Question Higher performance for gaming: Ryzen 7950X3D vs Ryzen 9950X ?

[MitchellReece]

With the release of the new Ryzen 9000 CPU series not having X3D versions on launch, I am wondering which CPU is actually better purely for gaming?

Will there be X3D versions of the Ryzen 9000 series and if that's a given, is there a rough timeframe on how much later those CPU's would release compared to the initial release of 9000 series?

I want to buy whichever CPU is more powerful for gaming to pair with my RTX 4080.

 

[CountMike]

With the release of the new Ryzen 9000 CPU series not having X3D versions on launch, I am wondering which CPU is actually better purely for gaming?

Will there be X3D versions of the Ryzen 9000 series and if that's a given, is there a rough timeframe on how much later those CPU's would release compared to the initial release of 9000 series?

I want to buy whichever CPU is more powerful for gaming to pair with my RTX 4080.

Results are still in realm of conjugation until tested in real life which will happen when they start selling but x3D is still of limited use even for gaming , not much useful everywhere. Zen5 comes with more and more importantly better optimized, faster cache than previous so x3D may be even more limited in use. In the end it might just become a gimmick for higher pricing.
If I was to bet, it would be (just for instance) a 9900x over let's say 7800x3D. There's also question about RAM which speed is also important for x3d, For 7000 series "gold point" is 6000MHz and for 9000 is supposed to be 7600MHz which should make up for more cache.

 

[wyliec2]

Until reputable benchmarks are available, most discussion is conjecture at the moment.

That said, the 9950X looks pretty meh compared to the 7950X - 16% improvement in IPC, virtually identical clocks and no reduction in power demand. I'd say for now, one could simply extrapolate a bit on 7950X - 7950X3D comparison.

 

[geofelt]

All is speculation and claims until the actual products are delivered.
If you wait for the next best thing, you will wait forever.
If you have a need now, buy now.

My uninformed guess is that a 9950X will perform nicely in gaming and will perhaps exceed the7800X3d.

 

[Phaaze88]

Crystal ball question. All that can be done is speculate until the product actually gets here.

 

[CountMike]

Official specs are out, what is not known how much of an impact they'll have. How ready are BIOS for it ? It took a while for previous Ryzen versions to be used properly. I installed newest BIOS for b650 MB and AGESA 1170 wasn't doing any good with 7900x so I had to switch back. I'm aiming for 9900x which dropped power requirements from 170W to 120W,

 

[Silas Sanchez]

The 9950x is more for productivity and not for getting the most out of games. That is the 3d cache tech, so the workhorse flagship would represent a poor or questionable choice for gaming. Add in its price, and that the clock speeds are the same, at best 6-8 cores may be able to hold over 5Ghz more easily and it looks to be a pretty boring cpu.. The problem with games is they all vary alot based on their construction.
Then of course you have to remember the 4080 isnt exactly a powerhouse. It cant even do hard ray tracing in games at native 1600p 30fps. Still, I operate on the design philosophy of having the most powerful CPU you can get, for reasons anyone who understood fundamental design and economic principles 101 would agree, sadly some dont understand that stuff.

 

[hotaru.hino]

With the release of the new Ryzen 9000 CPU series not having X3D versions on launch, I am wondering which CPU is actually better purely for gaming?

Neither, because Ryzen 9s aren't the best at gaming anyway. The problem is having multiple CPU chiplets introduces significant latency if there's any data sharing between CCDs. So unless AMD invents a magical bus that drastically reduces this latency, you'll want the game running only on one of the CCDs. And in the case of an X3D model, the one with V-cache since only one CCD has it.

You're better off with a Ryzen 7.

 

[CountMike]

Neither, because Ryzen 9s aren't the best at gaming anyway. The problem is having multiple CPU chiplets introduces significant latency if there's any data sharing between CCDs. So unless AMD invents a magical bus that drastically reduces this latency, you'll want the game running only on one of the CCDs. And in the case of an X3D model, the one with V-cache since only one CCD has it.

