AMD Announces April 20 Release For 3D V-Cache Packed Ryzen 7 5800X3D

First announced at CES in January, AMD’s planning to shake-up its Ryzen CPU lineup with a new model that bundles in the company’s new 3D V-Cache solution – one that uses vertically-stacked cache to provide lots of it. This chip is called the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, and compared to the regular 5800X, this latest chip offers triple the cache, putting it at 96MB.

To help put things into perspective, it wasn’t until recently that our desktop CPUs featured more than 16MB of L3 cache. Current Intel 12th-gen Core models peak at 30MB, while AMD has sat a bit higher, with 32MB. What’s all of this extra cache going to do for you? Well, the reviews should help sort that out. If you ask AMD, the primary advantage will be with gaming, leading the company to call the 5800X3D the “world’s fastest gaming CPU” – hinting that it’s up to 15% faster than the Ryzen 9 5900X.

For a different sort of perspective, here’s the new 5800X3D alongside the rest of AMD’s current-gen lineup:

It might not seem like it at first, but there’s actually quite a bit worth talking about here. In addition to the 5800X3D’s release, AMD is launching six more CPUs, as well, all of which are listed in this table. On the Zen 3 side, there’s a new Ryzen 7 5700X, Ryzen 5 5600, and Ryzen 5 5500. Each of these chips offer the same number of cores and threads as the model directly above it, but are clocked lower, and thus are priced more attractively. In the case of 5600 vs 5500, the latter also has its cache cut in half.

The other three chips AMD is unveiling today are a bit of a different sort – they’re based around Zen 2. Those are the Ryzen 5 4500, Ryzen 3 4100, and Ryzen 5 4600G – the latter of which includes an integrated GPU. These models could be a testament to the fact that AMD still has plenty of Zen 2 inventory to use, but for consumers, it will allow the chance at a capable CPU for much less cash than current-gen models.

In another surprise announcement, AMD has said that a new AGESA version is being implemented into 300-series motherboards – those sporting X370 or B350 chipsets – which will enable full support for Zen 3-based chips. That even includes the new top-end 5800X3D. If you’re wanting to upgrade to AMD’s latest architecture, and have that generation board, you can check out the vendor’s support page, and when the AGESA 1.2.0.7-equipped EFI version drops, you can grab it. AMD expects the full roll-out to happen over the next two months, so don’t be surprised if you can’t find it today.

Overall, this batch of announcements from AMD is interesting for many different reasons. We see the first 3D V-Cache-equipped Ryzen, Zen 2 brought back in the form of 4000-series chips, and not to mention a backporting of support for Zen 3 to 300-series platforms. This all comes a mere week after AMD announced its latest-gen Threadripper PRO processors, so the company has been quite busy. We’re still selfishly waiting for a new Threadripper non-Pro launch. AMD, are you listening?