AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D

The best gaming CPU, but not quite the one chip to do it all

- DAVE JAMES

AMD’S ATTEMPT TO create the ultimate gaming and productivity chip has almost worked with the Ryzen 9 7950X3D. It has once again proven the power of the 3D V-cache technology when it comes to squeezing higher gaming performance out of its processors, and has married that to an asymmetrical chiplet layout that can deliver the goods in productivity. The price and small gains in 4K games are the only things spoiling the party.

Once again, AMD has bonded an extra 64MB of L3 cache to an eight-core chiplet (this time a Zen 4 one) to double its lastlevel cache, for a total of 128MB. It has to limit the clock speed of that chiplet, too, as it’s important that it’s the same height as a standard Ryzen 7000-series CPU.

That’s challenging, because this time there are two chiplets in the package. But AMD has taken the smart move of limiting the 3D V-cache to just one of them, leaving the second in exactly the same state as it is on the standard Ryzen 9 7950X. It’s cheaper to do, but also means that it can have one side of the CPU with eight Zen 4 cores that can operate best for applications that benefit most from low latency memory, and another eight cores that will run at a peak clock speed frequency the others can’t manage.