Question From an early outset, is the 5800x3d worth the wait?

[Adam1998]

I've held out on a CPU upgrade for CES to pass, notably waiting for AMD's zen 3 refresh. But with only one chip coming in spring with no price or true benchmarks yet, I'm not really sure whether it's worth waiting for a single chip.

My other options are to pick from the Alderlake line or rely on the tried and tested 5800x.

Any thoughts? I'm after a multipurpose productivity and gaming rig which is why I'm looking at ryzen 7/i7

 

[Lutfij]

If you can't wait and your productivity deadlines are eating away at the ability to put food on the table, per se, then you should fall back on what you have access to at this moment of time. If you can wait, you can expect to see reviews come out hours prior to launch then is the issue of availability. Since the pandemic took hold, we've ended up seeing pretty much everything go away as soon as things were stocked on the shelves and whatever's left are sold for a higher price tag, if they weren't scalped enough by people.

Might I ask what sort of app's, tasks you're going to tax your proposed build with? Also, yesterdays announcement of the higher cache processor from AMD made my eyebrows flinch in a good manner since higher cache does help with multitasking and rendering tasks. Gaming, that depends on the titles you want to game though since not all titles like one particular platform unless the game dev's have optimized it to like one particular platform.

 

[Koekieezz]

I've held out on a CPU upgrade for CES to pass, notably waiting for AMD's zen 3 refresh. But with only one chip coming in spring with no price or true benchmarks yet, I'm not really sure whether it's worth waiting for a single chip.

My other options are to pick from the Alderlake line or rely on the tried and tested 5800x.

Any thoughts? I'm after a multipurpose productivity and gaming rig which is why I'm looking at ryzen 7/i7

if the price difference is not far from 5800x, it could be worth the wait. for now amd didnt give the exact msrp for it, also the fact that the chip shortage would affect the price or not. probably just hold until its msrp released.

 

[NameChanged38]

I'd consider the 5800X3D a waste of time considering AMDs goal to adopt LGA upon the next generation.

I am a fan of Intel's new 12th gen however....

 

[alceryes]

Buying everything new or do you have a system you can/will be upgrading?
What's your budget?

I'm disappointed at the lower base and boost clocks of the first new 3D chip. This smells of issues with heat dissipation when the cache is getting hammered.

 

[Adam1998]

If you can't wait and your productivity deadlines are eating away at the ability to put food on the table, per se, then you should fall back on what you have access to at this moment of time. If you can wait, you can expect to see reviews come out hours prior to launch then is the issue of availability. Since the pandemic took hold, we've ended up seeing pretty much everything go away as soon as things were stocked on the shelves and whatever's left are sold for a higher price tag, if they weren't scalped enough by people.

Might I ask what sort of app's, tasks you're going to tax your proposed build with? Also, yesterdays announcement of the higher cache processor from AMD made my eyebrows flinch in a good manner since higher cache does help with multitasking and rendering tasks. Gaming, that depends on the titles you want to game though since not all titles like one particular platform unless the game dev's have optimized it to like one particular platform.

Fortunately at the moment this won't affect income or anything, I've just an aging i5 but waiting is an option. That's a concern of mine as well.

The most taxing application right now is probably unreal, mixed with premiere, DAW's and such for content creation.

 

[Adam1998]

Buying everything new or do you have a system you can/will be upgrading?
What's your budget?

I'm disappointed at the lower base and boost clocks of the first new 3D chip. This smells of issues with heat dissipation when the cache is getting hammered.

Not everything new currently, this is like a more than half upgrade (CPU, mobo, cooler, case and PSU). Budget wise probably closer to £800 at a max for those bits.

Yeah I'm sort of not sure whether to jump to that or not quite so yet, especially when intel has now got an expanded Alderlake lineup

 

[Adam1998]

I'd consider the 5800X3D a waste of time considering AMDs goal to adopt LGA upon the next generation.

I am a fan of Intel's new 12th gen however....

