Ryzen 9850X3D evaluation: AMD’s bragging-rights gaming CPU will get extra to brag about

Performance and energy consumption

The very first thing to note concerning the 9850X3D is that its multi-core efficiency is actually indistinguishable from the 9800X3D. If something, the 9800X3D appears marginally higher behaved in our Handbrake video encoding assessments, which might come all the way down to something or nothing—perhaps it’s an precise distinction between the chips, perhaps it’s the silicon lottery, perhaps it’s one thing else. Overall, it’s principally a wash.

The 9850X3D does enhance considerably on the 9800X3D’s single-core efficiency, closing the hole with each the Ryzen 9900X3D and 9950X3D (each of which have common Zen 5 cores with no 3D V-Cache) and the 9700X (which has no 3D V-Cache in any respect).

There’s a world during which AMD can get this further efficiency for “free” with out altering something concerning the structure or manufacturing course of. AMD might have been “binning” silicon lottery winners, or the reliability of the manufacturing course of might have improved sufficient to permit AMD to hit higher numbers that weren’t as persistently achievable a 12 months in the past.

But it seems like AMD improved the 9850X3D’s single-core efficiency primarily by making it behave extra like a non-X3D chip. The chip’s energy consumption whereas gaming suggests this is kind of what’s occurring—the 9850X3D’s CPU package deal energy whereas gaming is a few 25 or 30 W increased than the 9800X3D taking part in the identical video games, regardless of the single-digit-at-best efficiency enchancment (in each our testing and AMD’s promoting).

While the 9850X3D’s energy consumption whereas gaming isn’t wildly out of step with the 9700X’s or the 9950X3D’s, it does make the tiny efficiency positive aspects on show right here onerous to get enthusiastic about.

And that is on high of the price trade-off you’re already making if you purchase an X3D-series chip. Game efficiency is all the time spectacular, however you discover these advantages the most in conditions the place your CPU, not the GPU, is the efficiency bottleneck.