Advanced Micro Technologies (NASDAQ: AMD) detailed its 7000X3D lineup as part of its ongoing attempt to bolster the Ryzen 7000 lineup in the face of Intel’s successful 13th gen Raptor Lake launch which currently holds the performance crown for a variety of benchmarks as well as an important niche that dominates demand for bleeding edge processors – Gaming. While Intel has attempted to improve on its Raptor Lake gains by launching the ultimate binned processor, the Intel Core i9 13900KS which can push past even 6Ghz in ideal situations, AMD has taken a more nuanced view of the current limitations of its 7000 series lineup by pushing for an X3D revamp, something that resulted in the Ryzen 7 5800X3D launching in April last year.
The 5800X3D processor directly competed in gaming benchmark against Intel’s then-greatest 12900K used 3D V-Cache to cover a yawning gap between the 5800X and the 12700k/12900k processors by doubling down on an increased ‘stacked’ 3D memory. It comes as no surprise that AMD, which finds itself on the backfoot this generation with the 13XXX series from Intel being a clear staple for gamers to attempt to use 3D V-Cache to rescue itself and release a more competitive product line in less than a year since the 7000 series made its debut. The catch however is that AMD is not limiting it to its mainstream Ryzen 7 lineup but launching it across the board as a staggered launch with the first 7000X3D CPUs we will see available commercially at retail channels will be the Ryzen 9 7900X3D and the 7950X3D. The Ryzen 9 launch on the 28th of Feb will be followed by the 8 core Ryzen 7 7800X3D more than a month later with a release date of 6th April. This comes in at the same time that both AMD and Nvidia have admitted to shipping CPUs and GPUs slower, essentially underselling existing Ryzen, Radeon and Geforce RTX processors to, both sustain price level as well as allow prior inventory to clear out, avoiding their own previous products cannibalizing their current generation offerings. Given how potent the 5800X3D is even versus the current gen Intel flagships, such a move might be warranted.
Source: AMD YT channel.
The 12-core, 24-thread Ryzen 9 7900X3D is priced at $599 and accompanies the flagship 16-core, 32-threaded 7950X3D which will trade at an $100 premium, opening at $699. They come capped to a 120W TDP and dial back their base clock speeds by 300Mhz each not unlike their predecessor while promising anywhere between a 13 to 24% gain in video game FPS and anywhere from 4 to 52% gains in workloads. As always, one should take these figures with a bucket of salt; AMD has been known to cherry-pick their benchmarks, limiting them to only those that heavily favor their narrative.
AMD has understandably staggered the launch to max out sales of the 7900X3D and 7950X3D first but the chip to watch for gaming enthusiasts will be the 7800X3D. This is not only because of its competitive price point of $449 but the limited gains once can stand to make from additional cores for gaming while most processors are rewarded for powerful single or dual core performance as game engines to date fail to optimize themselves completely for more ‘monolithic’ CPU designs.
All in all, if AMD’s benchmarks hold to real world tests and are more akin to general in-game performance gains, Intel’s 13900KS has its work cut out for them. Intel has already attempted to clear its 12th gen processors in the markets by trying to push as much as a 20% cut across the board to make them more appealing purchases for system builders and gamers on the fence for next gen upgrades. It is an exciting time to be a PC gamer, albeit an expensive one as both chipmaker’s flagships demand some relatively crazy cooling solutions to get their best performance out of the box – AMD recommends at least a 280MM liquid cooler for its upcoming chips, which means that the already-hot 7000 series seem to have reached a new peak with its X3D revision. We will be covering that with more information once benchmarks become more public.
