The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D Review: AMD's Fastest Gaming Processor
by Gavin Bonshor on February 27, 2023 9:00 AM ESTCPU Benchmark Performance: Rendering And Encoding
Rendering tests, compared to others, are often a little more simple to digest and automate. All the tests put out some sort of score or time, usually in an obtainable way that makes it fairly easy to extract. These tests are some of the most strenuous in our list, due to the highly threaded nature of rendering and ray-tracing, and can draw a lot of power.
If a system is not properly configured to deal with the thermal requirements of the processor, the rendering benchmarks are where it would show most easily as the frequency drops over a sustained period of time. Most benchmarks in this case are re-run several times, and the key to this is having an appropriate idle/wait time between benchmarks to allow for temperatures to normalize from the last test.
One of the interesting elements of modern processors is encoding performance. This covers two main areas: encryption/decryption for secure data transfer, and video transcoding from one video format to another.
In the encrypt/decrypt scenario, how data is transferred and by what mechanism is pertinent to on-the-fly encryption of sensitive data - a process by which more modern devices are leaning to for software security.
We are using DDR5 memory on the Ryzen 9 7950X3D and the other Ryzen 7000 series we've tested. This also includes Intel's 13th and 12th Gen processors. We tested the aforementioned platforms with the following settings:
- DDR5-5600B CL46 - Intel 13th Gen
- DDR5-5200 CL44 - Ryzen 7000
- DDR5-4800 (B) CL40 - Intel 12th Gen
All other CPUs such as Ryzen 5000 and 3000 were tested at the relevant JEDEC settings as per the processor's individual memory support with DDR4.
Rendering
When it comes to rendering, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D doesn't quite hit the compute performance of the Ryzen 9 7950X, but it isn't too far off, given the discrepancies in power usage. It shows that the 7950X3D is more than capable of rendering workloads in an effective manner.
Encoding
Our encoding section of the test suite is similar to other sections, where the 7950X is the faster and more power-hungry chip, which does output more performance. The Ryzen 9 7950X3D does however put in a respectable performance.
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AvidGamer - Monday, February 27, 2023 - link
Fully agree with the content and all arguments made in the above comment. Very good points! I too would have preferred a fully functional product instead of such an IMHO half assed approach which after all is said and done excels at basically nothing compared to all the other already existing good options from Intel and AMD. Shame on you AMD for what you have done there! IMHO that's just disgusting! I can't believe I've waited months for something like this, never again, urghhh...Gastec - Wednesday, March 1, 2023 - link
I've waited years to upgrade my i7-860, PCIe 2.0 system. I'm still waiting, now for the Ryzen 7900X3D to pop out. I'm pretty sure some other bad things will happen till then, that will prevent me to "upgrade". Hopefully a nuke.Tom Sunday - Monday, March 20, 2023 - link
Yes I am sure as well that some other not so good things will happen preventing me to "upgrade." Not withstanding our seemingly never-ending financial and inflationary conditions. The 7950X3D only excelling in gaming but not in content creation is disappointing to say the least. Many actually make money with content creation to pay for their casual gaming luxuries. For the 7950X3D a MSRP of USD$699 is an expensive trip for just gaming. Especially since the greater majority of gamers are no exactly living in the higher-end of the food chain nor are they the primary bread-winner for their family. What was AMD thinking? The only good news is that AMD usually starts dropping their intro-prices on all of their products virtually within a few months. So for me now sitting pretty and free in Mom’s basement, there may be hope after all and for now keeping on playing 'Wolfenstein' in all of its glory and a train ride to Berlin!Jp7188 - Wednesday, March 8, 2023 - link
3D V cache and 5.7+GHz across all cores would have been ideal, but it seems apparent it was not possible to achieve in this generation. Given the choice was cache or speed I think AMD did the best they could.Dribble - Thursday, March 2, 2023 - link
These cpu's won't be popular enough to get it fixed, chances are it will always be a mess.Papaspud - Monday, February 27, 2023 - link
Looks to me like any good processor from the last 1-2 years will do just fine. The gains are getting smaller, generational wise.meacupla - Tuesday, February 28, 2023 - link
Yes and no.If you play a lot of simulation games, particularly games like: factorio, Timberborn, Infraspace, Transport Fever 2, etc. and to a lesser degree Civ6, and Total War, those games will benefit substantially when the game asks the CPU to do all the pathfinding calculations.
For those games, it's easy to have 120fps at the start of the game, but as soon as the game has thousands of units asking for pathfinding at the same time, you will quickly find yourself with 100% CPU usage, 10% GPU usage, and <15fps.
These games benefit greatly from that massive cache on X3D.
Gastec - Wednesday, March 1, 2023 - link
Or in other words wait until someone else tests the CPU with the video games you want to play, before buying it. Wait, wait, wait. Work, work, work.cruiseliu - Monday, February 27, 2023 - link
7950X3D falls behind 7950X in simulation tests, while 5800X3D outperforms 7950X. That is strange.Could you please clarify which CCD is used in these tests?
Gavin Bonshor - Monday, February 27, 2023 - link
I'm looking into it. I'm testing in all three modes in our compute tests to see where AMD's PPM and 3D V-Cache driver gets it right and where it gets it wrong (if at all).