AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800X3D beats Core i9 12900K in gaming benchmarks
AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800X3D is coming soon. Chips are showing up in the wild, and early bird reviews and benchmarks are popping up online. Given that AMD has been touting the 5800X3D’s gaming prowess, we’ve been waiting to see if that’s true. It seems so.
Peru Hardware Site Xanxo Games (pass 3D Center) managed to get a retail Ryzen 7 5800X3D and put it through a comprehensive set of benchmarks comparing it to Intel’s Core i9 12900KF. Since AMD did not sample the site, it is not subject to the embargo.
Reviewers compared 11 games running at 720p and 1080p. In games that are less sensitive to the amount of cache, the CPUs are mostly neck and neck. However, several games showed significant growth. In games like The Witcher 3 and Final Fantasy XV, the AMD Ryzen 5800X3D leads by 22% and 29%, respectively. There were also plenty of 1% lows very favorable for the 5800X3D.
The 720p results don’t quite correlate with real-world use cases, they show greater gains. Still, in many cases the differences between the two systems are negligible.
While this is just one set of results, early indications that AMD’s claim that the 5800X3D is a gaming-oriented processor seem to be correct. Productivity benchmarks show little to no gain, and some actually go backwards due to slightly lower clock speeds. But that’s fine, AMD hasn’t made any claims to the contrary.
Notably, both test systems used DDR4-3200 memory. The 12900KF supports DDR5, which means it gets some performance when paired with high-speed memory. But good DDR5 costs money, which is another advantage of the 5800X3D. You can update your BIOS and put it into an older AM4 system without spending a fortune on a new motherboard and memory.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing for the 5800X3D, though. It doesn’t support overclocking and costs more than the already very good 5800X. So unless you’re a hardcore gamer with a high-end GPU that can chase every frame you can get, or have an older processor, early indications are that you shouldn’t feel the urgency to upgrade from a 5000-series processor. This also applies to gamers using Intel systems.
This early foray really gets us excited about what AMD can do with 3D V-Cache in the future. The increased gaming performance, higher clock frequencies, and higher IPC of the Zen 4 processors could bode well for AMD. Intel and AMD will go head to head later this year, and we can’t wait.
PC Gamer’s review of the Ryzen 7 5800X3D will appear after the embargo is lifted. Stay tuned for our full analysis!