3D V-Cache Infused Zen 4: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D Gaming Review

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla kicks things off to a good start, with obvious advantages being seen with AMD’s 3D V-Cache chips over its regular lineup. Intel’s Core i9-13900K puts up a hard fight, beating out the 7950X, and placing just behind the 7950X3D. Interestingly, an even greater gain on the 3D V-Cache side can be seen between 5800X3D and 5800X.

At 1440p, it’s clear that the 3D V-Cache enhancement can offer a bit of an improvement, but when the GPU becomes the biggest bottleneck, high-end CPUs can trip over one another in the results.

Borderlands 3

Borderlands 3 paints a similar picture as AC Valhalla, where both of the tested X3D chips gain a notable boost over their non-3D V-Cache parts. Intel is once again putting up a hard fight with its Core i9-13900K, but AMD’s 7950X3D wins in the end.

One other result that stands out to us here is the 7950X and 5950X battle. The Zen 4-based chip provides a substantial performance boost, with a jump from 225 to 283 FPS at 1080p. The 7950X3D manages to win the 1440p battle, as well, but the gains seen are not as impressive as they are at 1080p.

Company of Heroes 3

Company of Heroes 3 is one of the newest titles to grace our test bench, and it’s one that happens to show a nice performance uptick when extra cache is available. Both of the X3D chips perform much better than their non-3D V-Cache counterparts. Intel continues to put up one heck of a battle, with the 13900K falling short of taking on the 7950X3D, but easily leaps ahead of 7950X.

The previous games we’ve taken a look at so far haven’t shown much of a performance difference at 1440p, but CoH 3 bucks the trend, and manages to deliver an almost identical result between Intel’s 13900K and AMD’s 7950X3D.

Cyberpunk 2077

We’ve seen Intel and its Core i9-13900K give AMD’s top echelon a great fight, but something about Cyberpunk 2077‘s design really jives with the Zen 4 chips. Here, the 7950X leaps ahead of the 13900K, while the 7950X3D pushes performance further ahead. The 5800X3D also delivered a huge boost over its 5800X sibling.

At 1440p, strengths become less impressive. The 5800X3D continues to shine, though, scoring 1 FPS more than the 7950X3D, despite being built on the last-gen architecture. This could be a sign that single-CCD chips are a sweet spot, which could bode well for the upcoming 7800X3D.

Death Stranding

Death Stranding is one of the rarer games that manages to look really good for the level of GPU performance it requires. We felt that it might be a great candidate for CPU scaling, but that didn’t quite work out like we hoped. The X3D chips don’t gain much at all over the non-3D V-Cache chips. Whereas Cyberpunk seemed to love AMD CPUs, Death Stranding favors Intel, with even the Core i5-13600K outperforming the rest of the AMD lot.

Dying Light 2

We finish this gaming page off with a look at Dying Light 2, which really seems to dig all of the extra cache the 3D V-Cache parts provide it. This game becomes another example where Intel’s Core i9-13900K would lead the pack if not for the 3D V-Cache models existing. And because they exist, we see some really nice leaps in performance, where even the 5800X3D matches 13900K.

On the next page, we’ll take a look at performance in F1 22, Forza Horizon 5, Returnal, Spider-Man Miles Morales, and Total War Three Kingdoms.