Review AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D Review: New Gaming Champ Beats Pricier CPUs

[dalauder]

sorry terry, but the times i have done cpu swaps, on intel OR amd, the bios is usually reset when i 1st turn the comp on after switching cpus. i cant remember the wording on the screen, but it then says to enter the bios and load defaults, or adjust things, something to that effect.

your " might get fried " angle, doesnt hold any heat



as i said above ,it actually does, at least for the times i have done it with the comps i have upgraded

I had assumed that he meant there was a widespread bios bug where it doesn't reset defaults when you swap parts. That would be a BIG problem. But it's really more a motherboard OEM issue than AMD anyways. And Intel/AMD have the same motherboard partners.

 

[Ogotai]

I had assumed that he meant there was a widespread bios bug where it doesn't reset defaults when you swap parts. That would be a BIG problem. But it's really more a motherboard OEM issue than AMD anyways. And Intel/AMD have the same motherboard partners.

either way, if the bios resets when you swap cpus, couldnt that bug be a moot point ?

 

[TerryLaze]

If you use a good case or open bench and cooler, you're absolutely right. Most OEMs don't. Most $100 water coolers still don't dissipate 300W well. But Intel's 13th gen is MUCH better on cooling than 10th, 11th, or 12th generation. My point is that if you're going to knock AMD for DDR4, or other ridiculous claims, they really should've been more direct about Intel's heat issues the last couple generations.

Can you find a review that compares OEM Intel performance? I doubt you'll find a 11th or 12th generation Intel outperforming a similar 3000-series or 5000-series AMD chip. I could be wrong. Nobody tests real-world.

Same argument, with everything being the same the intel one is still much cooler...
So the only thing you are saying here is giving the explanation of why OEMs don't like AMD.
They can slap an intel CPU into a very bad case with bad cooling and it will still at least run while an ryzen CPU would constantly reboot due to hitting thermal limits.

sorry terry, but the times i have done cpu swaps, on intel OR amd, the bios is usually reset when i 1st turn the comp on after switching cpus. i cant remember the wording on the screen, but it then says to enter the bios and load defaults, or adjust things, something to that effect.

Oh?! You booted up the mobo without the new CPU being installed?! And it reset the settings without an CPU?
Doing the first boot to reset the setting would already apply the bad Vcore to the cpu.

 

[TerryLaze]

I had assumed that he meant there was a widespread bios bug where it doesn't reset defaults when you swap parts. That would be a BIG problem. But it's really more a motherboard OEM issue than AMD anyways. And Intel/AMD have the same motherboard partners.

either way, if the bios resets when you swap cpus, couldnt that bug be a moot point ?

I already posted these links.
It's not just a bios thing, potentially any software sees the x3d versions as the normal versions, and we already had a situation where an driver update overclocked CPUs without consent.
There is nothing to prevent this from happening again in the future and the x3d CPUs don't have any protections on the chips themselves to protect them...

https://www.techspot.com/news/98154-motherboard-software-bug-makes-easy-accidentally-kill-amd.html

AMD confirms GPU driver bug overclocks CPUs without permission

AMD is investigating an issue in its GPU software suite that causes an auto-adjustment of AMD Ryzen CPU performance settings for users without permission.

www.bleepingcomputer.com

 

[cyrusfox]

Should it be interesting? AMD's been getting better power usage for several generations in laptops, with vastly superior integrated graphics. Unless I'm missing something, Intel's not really competitive in that space.

Meteor lake may bring a reckoning to mobile Intel, it is revolutionary as they adopt a disaggregated chip design strategy(glue chips together ).

What you're missing is Business/enterprise(captive market). Still entirely Intel on the windows side. As well as platform maturity.

