a extra detailed evaluation of our AMD Ryzen 7000 (Zen 4) protection, listed below are a number of hyperlinks with a extra in-depth have a look at the Zen 4 core structure, in addition to AMD’s AM5 platform:

From a advertising and marketing viewpoint, the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D is primarily aimed toward avid gamers, notably those that play video games that may make good use of the extra L3 cache. After we reviewed the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, we discovered it missing a bit in compute duties when straight in comparison with the common Ryzen 7 5800X as a consequence of decrease core frequencies and a lock on turbo frequencies. The flip aspect is that we noticed among the advantages of AMD’s 3D V-Cache stacking expertise in gaming, making it a purchase order higher suited to avid gamers specifically, slightly than the broader efficiency fanatic market.

AMD is trying to change that notion considerably with its Ryzen 7000X3D SKUs, because of increased total clockspeeds and the usage of heterogeneous (asymmetrical) CPU cores. Thus we count on much less of successful on compute efficiency with these as a consequence of nonetheless combining respectable ranges of frequencies, and specs, albeit, at a decrease PPT energy ranking of 162 W.

From a pricing viewpoint, AMD has priced the Ryzen 9 7950X3D at what was the unique MSRP of the Ryzen 9 7950X: $699. This makes the flagship X3D chip round $110 dearer than the 7950X, which lately will be snagged for $589. For the opposite chips, the Ryzen 9 7900X3D ($599) is $150 dearer than the Ryzen 9 7900X (at the moment $449), whereas the Ryzen 7 7800X3D will value $449 when it releases in April.

The Ryzen 9 7950X3D in retail packaging: Able to cook dinner up

Lastly, having a look on the aggressive panorama, AMD is aiming the Ryzen 9 7950X3D extra on the Core i9-13900K in gaming than its Ryzen 9 7950X counterpart. So it is time to put it on our take a look at bench, put it by way of its paces in our take a look at suite, and see how nicely the Ryzen 9 7950X3D fares in opposition to the competitors. Compute efficiency fanatics will probably discover that the Ryzen 9 7950X remains to be an total higher chip; whereas the Ryzen 9 7950X3D is trying to leverage its 128 MB of L3 cache in video games to make it the most effective gaming chip in the marketplace. Let’s examine what we’re coping with.

The Present CPU Take a look at Suite

For our AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D testing, we’re utilizing the next take a look at system:

Our up to date CPU suite for 2023 consists of numerous benchmarks, assessments, and workloads designed to point out variance in efficiency between totally different processors and architectures. These embody UL’s newest Procyon suite with each workplace and picture enhancing workloads simulated to measure efficiency in these duties, CineBench R23, Dwarf Fortress, Blender 3.3, and C-Ray 1.1.  

In the meantime, we have additionally carried over some older (however nonetheless related/enlightening) benchmarks from our CPU 2021 suite. This consists of benchmarks similar to Dwarf Fortress, Factorio, and Dr. Ian Cutress’s 3DPMv2 benchmark.

We now have additionally up to date our pool of video games going ahead into 2023 and past, together with the most recent F1 2022 racing recreation, the CPU-intensive RTS Whole Warfare: Warhammer 3, and the favored Hitman 3.