AMD Ryzen 7000X3D Series: Overview for Gamers and Creators

 

 

In a market that’s been dominated by Intel for years, AMD has been the only real traditional competitor and has been pushing the envelope to gain on Intel’s widespread popularity — a gap that’s been closing more and more year after year.

Source: Statista (Share of Intel and AMD x86 computer CPUs worldwide 2012-2022, by quarter)

This means new advancements with every generation of CPU — and 3D V-Cache is looking to be the biggest innovation from AMD yet. The company’s new cache ‘stacking’ technology has meant that for gamers and creators alike, a move over to the red side is becoming more and more appealing.

Let’s take a look at this new generation of CPUs, and whether the bold innovation has paid off for AMD! (Spoiler: It has)

AMD Ryzen 7000X3D Overview

AMD’s Ryzen 7000X3D series is a 3D V-Cache enabled version of their 7000X series of CPU, powered by their highly powerful Zen 4 architecture.

With that being considered, this isn’t a completely new series of CPUs — they’re technically incredibly similar to their non-7000X counterparts and the only real difference is the implementation of 3D V-Cache.

What you need to know about 3D V-Cache

3D V-Cache is a new technology created by AMD that uses a stacking technology to essentially give double the Level 3 cache — meaning that your computer can receive twice the number of operations from your RAM for your CPU to complete.

All of this means that the CPU needs to read from RAM less overall, which has obvious performance benefits — especially when gaming.

If you’re interested in learning more about the importance of 3D V-Cache, you can read more in our article that talks about how 3D V-Cache works for gamers and creators.

What’s different about the CPUs?

The CPUs are incredibly similar from a specification standpoint, and have similar specifications in most areas. However, the most noticeable difference is the base clock speed (the X3D series has a slower base clock speed).

This is because — due to the limitations of the 3D V-Cache — the 3D V-Cache-enabled CPUs have to run at a generally lower clock speed.

This was a major issue with the 5800X3D CPU, as the lower clock speed generally means that there will be lower performance in programs that 3D-V Cache doesn’t benefit. The 7000X3D series solves this problem quite intelligently, however.

Only half of the cores in the CPU are 3D V-Cache enabled — meaning that if you don’t need 3D V-Cache as it won’t benefit said program or tool, your CPU can still output a good clock speed that matches the other Zen 4 CPUs as well as possible.

AMD Ryzen 7000X3D Series for Gaming

For gamers, the 7000X3D series is the biggest innovation in gaming technology since the implementation of ray tracing capabilities into modern GPUs.

Games benefit from added cache immensely, and — for a while — it was looking like no more cache could be added to the CPUs of today. The cache is the largest component in the CPU, and the most awkward to make smaller.

With 3D V-Cache, the possibilities are now limitless.

While the 7000X series initially was quite a large step behind Intel’s Core 13000K series, the 7000X3D series has solidly closed the gap when it comes to average gaming performance — even beating the Intel CPUs in games such as Borderlands 3 and Elden Ring.

And obviously, these CPUs are better for gaming than their 7000X series counterparts due to the massive benefit of 3D V-Cache for gaming performance.

So, for gamers, this is a massive step in the right direction for AMD and could be the beginning of a new era for the gaming industry regarding CPU capabilities.

AMD Ryzen 7000X3D Series for Creators

While the benefits of 3D V-Cache don’t really apply to creators — a lot of the programs utilised by creators are either GPU intensive or just don’t really utilise V-Cache — the Ryzen 7000X3D series still isn’t a bad choice.

The fact that the OC clock speeds are the same for both the 7000X and 7000X3D essentially means that you can assuredly attain great performance from either CPU. As seen in this Cinebench benchmark, there’s not a massive difference between the two —

Data source: Eurogamer.net

This means that, essentially, either CPU is good — you’ll get ever so slightly better performance from the non-3D V-Cache CPUs in most creative programs, but both perform incredibly well and outshine previous generations immensely.

Overall, if you’re a creator who creates content about (or even also enjoys) gaming, there is a chance that you might benefit more from 3D V-Cache. It’s not a strictly worse choice, just a consideration to make when deciding between the two.

Last Word

AMD’s 3D V-Cache CPUs have helped them close the gap with the latest generation of Intel CPUs, keeping them neck-and-neck in the race for the best CPU. The technology behind 3D V-Cache is incredibly impressive and boasts many benefits for gaming specifically.

The implementation of this technology, however, also means that these CPUs are far more flexible than we saw in 3D V-Cache in the past. And, if you’re not going to benefit at all from the cache benefits, the high clock speed 7000X series CPUs boast great performance anyway at the exact same price point.

These new innovations keep AMD flexible and give more reasons for people from any background to look towards them as a serious contender for the (once irrefutably Intel) throne.

If you’re looking to buy a CPU, check out our CPU buyers’ guide today! Otherwise, why not take a look at our other great articles for tech news and updates?