Honestly Alderlake makes this a hard decision. I have a soft spot for AMD but I can't argue with benchmarks really

 

[Adam1998]

if the price difference is not far from 5800x, it could be worth the wait. for now amd didnt give the exact msrp for it, also the fact that the chip shortage would affect the price or not. probably just hold until its msrp released.

Hone yeah the MSRP will be a make or break for me on that, I like AMD and I wanna go with them so I hope they make it easy for me

 

[Karadjgne]

Wait for the 12700. Gaming, it'll be somewhat equitable to the 5800x/5800x3D, but productivity is a different story. With that cpu is supposed to be the release of the B660, which shouldn't be close to the same ripoff prices as the Z690 boards.

 

[Adam1998]

Wait for the 12700. Gaming, it'll be somewhat equitable to the 5800x/5800x3D, but productivity is a different story. With that cpu is supposed to be the release of the B660, which shouldn't be close to the same ripoff prices as the Z690 boards.

I actually held out for cheaper motherboards for Alderlake and with those on the way, the reasons for intel are mounting

 

[alceryes]

If you need it now than I'd probably go for the Alder Lake. If you can wait for AM5 then I'd wait till AM5.
The 5800X3D is a 'filler' flagship CPU. I'd only recommend it if you've got an older Ryzen 3000 system that you want to breathe new CPU life into, and even then I would wait till AM5 if I could.

 

[larkspur]

The 5800X3D is probably going to be pricey with low availability although I'm just guessing based on their announcement. They compared it to the 12900k in the game benches which tells me they are going to charge a lot more than the regular 5800X. The lack of additional SKUs also tells me that something didn't go well for the 5900X3D and 5950X3D (probably heat). I would have thought those would benefit most from an additional huge chunk o' cache. Maybe they'll still release those later, who knows... The lowered clockspeeds are disappointing too. Will the 5800X3D lose to the 5800X is some workloads due to its lower clocks?

I'd be more inclined toward AL right now. 12700 or 12700k for your use case and budget. You'd want to see if DDR5 is something that benefits your workloads, otherwise it likely doesn't make sense. From what I've heard Raptor Lake will be an option in the future with a BIOS update although I wouldn't expect any miracle improvements.

 

[drea.drechsler]

I don't expect wide availability or big quantities even though it will doubtless take the gaming crown (else why do it). Heat might be a consideration on an architecture that wasn't designed from scratch for this sort of thing but I don't think anyone knows for certain why no 12 or 16 core version outside of AMD. But the lack of any sure does hint that Zen 3D is just for gaming which isn't a heavy processing load that generates a lot of heat.

Then again: 5900 and 5950 are dual-die CPU's. Might there be technical issues with die to die interconnects for the stacked L3 cache? But it seems to me the thermal problems of a 5900X3D, with only 6 cores per die, would be more easily managed than a 5800X3D with 8 cores per die. At any rate: Why solve these problems for content creators and low-end HEDT when Zen 4 is only a few months away?

Coming so close to the launch of Zen 4 many pundits are saying the 5800X3D is mainly to keep shareholders happy. I can see that.

 

[Karadjgne]

Space under the IHS. The 5800x, and 5600x are single core dies whereas the 5900x and 5950x use 2x dies for cores. The 2x dies take up the entire right side of the IHS and the Lcache already there takes up a good chunk of the left. Adding 64Mb of Lcache isn't small. And it'd be rough to make it work on AM4 without rerouting all the internal traces. Just the 5800x with the 64Mb of Lcache took a little rerouting, but was done in an area of the pcb that had relatively little tracing to start with.

But as it is, amd is kinda vague about its claims. Being the 'fastest' only applies to games/apps that can really benefit from higher Lcache. For other games/apps that don't have a high dependency on Lcache, the 3d isn't going to magically raise the 5800x3D above 5950x levels. Or 12900k.

