AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D Review: 3D V-Cache Powers a New Gaming Champion

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96MB of L3 cache goes Brrrr

If you have a taste for higher-end fare and a good understanding of the strengths and weaknesses, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D is an impressive chip that delivers leading-edge gaming performance and leaves room for future GPU upgrades, making it the best CPU at its price point for gaming-focused rigs.

Pros

• +The fastest gaming CPU money can buy
  
• +Competitive price
  
• +Support for PCIe 4.0
  
• +Compatible with AM4 motherboards
  
• +Passable single- and multi-threaded performance
  
• +Low power consumption
  

Cons

• -No overclocking support
  
• -No bundled cooler
  
• -No integrated graphics
  
• -Not as strong as competing chips in desktop PC applications
  

The battle for gaming supremacy between Intel and AMD has never been as intense as it is now, but AMD has a new ace in the hole. AMD's $449 Ryzen 7 5800X3D (opens in new tab) uses new cutting-edge 3D-stacked SRAM technology, called 3D V-Cache, to enable a total of 96MB of L3 cache that unlocks tremendous gaming performance, unseating Intel's expensive $738 Core i9-12900KS as the fastest of the Best CPUs for gaming — but at a more forgiving price point. AMD pulled this feat off with an eight-core 16-thread chip based on the same 7nm process and Zen 3 architecture as the original Ryzen 5000 chips that debuted back in 2020, but uses an innovative hybrid bonding technology to fuse an extra slice of cache atop the processing cores, a first for desktop PCs.

The Ryzen 7 5800X3D represents the company's last hurrah for its long-lived Socket AM4 platforms that have shepherded the Ryzen chips from their infancy with the Ryzen 7 1800X in 2017 to their once-dominating position at the top of our CPU benchmark gaming hierarchy last year with the Ryzen 9 5900X.

AMD's chips held the lead in every metric until Intel released its Alder Lake lineup last year, with Intel's Core i9-12900K landing as the fastest gaming CPU we'd ever tested. However, with AMD poised to launch the 5800X3D, Intel attempted to cement itself atop the gaming performance charts with its new Special Edition Core i9-12900KS. That came to market one week before the 5800X3D with boost speeds reaching up to a blistering 5.5 GHz, a record high for PCs, and for a little over a week, it was the fastest desktop PC chip in all categories. 

Intel's short-lived advantage in gaming came at the cost of extra power, though: The Core i9-12900KS has a 150W processor base power (PBP), a record for a mainstream desktop processor, and we measured up to 300W of power consumption under full load. In contrast, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D has a 105W TDP rating and maxed out at 130W in our tests, showing that it is a far cooler processor that won't require as expensive accommodations, like a beefy cooler, motherboard, and power supply, as the Core i9-12900KS.

The Ryzen 7 5800X3D's 96MB of L3 cache is transparent to the operating system, meaning it doesn't need special accommodations from the OS or software, but it doesn't benefit all games. However, we did see a big uplift in nearly every title we tested. 

Here's a quick snapshot of the 5800X3D's average performance in our gaming test suite and key single- and multi-threaded applications. You'll find much more extensive testing on the following pages, but this gives you a good general sense of how the Ryzen 7 5800X3D stacks up.

As you can see, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D takes the crown as the fastest gaming chip in our test suite and lives up to AMD's claim that 3D V-Cache delivers an increase in gaming performance equivalent to what we would normally only see from a new microarchitecture. However, the 58000X3D isn't as fast as comparable chips in other types of single- and multi-threaded work beyond gaming. That's because the other models have a core count and frequency advantage. In fact, due to lower clock speeds than its most directly-comparable counterpart, the Ryzen 7 5800X, the 5800X3D is slower in some single-threaded applications.

However, while Intel's 12900KS still delivers leading performance in applications, its hefty $739 premium isn't as good of a buy as AMD's $449 Ryzen 7 5800X3D if you're solely interested in gaming. The same applies to the standard 12900K and 12700K, too, though the Core i7-12700K is a contender if you're looking for a more balanced blend of gaming and application performance around the $410 price point.

Of course, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D is a huge win if you already own a Ryzen system — this chip will drop into almost any AM4 motherboard, saving some cash if you have the right supporting components. Overall, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D is exactly what AMD says it is — a chip optimized specifically for gaming that takes the overall lead.

First, let's take a quick look at the specs, then get right to our full gaming and application test results. Be sure to look for the deep-dive details and testing on the 3D V-Cache, boost frequencies, and thermals later in the article (the latter is particularly interesting). 
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