I have an AMD laptop(4700u), and I still have issues around USB malfunction, sleep (never will stay asleep, have to shut it down- annoying), my NVME is reporting millions of off/on cycles with only a couple hundred hours of use[that can't be good for drive longevity], and battery self drain. I don't experience this with any of my Intel platforms(4th,6th,8th,&11th gen Core laptops), most items just work[TB3 can be finnicky with eGPU granted]. AMD has improved but I still experience lagging issues(GPu stuff was fixed thanks to driver update). Other item I notice is AMD platform seems to lack long term support from the manufacturers. For instance, I can still find recent(2022) bios upgrades for ancient 4th gen HP platforms but my 3 year old HP Zen laptop hasn't seen a bios update for 2 years...

I hope my next AMD laptop is more polished as the battery life, performance, and price make them too tempting. I use Intel laptops due to work and I'll generally find them 2nd hand for cheaper than I can ignore (Sub $200 for workstation class Intel cpu 2-3 years old).

 

[Thunder64]

Same argument, with everything being the same the intel one is still much cooler...
So the only thing you are saying here is giving the explanation of why OEMs don't like AMD.
They can slap an intel CPU into a very bad case with bad cooling and it will still at least run while an ryzen CPU would constantly reboot due to hitting thermal limits.

Oh?! You booted up the mobo without the new CPU being installed?! And it reset the settings without an CPU?
Doing the first boot to reset the setting would already apply the bad Vcore to the cpu.

You know that is wrong. The Intel one may throttle sooner so it doesn't hit it's peak temperature, but that does not mean it is "cooler". Intel burns through watts compared to AMD. An AMD CPU will put less heat into the room. So, if anything, AMD is "cooler".

 

[Elusive Ruse]

Nice comparison of prices. That post claiming that DDR4 and DDR5 cost the same was misrepresenting information.

I still think the $40 difference for 32GB is pretty small for a gaming PC...especially when going with DDR4 loses more than $40 of gaming performance.

I also think that talking about Raptor Lake like it drops into existing boards is a totally invalid comparison, since data shows that the Intel chips pretty much aren't competitive to 7000 Ryzen chips with DDR4. The 5800X3D drops into existing boards, while we're comparing worse/old platforms.

So I'm still not clear where DDR4 is a valid point to criticize. There aren't really any usage cases for it.

I should acknowledge that my complaints about Intel heat in above posts isn't valid for 13th generation.

It is also worth noting that despite Tom's firm belief that DDR4 support is so important and puts Intel 13th gen at a huge advantage in regards to AMD CPUs ( they believe it so firmly that they count it as two cons: "Lack of DDR4 Support" and "Expensive Ecosystem") when it comes to benchmarking Raptor Lake, they make sure to pair those CPUs with the fastest DDR5 they can find.

 

[SunMaster]

Same argument, with everything being the same the intel one is still much cooler...
So the only thing you are saying here is giving the explanation of why OEMs don't like AMD.
They can slap an intel CPU into a very bad case with bad cooling and it will still at least run while an ryzen CPU would constantly reboot due to hitting thermal limits.

Do you create your ‘facts’ before you start writing or is it more like a ‘go with the flow’ kind of process where everything is made up on the fly?

 

[ottonis]

I am interested in power efficiency rather than in raw gaming performance. Looking at the amazing power-efficiency diagrams, the 7950X3D seems to excel in this discipline and to put all other CPUs to shame: while spending just as much energy on the task as the 7800X3D, the 16core CPU finishes the task in almost half the time.
Now, that's quite an achievement!

 

[ottonis]

It is also worth noting that despite Tom's firm belief that DDR4 support is so important and puts Intel 13th gen at a huge advantage in regards to AMD CPUs ( they believe it so firmly that they count it as two cons: "Lack of DDR4 Support" and "Expensive Ecosystem") when it comes to benchmarking Raptor Lake, they make sure to pair those CPUs with the fastest DDR5 they can find.

That's OK in my book. Lack of DDR4 support is certainly a con for all those folks who already own DDR4 memory sticks but cannot use it for their new system.
However, as a reader who wants to know the maximum possible performance of a tested CPU, I would expect the reviewers to remove all potential bottlenecks, including slow/subpar RAM modules.