You're better off with a Ryzen 7.

Ryzen 9000 series fixed that.

 

[hotaru.hino]

Ryzen 9000 series fixed that.

Where did you see that either:

• They fixed the latency problem between cross CCD communication
• The X3D versions of Zen 5 Ryzen 9s will have V-Cache on both CCDs

 

[CountMike]

Where did you see that either:

• They fixed the latency problem between cross CCD communication
• The X3D versions of Zen 5 Ryzen 9s will have V-Cache on both CCDs

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-com...-7-and-5-processors-with-a-16-ipc-improvement

The core microarchitecture has seen several enhancements; AMD points to its doubled data bandwidth between its L2 and L1 caches and the L1 to floating point unit as a contributor to its gen-on-gen gains in gaming performance. That makes sense, as latency tremendously impacts gaming performance.

Other improvements include improved branch prediction accuracy and latency that will help avoid pipeline bubbles and stalls. Zen 5 also features doubled instruction bandwidth for front-end instructions, a nice pairing with the improved branch prediction (this also suggests a wider retire queue, but AMD hasn’t shared that level of detail yet).

 

[hotaru.hino]

The core microarchitecture has seen several enhancements; AMD points to its doubled data bandwidth between its L2 and L1 caches and the L1 to floating point unit as a contributor to its gen-on-gen gains in gaming performance. That makes sense, as latency tremendously impacts gaming performance.

Other improvements include improved branch prediction accuracy and latency that will help avoid pipeline bubbles and stalls. Zen 5 also features doubled instruction bandwidth for front-end instructions, a nice pairing with the improved branch prediction (this also suggests a wider retire queue, but AMD hasn’t shared that level of detail yet).

These don't address the cross CCD access penalty. I'm talking about this chart if a reviewer is able to test core-to-core access latency (from https://www.anandtech.com/show/1758...ryzen-5-7600x-review-retaking-the-high-end/10)

As far as I can tell from what AMD revealed, the CCDs are still going to talk to the I/O die first through some IPC bus. Upgrading what the core itself does has nothing to do with this. And as long as AMD doesn't address this, Ryzen 9s will continue to not be the best CPU for gaming if you're going with AMD because you're going to have to tell the game to run on only one CCD to avoid potential issues with this.

EDIT: I'm too lazy to go find where I saw it, but allegedly Lisa Siu said one of the reasons why Zen 5 CCDs are still 8-core maximum is because games aren't developed to be able to use more than that effectively. You could take it as Lisa jabbing at game developers, but I can also interpret this as them acknowledging this problem because there's no reason to add more cores to avoid this penalty if games could use more cores.

 

[35below0]

The 9950x is more for productivity and not for getting the most out of games. That is the 3d cache tech, so the workhorse flagship would represent a poor or questionable choice for gaming. Add in its price, and that the clock speeds are the same, at best 6-8 cores may be able to hold over 5Ghz more easily and it looks to be a pretty boring cpu.. The problem with games is they all vary alot based on their construction.

You're ignoring that the 3D cache isn't utilized 100% by every game. Some of them wont benefit at all.

 

[thestryker]

Personally speaking I'd rather have a 9950X than a 7950X3D simply due to needing a software solution to properly utilize the extra cache. That being said you shouldn't really be buying AMD dual CCD CPUs for gaming as they don't provide any tangible benefits. That's why the 7800X3D is widely regarded as the best gaming CPU even though technically the 7950X3D should be, but again we go back to the software solution situation.

There's of course the option of waiting until the Zen 5 X3D chips arrive. At this point in time though I wouldn't buy anything until Intel's ARL launches unless there was a need to as that will be the Intel competitor for Zen 5.

 

[NickyB]

People are acting as if a 7800X3D is going to give you 80 more fps in games than a 9950X...it's bullsh!t and not true at all. The 9950X will be MORE THAN ENOUGH for gaming in whatever game is out currently and will come out for the next 2 years. I swear to God people love talking outta their a$$.