AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D review: The Money Cache

The $449/£429 The Ryzen 7 5800X3D is something a little different from AMD, a processor that’s there to show off the power of the company’s 3D V-Cache design for upcoming Ryzen CPUs and battle Intel’s 12900KS for the title of “fastest gaming processor.” It’s also a final moment for the surprisingly long-lived AM4 platform, which debuted in 2017 and has passed half a dozen generations of Intel as Ryzen CPUs have improved by leaps and bounds.

So what exactly is 3D V-Cache anyway? Let’s start with the basics. You can think of a processor’s cache as a place to store the data it’s currently working on – a bit like RAM, but because it’s inside a CPU, it’s faster to access by volume And the An order of magnitude smaller in terms of the amount of data that can be stored. Modern processors typically use three levels of cache – L1, L2, L3 – with L1 cache being the fastest to access but the smallest, L2 being slower but larger, and L3 being again slower and larger. This is the third level of cache that AMD has changed, moving from traditional 2D design to 3D design, a set of cache that takes up more vertical space. This allows more data to be stored inside the CPU at one time, thus increasing the chances of the required data actually being inside and speeding up any subsequent processing.

AMD is slated to use this technology in its future Zen 4 processors, but for now, it’s only this particular 5800X3D, an upgraded version of the Ryzen 7 5800X launched in 2020. Compared to the 5800X, the 5800X3D trades in bits of frequency. And some overclocking controls for an even larger 96MB L3 cache — three times the size of the 5800X’s.

Before we get into the first test results, let’s briefly cover the rig we use. For AMD we’re using the Asus ROG Crosshair 8 Hero, while the 11th generation Intel gets the Asus ROG Maximus Z590 Hero and the 12th generation gets the Asus ROG Z690 Maximus Hero – all high-end motherboards for their own platforms. DDR4 motherboards used G.Skill 3600MT/s CL16 memory, while Intel made use of 12th generation Corsair 5200MT/s CL38 RAM, faster but with higher latency.

Eleventh-generation AMD and Intel processors were cooled with an Eisbaer Aurora 240mm AiO, while 12th-generation testing was conducted with an Asus ROG Ryujin 2 360mm AiO. (And to answer the obvious question: AiOs 240mm and 360mm hitches tend to deliver equivalent performance based on our tests—particularly for an outdoor test bench in cool (21°C) ambient conditions. The only difference tends to be the fan speed, which is higher at 240mm by 360mm.) Our excavator was completed with a 1000W Corsair RM1000x power supply from Infinite Computing.

To reduce variance during playback and ensure that we are as limiting to the CPU as possible, we are using the Asus ROG Strix 3090 OC Edition. This is a massive three-slot and triple-fan design that keeps the card surprisingly cool and quiet.

One of the biggest questions about the 5800X3D is exactly where the upgraded cache will be useful – because if it’s a game or other app that doesn’t fit a certain performance profile, you might not see any performance advantage at all working on the 5800X3D – and indeed, it might be Worse because of the clock speed that AMD sacrificed to make the design work.

To find out, we tested the 5800X3D in a range of content creation and gaming scenarios — against the original 5800X and a number of other recent AMD and Intel processors. We’re hoping to see some big performance increases, especially in video games, but we’ll start with two fast-paced content creation benchmarks: Cinebench R20 3D rendering and Handbrake video conversion.

Neither content creation result is particularly impressive for the 5800X3D, which outperforms the 5600X and Intel 12400F but lags behind its previous competitors such as the 12900K, 12700K, and 5800X (the latter by two to six percent). That’s not a huge surprise – neither task would logically benefit from having a larger cache, so you only see the effect of the new CPU’s lower base clocks compared to the standard 5800X. However, the results are not disastrous either; This CPU is still quite capable of performing these tasks easily outperforming previous generations, but it is not a leading unit in its class.

With those out there, let’s get to the fun stuff: checking out how the 5800X3D performs in a bunch of games. Click the quick links below to jump to the titles you’re most interested in, or hit the Next Page button to take it all in!

AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D Analysis