AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D CPU Review Ft. MSI MAG X670E Tomahawk – The Most Efficient High-End CPU

Conclusion - Disruptive Efficiency For High-End Users

The 2nd generation of AMD Ryzen 3D V-Cache CPUs is here and this time, the red team is offering a choice of high-end and mainstream solutions. Kicking things off in the high-end range first, we have the Ryzen 9 7950X3D which sits on top of the Ryzen 7000 "Zen 4" throne but whether it's worth the price, or will it be better to wait for the lower cost 7800X3D?

3D V-Cache Chiplet or Frequency-Optimized Chiplet?

The AMD Ryzen 9 7000 3D V-Cache CPUs come in an interesting chiplet design with one offering the stacked cache and the other being a standard chiplet. The 3D V-Cache chiplet is optimized for gaming and the other chiplet is optimized for frequency-focused workloads. Users can disable or enable the chiplet they want to use based on their preferences but AMD is working with Microsoft to ensure that the proper chiplet gets utilized during a specific type of workload.

This implementation has a certain tradeoff. For example, the 3D V-Cache chiplet has power and thermal constraints due to which it cannot sustain the same frequencies that the other chiplet is able to sustain. Vice-versa, the 3D V-Cache chiplet benefits from the extra cache, and games that utilize that specific chiplet would either park the rest of the 8 cores / 16 threads or utilize them & result in slightly abnormal operation. As was the case with Intel's hybrid architecture approach we saw with the Thread Director implementation, the AMD 3D V-Cache CPUs will be a work in progress and that's shown by the two distinct chipset drivers that were released close to launch.

But that doesn't mean the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D is any slouch. The chip performs well within our expectations and delivers around 95% of 7950X's performance. The best part is that it does so at a much lower power consumption. So you still retain the high-end multi-threaded performance in a chip that performs exceptionally well at gaming.

Gaming Performance Is Incredible

The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D is designed to offer the best of both worlds and as much as capable it is in application workloads, it's even better than a gaming chip. The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D CPU is able to outperform the Intel Core i9-13900K in the vast majority of titles and even the DDR5-7200 setup of the 13900K wasn't able to keep up with the highs that the 7950X3D produced. Surely, gaming performance mainly depends on the title being tested but the chip paired with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 delivered some incredible results.

Our performance results focused mostly on 1440p and 2160p performance since this is what the majority of high-end gamers play on. Surely, we will be able to see some bigger gains at 1080p but you aren't buying a $1000 US+ graphics card and a $500 US+ CPU to game at that resolution. With that said, one area where we saw an even bigger gain was the 0.1% lows (soon to be added to this review). Here, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D absolutely crushed the Core i9-13900K and delivered a vastly smoother playing experience at higher resolutions.

Power Efficiency Keeps on RYZENING!

Coming To power consumption, this is another key aspect where AMD shows the strengths of its Zen 4 core architecture and simply blows the competition away.

The CPU consumes almost 30-50 percent lower power than the competition at stock and in gaming, the CPU is on a whole different level. Even at stock, the CPUs consume as much as 50-60W lower power than the competition in gaming power consumption and that's taken to the next level with the 65W ECO mode which pushes the power down to sub-100W levels while retaining the same performance in gaming. Sometimes, the CPU was sipping around 50-60W of power while gaming which shows AMD's strength in the efficiency segment.

But if you plan on using the ECO mode in multi-threaded workloads, then you should expect performance drops compared to stock since the Zen 4 CPU cores require that extra juice deliver the 40-50% performance boost over their predecessors. Despite that, the CPUs still end up being the most efficient processors on the market. The good thing is that gaming won't see as much of a drop when running the 65W ECO mode since one chiplet will be parked, leaving just the 3D V-Cache chiplet to run.

Now compared to the previous generation CPUs, the maximum power targets have been raised and the CPU package size and IHS have gotten smaller. As such, the higher transistor density and smaller thermal density mean that the chip is bound to get hot and so it does. The CPU is able to hit its 89C thermal limit with ease unless you are really using the best of the best liquid cooling setup.

Who's The Ryzen 9 7950X3D For?

The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D is a powerful chip, it has strong multi-threaded performance and even better gaming performance. The CPU is crazy efficient and it rips through all games even when just sipping close to 100W of power, that's half of what the competition has to pull to offer pretty much the same performance (in some cases, the competition even loses while sipping double the power).

With all of that considered, the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D is a great flagship CPU but the $699 US price is slightly on the high-end side. Considering that the main benefits of the Ryzen 9 7950X3D over the 7950X include faster gaming performance and higher efficiency, that's not enough to warrant a 100 US+ price charge. The 7950X still leads the multi-threaded benchmarks versus the 7950X3D and the gaming performance isn't that big of a leap in some titles. The Core i9-13900K is even better with a $150 US price difference and great multi-threaded and gaming performance. If you aren't going the efficiency route, then that might as well be your best bet.

Final Verdict - The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D is an efficiency king which is quite surprising for a high-end CPU of this class to be. Offering stunning gaming/application performance while consuming half of what the competition does, it is a spectacular chip but the pricing may put off some gamers and customers to grab a 13900K or 7950X instead. With that said, the 7950X3D has made me even more excited for the Ryzen 7 7800X3D which is definitely going to disrupt the sub-$500 US gaming segment when it launches in April.

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