AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D Review: No Compromise Gaming And Creator Performance
"Overclocking" The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D
Although the processors are not fully unlocked, and don’t offer fine grained multiplier and clock manipulation, they do offer memory overclocking (with full EXPO support), with Curve Optimizer and PBO support.To get the best performance from a Ryzen 9 7950X3D, or any other high end processor for that matter, you’ll obviously want a good cooler and power supply and an enthusiast-class motherboard with plenty of headroom for overclocking.
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D Idle Temps
That said, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D’s thermal limit is somewhat lower than standard Ryzen 7000 series processors (89°C). And like all Ryzen 7000 series processors, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D is designed to boost up to its maximum supported frequencies and voltages for as long as possible until its thermal limit is reached. This is by design and is meant to extract as much performance as possible from the chip, given the power and thermal headroom in the system.
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D Load Temps
In its stock configuration in our test rig, after hours of benchmarking, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D would offer consistent performance and tickle that 89°C limit, but often ran a couple of degrees below. With PBO and Curve Optimizer enabled, however, expect to hit that thermal limit more quickly, and with somewhat higher performance.
We ran a couple of quick tests with PBO enabled and after letting Curve Optimizer profile our CPU (the process takes a couple of hours) and saw some moderate performance gains.
In Cinebench, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D with PBO and CO was actually able to overtake the "stock" Ryzen 9 7950X by the slimmest of margins. We also saw some small gains during audio and video encoding, but they weren't large enough to catch the 7950X. Still, we're not going to complain about a couple of percentage points of free performance that's available by only ticking a couple of boxes in Ryzen Master. Just keep in mind your mileage will vary depending on your system configuration and workload.
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D Load Temps
In its stock configuration in our test rig, after hours of benchmarking, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D would offer consistent performance and tickle that 89°C limit, but often ran a couple of degrees below. With PBO and Curve Optimizer enabled, however, expect to hit that thermal limit more quickly, and with somewhat higher performance.
We ran a couple of quick tests with PBO enabled and after letting Curve Optimizer profile our CPU (the process takes a couple of hours) and saw some moderate performance gains.
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D With 3D V-Cache - Review Verdict
AMD has another success on its hands with the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, and likely the Ryzen 7000X3D series as a whole, though we’ll reserve judgement on the Ryzen 9 7900X3D and Ryzen 7 7800X3D until we get to test the processors. The 7800X3D’s significantly lower boost clock and the 7900X3D’s four fewer “fast” cores (i.e. those without 3D V-Cache), will likely alter their behavior versus non-X3D counterparts more so than the Ryzen 9 7950X3D in multi-threaded workloads.That said, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D seems to deliver on AMD’s claim of offering the best of both worlds. The Ryzen 9 7950X3D offers virtually all of the performance of the Ryzen 9 7950X in many workloads, though it does trail in spots. Where it does trail, however, it’s only by a few percentage points and won’t have a meaningful impact on real-world experiences. With gaming workloads, that benefit most of the 3D V-Cache, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D is a beast. In every game we tested the Ryzen 9 7950X3D offered a huge boost over the Ryzen 9 7950X and often outpaced Intel's Core i9-13900K/S.
With excellent single-threaded, multi-threaded, and game performance, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D is well suited to a variety of users. If you’re a creator that also loves to game, this processor is a no compromise solution. And perhaps best of all, it offers this strong, well-rounded performance, at a fraction of the power of competing processors. The Ryzen 9 7950X3D is a highly efficient, high performance multicore processor.
In terms of pricing, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D will arrive at $449, the Ryzen 9 7900X3D at $599, and the 7950X3D at $699. That about $110 more than their standard counterparts, so there’s a clear premium at play for the boost in gaming performance and efficiency. Whether that’s worth it to you is going to depend on your priorities, but we suspect it won’t be an issue for most hardcore gamers or enthusiasts. AMD notes these chips will be on sale at retailers starting tomorrow, 2/28.
Overall, our initial look at the Ryzen 9 7950X3D was very positive and the heated, invigorated battle between AMD and Intel has been extremely fun to witness these past few generations. AMD scored some major points today, and expands their socket AM5 line-up with some jack-of-all-trades processors that should please a wide range of users looking for no compromise performance for work and play.