As far as clock speeds go, that's kinda immaterial in comparison. It's a Ryzen. I get better CB20 scores at an all core 4.2GHz 62°C by clocktuner2 than I do at all core 4.4GHz 83°C manual OC. Simply due to heat killing efficiency. The higher a Ryzen temp gets above 60°C, the slower it 'thinks', regardless of clocks.

I bet Amd will have done something similar with the 3D, maximizing real performance, lowering voltages, lowering heat output, since the 5800x is the highest binned chips anyway, and that gets higher performance numbers, even if it means lowering clock speeds in comparison to the 5800x .

 

[drea.drechsler]

Adding a bit:

AMD (Rober Halleck) talks some about V-cache and 5800X3D. A good watch. At the outset he does say he truly believes it will be worlds fastest gaming processor. No quibbles.

tl/dW: he says the 5800X3D is quite by design a gaming CPU. The purpose is reducing latency for gaming, which is very much latency sensitive because of it's highly unpredictable nature, with a very large pool of cache that's common to all cores. The 8 core chip was chosen because it seems to be the more popular choice by gamers (?) He delves into doing it on dual die chips and he does suggest potential latency problems when a thread on one die needs data in the cache on the other die...or keeping data common between caches on the two dies. Thermals is a problem but the clock reduction is chosen more to find an optimal operating point considering the large cache and to keep clocks steady in the 4.5 Ghz range for gaming which isn't so much CPU clock sensitive as memory latency sensitive.

It is overclockable...so maybe some improved cooling might leverage even more performance if ignoring the 105W TDP. No word on price.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha_U8rrxvyE

 

[Karadjgne]

Amd only makes 1 die, an 8 core Ryzen. If any of the cores fails QC, the 2 worst cores get burned, and you get a 5600x or 2x die are used for a 5900x. If the cores pass you get a 5800x or 2x die are used for a 5950x. It's how Amd keeps production costs lowered, and why the 5800x was slightly above what would be normal price progression, it's harder to get 8 perfect cores, more often at least 1 isn't upto snuff.

It's not that an 8 core is more popular with gamers, the 5600x is considerably more popular than the 5800x, just based on price vs performance, but 8 core die was going to be used no matter what. With costs of using 2x die and the amount of work needed to revamp the tracing in the pcb to allow space for the extra Lcache, single die was necessary. Then amd runs into the issue of a 5600x3d that costs similar to a 5800x and performs similar in games to a 5800x, but productivity is behind. Which limits sales of the 3d chip, ppl would just buy the better 5800x for a similar price.

So it makes sense to use a not so popular cpu, bump its gaming performance up while keeping costs down and not affecting the cpus higher in the chain.

 

[sizzling]

What do you have now? I have a 3700x and was waiting for 3D cache CPU’s to maximise the lifespan out of my AM4 & DDR4 setup. AMD have been fairly good at giving accurate claims prior to launch and their claim that the 5800X3D is the fastest gaming cpu would be fairly stupid if it didn’t live up to that. Even if it’s faster by 1% than a 12900k that’s an awesome setup that should last at least a few years. I can then look at upgrading the whole platform when DDR5 has matured and actually beneficial to me.

 

[jacob249358]

something people seem to forget is that the 5800x MSRP is $449. I wouldn't be surprised if the 5800x3d MSRP is $599 or even $649, this might sound outrageous but keep in mind you are paying for the AMD premium and so-called "fastest gaming CPU" premium. if you don't already have an am4 motherboard I doubt it will be a good choice. . Either ltt or gamers nexus said AMD cherry-picked games and benchmarks for the 5800x3d vs 12900k stuff they showed

 

[drea.drechsler]

something people seem to forget is that the 5800x MSRP is $449. I wouldn't be surprised if the 5800x3d MSRP is $599 or even ...

I don't know where it's going to be and wouldn't want to guess...but I know that $449 MSRP doesn't seem to be holding up very well. I got mine at $299 at Microcenter....they had it last week at $329 and it's $359 today. They've been rocking the price back and forth in that range since well before black Friday. Not everybody's got a Microcenter nearby (they only sell them in-store) but BB will pricematch and the point is the price is under pressure.

