Like you, I’ve got X3D on the brain. It’s hard not to seeing the sky-high frame rates that Ryzen 7 9800X3D can achieve. However, alluring as its performance is, there’s no escaping that it’s an expensive processor. So, spurred by a friend hoping to jump on the 3D V-Cache hype train, I’ve turned my attention to a more affordable but nonetheless speedy option: Ryzen 7 5700X3D. Here’s why I’m recommending this AM4 chip to them, and why you should consider picking one up.
First, let’s discuss the price of the processor. On Amazon US, it’s available with a 20% discount ($51), bringing its price down to just $198. Meanwhile, in the UK, it’s similarly fallen to £189. Availability in European regions varies, but it is available in France for €218. Wherever you buy it, the CPU costs less than half of its Zen 4 and 5 siblings.
AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D
“AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D processor with AMD 3D V-Cache technology adds a massive gaming performance boost.”
It’s easy to confuse this chip with Ryzen 7 5800X3D, both in name and specification. Each sports eight Zen 3 CPU cores, along with 96MB of L3 cache. The only major differences between the two are in clock speeds, with 400MHz separating the two in base and boost clocks. Nonetheless, Ryzen 7 5700X3D still packs a sizeable punch, running at 3.0GHz out of the box, rising to 4.1GHz under load. In practice, this makes little difference in games that primarily benefit from 3D V-Cache rather than frequency.
You can expect Ryzen 7 5700X3D to trade blows with every other non-X3D processor on the market in a range of games including Baldur’s Gate 3, Microsoft Flight Simulator, and especially esports titles like Counter-Strike 2 and Valorant. We’re talking performance in the region of flagships like Core Ultra 9 285K and Ryzen 9 9950X in some cases, all on the cheap.
While you will need to buy an aftermarket cooler to pair with Ryzen 7 5700X3D, the overall platform cost is much lower than any Socket AM5 alternative. Given the maturity of Socket AM4, motherboards are plentiful and affordable with the B550 chipset providing all you need for a modern gaming system. That’s not forgetting the price of DDR4 RAM too, providing further savings as you needn’t bother venturing beyond speeds of 3,600MT/s.
So, if you’re hungry for 3D V-Cache but can’t stomach the prices of Ryzen 7 7800X3D or 9800X3D, this is the way to go. It’s worth noting that opting for Socket AM4 effectively limits your upgrade options to zero in the future, but I’d be surprised if 5700X3D doesn’t serve your needs for several years.