 

[Elusive Ruse]

That's OK in my book. Lack of DDR4 support is certainly a con for all those folks who already own DDR4 memory sticks but cannot use it for their new system.
However, as a reader who wants to know the maximum possible performance of a tested CPU, I would expect the reviewers to remove all potential bottlenecks, including slow/subpar RAM modules.

It's not a con of the CPU by any means, not EVERYTHING has to be made universally compatible with everything else. It's like attributing a major con to the 4090 because people with lower watt PSUs cannot just buy it and roll with it. AM5 is a new platform and only supports DDR5 we have known that fact for a long time, it is not a shock to anyone who has a DDR4 system.
Yes, reviewers should take as much as they can out of a part they are testing but if they keep harping about DDR4 support and how amazing Intel 13th gen is for having it, then maybe the advantage should be demonstrated. Using high-end DDR5 on Raptor Lake just proves that they KNOW that DDR5 is essential for Intel to perform.

 

[ottonis]

It's not a con of the CPU by any means, not EVERYTHING has to be made universally compatible with everything else. It's like attributing a major con to the 4090 because people with lower watt PSUs cannot just buy it and roll with it. AM5 is a new platform and only supports DDR5 we have known that fact for a long time, it is not a shock to anyone who has a DDR4 system.
Yes, reviewers should take as much as they can out of a part they are testing but if they keep harping about DDR4 support and how amazing Intel 13th gen is for having it, then maybe the advantage should be demonstrated. Using high-end DDR5 on Raptor Lake just proves that they KNOW that DDR5 is essential for Intel to perform.

I get your point. Lack of DDR4-support ist not a genuine con, here I definitely agree with you. However, when referenced against the competition that does offer dual support for DDR4/5, then the lack of DDR4-support indeed becomes a "relative" con. It's a matter of having more options.

 

[abufrejoval]

I'm building a new ITX rig and I'm really glad that I decided to wait to see what the 7800X3D was going to bring to the table and now I think that's going to be the CPU I put in this rig. Now to find a motherboard that supports it out of the box without a BIOS update.

Well, supposedly you should be able to update the BIOS without putting in the CPU first, at least on some mainboards. I've just read through the manual of the cheapest B650 mainboard I could find (an ASROCK B650M-HDV/M.2) and it supports "CPU less" flashing of a BIOS.

Although I am a bit at a loss to understand how that works with AM5...

Mainframes had so called service processors for decades, they'd load the microcode into the main CPU before it would launch. Once the x86 CPUs started to rival those mainframes in capabilitie and complexity, they did similar things and I believe Intel chipsets included the equivalent of an 80486 as a service processor for a long time, running some type of Minix.

AMD went with an ARM core, but I'm not sure where that service processor would reside today, with Pluton and all that I'm inclined to think it's part of the SoC, so no "CPU" no easy way to flash a BIOS with that service processor...

Then again there are probably a couple other tiny little processors on a modern mainboard, which an do the job, because they wouldn't advertise the feature otherwise.

I certainly remember having to put in a Skylake CPU into a mainboard I intended to run with a Kaby Lake CPU later, but when I went with a 5800X3D I didn't have to borrow my 5950X from an other system to update the BIOS to a variant that had official V-cache support. I followed the instructions from the manual for a CPU-less flash and it then accepted the 5800X3D without issue.

But then it might have actually run the CPU even with the old BIOS, because AMD was smart enough to include some basic support mode, knowing that might ease the user experience...

 

[SunMaster]

Well, supposedly you should be able to update the BIOS without putting in the CPU first, at least on some mainboards. I've just read through the manual of the cheapest B650 mainboard I could find (an ASROCK B650M-HDV/M.2) and it supports "CPU less" flashing of a BIOS

I believe it has become quite the norm.

https://www.asrock.com/mb/compare.a...iFi,A620M Pro RS,A620M-HDV/M.2+,A620M-HDV/M.2 show that all asrock a620 boards support bios flashback. Probably all the other main suppliers as well.

