ZEN 4 V-CACHE LANDS
Sixteen cores, 144MB of cache, a gaming monster
EVERYBODY was impressed by the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, a Zen 3 chip with 96MB of L2 cache that was claimed to be the world’s fastest gaming processor at the time. We’ve been waiting for the Zen 4, and AMD has now confirmed three new versions— the Ryzen 9 7950X3D and 7900X3D, and the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. The top dog 7950XD has 16 cores and a maximum clock of 5.7GHz. That extra cache pushes the total to 144MB of L2, which is Threadripper territory.
The middle chip has 12 cores and a top clock of 5.6GHz, while the Ryzen 7 has eight cores, a clock of up to 5.0GHz, and a TDP of 120W. They aren’t unlocked but settings such as the precision boost overdrive, curve optimizer, and memory can be tweaked.
These chips spell trouble for Intel, as the 7950X3D should be a gaming powerhouse. AMD puts it at between 13 and 24 percent faster than the Core i9-13900K on selected titles. Similarly impressive claims are made for productivity, including a 17 percent lead using Adobe Premiere Pro. AMD initially quoted a release date of 14 February, but it should be any time now.
AMD also released a series of mid-range 65W non-X Ryzen 7000s—a 12-core Ryzen 9 7800 ($429), an eight-core Ryzen 7 7700 ($329), and a six-core Ryzen 5 7600 ($229). Clock rates have been lowered over the X versions, the 7700 losing a full Gigahertz. We also get the Radeon RX 7600M and 7000S graphics cards for laptops using the latest RDNA 3 architecture. AMD also has a range of laptop chips, from the Zen 4 7045, and 7040 series, through Zen 3+ 7035, Zen 3 7030, to the Zen 2 7020. The 7045 has up to 16 cores and the 7040 carries RDNA 3 graphics and dedicated AI silicon.