AMD claims gaming dominance with their three new Ryzen 7000X3D CPUs

AMD claims explosive performance gains with their new V-Cache Enhanced Zen 4 Gaming CPUs

At CES 2023, AMD has confirmed that the company’s 3D V-Cache technology is coming to Zen 4 in February, launching in the form of their Ryzen 9 7950 X3D, Ryzen 9 7900X3D and Ryzen 7 7800X3D. These CPUs combine the processing power of AMD’s Zen 4 CPU cores and the benefits of the company’s 3D V-Cache technology, promising to deliver gamers a huge leap in system performance.

What is V-Cache?

AMD’s 3D V-Cache technology was introduced with AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800X3D, which used 3D die stacking techniques to place a 64MB SRAM die on top of their Ryzen 5000 series CPU silicon to boost a CCD’s L3 cache size from 32MB to 96MB. This tripling of L3 cache size allows AMD to accelerate workloads that benefit from having more data on-chip. Having three times as much L3 cache allows AMD’s X3D processors to store a lot more data on-chip, speeding up data access by limiting the number of times that CPUs need to search DRAM for important data. To put things another way, it is much faster to get a pen from a drawer beside you than it is to walk to the next room and back to grab it.

AMD’s enlarged L3 caches on X3D series processors are particularly beneficial for gaming workloads, as most games rely heavily on memory access to achieve high framerates. Having more data on cache can therefore accelerate these workloads significantly, especially for games like Factorio and Stellaris.

With 3D V-Cache, AMD can effectively deliver a generational leap in gaming performance without making any changes to their Zen core designs. With 3D V-Cache, AMD can accelerate gaming workloads with enlarged caches, though it is worth noting that the performance gains from these enlarged caches will vary significantly on a game-by-game basis, and some games will not benefit from the change at all. 

AMD claims gaming leadership over Intel

When compared to Intel’s current gaming flagship, the Raptor Lake powered i9-13900K, AMD has claimed that their Ryzen 9 7950X3D can deliver performance gains of up to 24% at 1080p in a CPU-limited gaming scenario. 

Across Rainbow Six Siege, Total War: Three Kingdoms, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Horizon Zero Dawn, AMD has claimed performance advantages of 13%, 18%, 23%, and 24% respectively. These are huge benefits for gamers, though AMD has not showcased the raw benefits of V-Cache by comparing their Ryzen 9 7950X and Ryzen 9 7950X3D.

Leadership inside and outside of gaming

The problem with V-Cache is that its performance benefits outside of gaming are spotty. There’s a reason why most CPUs do not have this much L3 cache, and that reason is that most workloads do not benefit greatly from having this much on-chip memory. There is a reason why a lot of Ryzen users will not want to invest in AMD’s V-Cache technology, and why AMD’s V-Cache technology is limited mostly to application-specific processors outside of the consumer PC market. 

Even with V-Cache’s limited appeal outside of gaming workloads, AMD has showcased their Ryzen 9 7950X3D processor to be a strong performer in content creation workloads below. There are workloads where AMD’s Zen 4 CPU architecture can deliver strong performance benefits over Intel’s Raptor Lake CPU lineup. 

Zen 4 V-Cache VS Zen 3 V-Cache 

When compared to their last-generation Ryzen 7 5800X3D processor, AMD’s new Ryzen 7800X3D CPU is said to offer gamers a 21-30% boost in game performance, offering gamers a significant generational leap in performance. Both of these CPUs feature eight cores and sixteen threads, making these CPUs directly comparable in terms of core-to-core performance. 

You can join the discussion on AMD’s Ryzen 7000X3D Gaming CPUs on the OC3D Forums.