 

[abufrejoval]

Staring at my 7950X3D chip and smiles...I need more cores personally and I have zero problem shutting down a CCD to get max FPS when the need arises which will beat the 7800X3D due to 250mhz higher clocks. Plus if I know a game hates/could care less about the extra cache I can switch CCDs to use the higher clocks. Regardless though this sounds like a great chip. I need to build a rig for my nephew who is graduating high school this year, he might benefit from a 7800X3D if I am nice...otherwise hell just get a 7700X lol.

Yeah I keep wondering what people/software are doing wrong when they measure the 7800X3D better than a 7950X, because the 3D CCD is simply bound to be a better bin and as long as the cache-less CCD isn't consuming thermal budget, the V-cache CCD of a 7950X3D must outperform any 7800X3D...

Now shutting the "high-clock" CCD down effectively may be an issue. You should be able to do it in the BIOS, but that's a little harsh in day-to-day operations. AMD's software control may not be as effective as it should be, but with a tool like Lasso you should be able to keep anything waking up the high-clock CCD and then allow the V-cache CCD to perform to its full potential... and beyond what its smaller cousin is capable of.

In short, nobody who paid the 7970X3D premium should ever feel 7800X3D envy, unless someone messed up.

But then we've had similar flukes with the 5000 series, where 5800 and 5900 were reported to do better than 5950... With better CPU control in the OS, via Lasso or some other "numactl" like facility to keep the scheduler from spreading critical scalar workloads across CCDs, that simply should not happen.

 

[TerryLaze]

You know that is wrong. The Intel one may throttle sooner so it doesn't hit it's peak temperature, but that does not mean it is "cooler". Intel burns through watts compared to AMD. An AMD CPU will put less heat into the room. So, if anything, AMD is "cooler".

Room temperature has not much to do with how much cooling you need for the CPU which is what was discussed.
Sure, with intel if you run it without limit you will get 330W into your room, the CPU itself will still be running at 330W performance and at 15 degrees below throttle.
Intel hits full performance and full power draw at 8 degrees lower than ryzen, ryzen throttles while intel is at full power and 30% above that at 15 degrees below throttling temp.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/17641/lighter-touch-cpu-power-scaling-13900k-7950x/3

Following on from the temperatures, despite pulling a figure of 330.3 W under full load, the peak core temperature of the i9-1300K was 8°C lower than the Ryzen 9 7950X, which hit 94°C under full load.

If you limit the power draw to the same level of Ryzen it will still be much cooler, ryzen will be ~15% more efficient but intel will be cooler, the CPU temps, the power draw will be the same.
https://www.computerbase.de/2022-10...bschnitt_leistung_in_apps_bei_reduzierter_tdp

Do you create your ‘facts’ before you start writing or is it more like a ‘go with the flow’ kind of process where everything is made up on the fly?

If you have a different opinion then show us links that support your opinion, otherwise it's you that is just making stuff up on the fly.

 

[Elusive Ruse]

Room temperature has not much to do with how much cooling you need for the CPU which is what was discussed.
Sure, with intel if you run it without limit you will get 330W into your room, the CPU itself will still be running at 330W performance and at 15 degrees below throttle.
Intel hits full performance and full power draw at 8 degrees lower than ryzen, ryzen throttles while intel is at full power and 30% above that at 15 degrees below throttling temp.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/17641/lighter-touch-cpu-power-scaling-13900k-7950x/3


If you limit the power draw to the same level of Ryzen it will still be much cooler, ryzen will be ~15% more efficient but intel will be cooler, the CPU temps, the power draw will be the same.
https://www.computerbase.de/2022-10...bschnitt_leistung_in_apps_bei_reduzierter_tdp

If you have a different opinion then show us links that support your opinion, otherwise it's you that is just making stuff up on the fly.

Stop with the 7950X throttling nonsense, 7950X doesn't throttle at peak temp; AMD designed the chip to go as high as 95 Celsius and operate at that temperature. This is not a throttling point but a thermal target. You simply don't understand how Zen4 works or choose to ignore it because your employers at Intel wouldn't look kindly at that.
Techpowerup put the 7950X through rigorous thermal testing and found the CPU to perform great even with handicapped air cooling measures.