So while I wouldn't want to guess I'm not so sure I could agree with it being really high...not unless quantities are going to be limited. It could easily be this is just a tease to get the title back and prepare us for Zen 4. The crazy heads will pay any price if it's the Gaming King and this is a drop-in while waiting for AM5.

I'm positive GN would be skeptical of benchmark claims...that's his schtick. He's always (and correctly) careful about taking marketing at face value. But the thing is, AMD's marketing claims with prior Ryzen releases have turned out very much spot on what we got. Not that it matters...we'll find out soon enough.

 

[Makaveli]

What do you have now? I have a 3700x and was waiting for 3D cache CPU’s to maximise the lifespan out of my AM4 & DDR4 setup. AMD have been fairly good at giving accurate claims prior to launch and their claim that the 5800X3D is the fastest gaming cpu would be fairly stupid if it didn’t live up to that. Even if it’s faster by 1% than a 12900k that’s an awesome setup that should last at least a few years. I can then look at upgrading the whole platform when DDR5 has matured and actually beneficial to me.

I'm even considering it on a 5800X if the price is right. I think for anyone on Zen 2 or lower its a no brainer. Zen 3 already added 19% over Zen 2 then this add's another 15%.

Easily a 30% average performance increase from a 3700X

 

[Karadjgne]

Amd doesn't lie. Period. They may stretch the truth and wiggle around technicalities, but Intel sued them often enough that outright lies or fabrications are something they won't even consider now. Which means I'm thinking they cherry picked some amd strong titles, found specific sections to test that were amd strong points etc.

Which validates their claims. From a certain point of view, but validated non the less.

 

[drea.drechsler]

.... Which means I'm thinking they cherry picked some amd strong titles, found specific sections to test that were amd strong points etc.
...

Cherry picked...always. But based on RH's comments it sounds like this thing will most strongly benefit the most latency sensitive games, and those tend to be e-sports titles, intense FPS games. I can't say those are exactly known to be AMD optimized.

FPS gamers also jump on any advantage they can get. Sounds like a tremendous opportunity to get a bunch of AM4 owners, saddened by their recent de-throneing, to drop this thing in and then get them again on the backside when Zen 4/AM 5 comes out.

Planned obsolescence at it's finest. Alfred P. Sloan would be proud. If it works Intel will be envious.

Speaking of: so Intel has sued AMD for false performance claims? Didn't know such a thing is done...but absolutely absurd on the face of it. I mean...you know...pot and kettle and all that.

 

[Karadjgne]

Of course Intel sued Amd. Multiple times. It's part of the reason Amd was always on the sidelines, prolly the most well known being Intels suit that the FX was not an 8 core cpu, but really a 4 core with shared nodes. It drug Amd through the Court system for years and with Intel "95% of the World's Internet", they had the money to staff bigger, better and more lawyers. (Intel finally won that one). Ryzen did more for Amd than most realize. Ryzen performance wasn't just a slap in the face, it was a well deserved beat-down that left Intel staggering.

 

[Crosslhs82x2]

I was Very Happy to read that the 3d's will be able to run on B450's and X470's.
Now it's a wait and see matter as to price and availibilty as the scalpers was grabbing the 5600x and 5800x here in the Denver area and sold them way over Micro Centers price when they came out.
Certainly the 3d's will have a higher price but most likely the 56 & 5800x's are sure to drop given the way micro center shifts their prices.
Recently they had the 5800x for $279.00 or $289.00 and the 5600x for $249.99 I almost jumped on the 5800x, but decided to wait for the News and upgraded my ram instead.
I did buy a 5600x at that time for my son's birthday in July and it's Very Hard Keeping it put away till then!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So waiting for Reviews and Pricing Here In Denver.
Hope Everyone is having a Great Weekend!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!