Hindsight is a wonderful thing when doling out recognition of truly great CPUs. AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D falls into that bracket, and only now, two generations later, are regular Ryzen chips catching up.
That’s the promise from AMD, who reckons imminent Ryzen 7 9700X has the beating of fan-favourite 5800X3D when gaming. You would hope so given the 27 months between release dates, yet it’s the manner of the supposed victory that makes things interesting.
Ryzen 7 9700X touts a similar eight-core, 16-thread topology to 5800X3D, but trades that extra layer of X3D cache for good ol’ fashioned frequency. 5.5GHz, to be exact, representing a 22% speed advantage over the aforementioned gaming chip.
Cache shrinks from 100MB (4MB L2, 96MB L3) on 5800X3D to 40MB (8MB L2, 32MB L3) on 9700X, yet AMD reckons this composition remains sufficient to overthrow the erstwhile gaming champ.
Going by the firm’s internal numbers, in-game performance on Ryzen 7 9700X is, on average, just over 10% quicker than Ryzen 7 5800X3D.
Such a claim is hardly groundbreaking, however do bear in mind 9700X is a 65W processor. Usurping 5800X3D was to be expected but beating it with less cache while drastically reducing power consumption is an impressive feat. A healthy baseline that has me stoked for the next generation of X3D parts.
AMD’s two-pronged leadership promise balances performance and efficiency. While 9700X is shown to handily outperform Core i7-14700K in a bevy of benchmarks, the chip also touts a 15% improvement in thermal resistance, enabling up to a 7°C temperature reduction over the previous generation at the same TDP.
Stands to reason that an absence of X3D layered cache will also pave the way to a superior overclocking experience on existing AM5 motherboards. Simply enabling Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) is said to unlock a further 15% performance on Ryzen 7 9700X at the click of a button.
Despite a bullish outlook, AMD is tasked with balancing an increasingly diverse portfolio. The firm will be eager not to cannibalise sales of existing parts – 5800X3D remains a firm favourite with the DIY audience – and pitching 9700X as a gaming CPU is a challenge in itself when 9000X3D is coming soon.
Pricing will play a key role in determining Zen 5’s appeal, and we look forward to delivering our verdict later this month. Stay tuned for all the benchmarks and analysis right here at Club386.