It's been a fascinating experience trying out the Ryzen 9 7950X with three very different kinds of cooling solutions. The 95°C load temperature of Zen 4 desktop processors is somewhat misunderstood due to the way it's being referred to on social media and online forums. This isn't a T-junction max temperature in the classical sense. Your CPU won't get damaged, or the PC won't turn off the moment it hits this temperature, but rather the processor will aim to run at this temperature, which is the highest safe operational temperature, and adjust its boost frequency and voltages accordingly, to keep the processor at this temperature (not under this temperature). If your cooler is good enough that the processor can boost up to its top 5.75 GHz highest boost frequency, then by all means you'll get this speed. If not, you'll get a lower boost frequency. How much lower? Depends on the cooler. Even with the weakest configuration in our test (Wraith Spire at 20%), you still get 5.3 GHz, which is 92% of the maximum boost clocks. Overclockers can override this limit, and let the processor heat all the way up to 105°C, at which point the processor will unconditionally shut the system down (thermal-trip).

The frenzy around the 95°C load temperature of the processor had gotten so bad that some predicted that cheap air coolers could "start fires." This clearly won't happen as our testing confirms. The Wraith Spire is a 95 W-capable cooler that probably costs AMD $10-15 to bundle with each PIB package. It's a piece of aluminium with a fan—as basic as stock coolers can get. When paired with the 7950X, the cooler is able to keep the processor away from damage or overheating and runs 100% stable all day. The processor will run at 95°C both when gaming and with multi-threaded productivity load, although the frequency yielded varies with the fan setting. You will get frequencies as high as 5.65 GHz under a single-threaded workload with 100% fan (best case), or as low as 3.22 GHz with a 32-threaded workload at 20% fan (the absolute worst case for this processor short of running it without a cooler). You will lose around 7% performance when averaged across all tests, but when you look at individual tests, you'll see that the performance loss can reach almost 25%. Much less performance is lost in gaming workloads (as much as 10% in CPU-limited games, almost nothing in GPU-limited ones).

 

[abufrejoval]

@PaulAlcorn ,
Why are you still dinging premium AMD products for lack of DDR4 support? DDR5 has been on the market for 1.5 years!

If I price 2x 32 GB of DDR4-4000 at Newegg (direct), it's >= $180. The same capacity of DDR5-4800 is $195. As noted here, DDR5 prices are expected to continue falling faster than DDR4, which means the gap will only continue to narrow, in coming months:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/dram-prices-dropped-20-in-q1-2023-will-keep-falling-in-q2

At this point in time, I doubt anyone spending >= $450 on a CPU is opting to stick with DDR4, even if they have the option to do so. For lower-end CPUs, the point remains valid.

I am glad, DDR5 prices have come down.

But in my case the main issue was that I wanted 64GB and ECC, because I was trying to upgrade a Xeon E3 machine that runs plenty of VMs (not necessarily with constant high loads) as a side job 24x7.

DDR5 was expensive, DDR5 with ECC not even available six months ago, when I did the upgrade.
And when it finally became available three months later, it was another 2x or 4x the price of DDR4.

But even that seems to have changed, even ECC DDR5 no longer has prohibitive prices, but you don't get it at the kind of high-speed variants, that makes perform significantly better.

Intel boards with the W680 chipset and DDR4 support remained paper tigers or simply not available for purchase, nor would they accept Raptor Lake CPUs...

So in the end I went with the 5800X3D and 64GB of DDR4-3200 ECC and hoped that the extra cache might both help with the VMs and with the fact that the RAM wasn't exactly the best in terms of bandwidth and latency: it certainly not a slow system.

I'd probably be tempted to upgrade that system to a 7800X3D or even a 7950X3D eventually, without throwing away 128GB of perfectly capable ECC RAM, which I can't really sell to anyone, so having that backward compatibility would have been a nice feature. I have no idea what the cost of having the IP block on the IOD would have been in terms of die space or perhaps IP license cost, but I can't believe it to be that high.

AMD is sometimes cutting costs "brutally" e.g. when it comes to sign their drivers for Windows server use (I run Windows 2022 on the machine).

So today I just got another 64GB of DDR4-3200 ECC delivered for 50% of what that would have cost as DDR5, even more VMs, less VROOUUM than the 7800X3D.

Yes, I agree with Paul that the lack of DDR4 backward compatibility for non-APU chips is still a detriment today, perhaps not so much towards the end of the AM5 life cycle in 2025.

For an APU with a serious iGPU DDR4 would be silly, I agree.

 

[dalauder]

either way, if the bios resets when you swap cpus, couldnt that bug be a moot point ?

Of course. As I said, if it doesn't, that would be the problem.

 

[dalauder]

Room temperature has not much to do with how much cooling you need for the CPU which is what was discussed.
...

Well that depends on what you mean by "Room temperature". But talking about when I lived in Guam, didn't use air conditioning, and used air cooling for my CPU is a different can of worms.

 

[Ogotai]

Oh?! You booted up the mobo without the new CPU being installed?! And it reset the settings without an CPU?
Doing the first boot to reset the setting would already apply the bad Vcore to the cpu.

nice try twisting words around terrylaze. go back an re read my post.
as that is not what i said. but you cant help find ways to bash amd in some way when intel looks bad. no wonder most of your posts always come across as " i hate amd, lets see if i can post something just to make them look bad

 

[dalauder]

Meteor lake may bring a reckoning to mobile Intel, it is revolutionary as they adopt a disaggregated chip design strategy(glue chips together ).

What you're missing is Business/enterprise(captive market). Still entirely Intel on the windows side. As well as platform maturity.

I have an AMD laptop(4700u), and I still have issues around USB malfunction, sleep (never will stay asleep, have to shut it down- annoying), my NVME is reporting millions of off/on cycles with only a couple hundred hours of use[that can't be good for drive longevity], and battery self drain. I don't experience this with any of my Intel platforms(4th,6th,8th,&11th gen Core laptops), most items just work[TB3 can be finnicky with eGPU granted]. AMD has improved but I still experience lagging issues(GPu stuff was fixed thanks to driver update). Other item I notice is AMD platform seems to lack long term support from the manufacturers. For instance, I can still find recent(2022) bios upgrades for ancient 4th gen HP platforms but my 3 year old HP Zen laptop hasn't seen a bios update for 2 years...

I hope my next AMD laptop is more polished as the battery life, performance, and price make them too tempting. I use Intel laptops due to work and I'll generally find them 2nd hand for cheaper than I can ignore (Sub $200 for workstation class Intel cpu 2-3 years old).

Business laptops are a different animal, true.

 

[g-unit1111]

Well, supposedly you should be able to update the BIOS without putting in the CPU first, at least on some mainboards. I've just read through the manual of the cheapest B650 mainboard I could find (an ASROCK B650M-HDV/M.2) and it supports "CPU less" flashing of a BIOS.

Although I am a bit at a loss to understand how that works with AM5...

Yeah I was wondering the same thing. I've seen it done on AM4 but I haven't seen this process done on AM5 yet.

 

[helper800]

I'm building a new ITX rig and I'm really glad that I decided to wait to see what the 7800X3D was going to bring to the table and now I think that's going to be the CPU I put in this rig. Now to find a motherboard that supports it out of the box without a BIOS update.

We seem to be in a similar position, so I'd be interested which motherboard you end up settling on. If you don't mind me asking, what's driving your preference for support out of the box? Convenience, reliability, performance? Or something else?

This motherboard has a BIOS flashback feature which allows you to update the BIOS with a USB flashdrive with no parts installed, just PSU plugged into the motherboard for power. I have done this many 10's of times with no issues, though if power is cut to the motherboard in the middle of the flash it can cause some serious issues.

 

[colindog]

So it's 16.4% faster than the 13600K in gaming and about 14% slower in productivity (multithread) while costing 40% more.

Would you pay 40% more to get 16% faster gaming performance? I sure wouldn't.
[/QUOTE
Coming from a 4700K so I plan on keeping this guy for a long time so anything helps for me, espicially down the line with that extra cache.