AMD first demonstrated the Ryzen 9 5900X processor engineering sample using 3D V-Cache cache stacking technology at COMUTEX last year, and from the test DEMO demonstrated live, it can be seen that the processor game performance of the three-level cache has increased by leaps and bounds, so many enthusiast gamers are looking forward to it. At the march 5 press conference, AMD finally announced the first desktop processor based on this technology, the Ryzen™ 7 5800X3D, and the L3 cache soared from 32MB of the Ryzen 7 5800X to 96MB, claiming that the game performance was 5% higher than the Core i9 12900K on average, which is the strongest game processor at present. What exactly is 3D V-Cache black technology? Is the Ryzen™ 7 5800X3D really that strong? We have received the final retail version of the Ryzen™ 7 5800X3D before the release on April 20, so let's take a closer look at this very special game artifact U.
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AMD 3D V-Cache technology, the black magic that boosts processor gaming performance
At present, the official website of AMD has updated the detailed specifications of the Ryzen™ 7 5800X3D, and it can be seen that its biggest change from the Ryzen 7 5800X is to increase the 64MB L3 cache through AMD 3D V-Cache technology, thus achieving a significant improvement in game performance. AMD did not use the traditional frequency increase method to enhance performance this time, but chose a cache stacking technology that is better in energy efficiency control and scalability, which is another milestone in the history of processor development.
But why not integrate a larger cache directly into the original CCD chip? In fact, the reason is easy to understand, first, if you add caching directly in the CCD, you need to redesign the chip; secondly, the larger chip size will make the regional utilization of the wafer edge lower, and the yield rate will also be affected, which will lead to a significant increase in cost. So why not increase the L2 cache, but instead increase the L3 cache? AMD means that the L2 cache is exclusive to each core, while the L3 cache is shared by all cores, which is more effective for the overall improvement of game performance. In fact, from the perspective of ZEN3's architecture, due to the lack of size kernel design drag, heap level three cache is indeed more reasonable.
The Ryzen™ 7 5800X3D added 3D V-Cahce cache is also manufactured using a 7nm process with an area of 41mm2, made of 13 layers of copper and 1 layer of aluminum stacked, connected to the original L3 cache via TSV silicon perforation, hybrid bonding, two signal interfaces, and data transmission with each processor core via a shared ring bus added on the L3 cache. In addition, 3D V-Cahce adopts a slice design with a capacity of 8MB per block, a total of eight blocks, and the internal bandwidth of each block exceeds 2TB/s, which makes the data bandwidth of 3D V-Cache completely comparable to the native L3 cache, thus providing extremely high performance.
However, in theory, this is not the limit of the AM4 platform ZEN3 architecture to install 3D V-Cache cache, before Su Mama showed the open cover of the Ryzen™ 9 5900X 3D V-Cache version sample, you can see that only one CCD is installed with 64MB 3D V-Cache, if the two CCDs of the Ryzen 9 are added 3D V-Cache cache, the total cache capacity can reach 200MB (4MB× 2 L2 cache plus 192MB L3 cache)! Of course, taking into account the price, power, heat dissipation, and factors for gaming applications, AMD finally chose the first 8-core 16-thread Ryzen™ 7 5800X3D.
Let's take a look at the structural details of the 3D V-Cache. As shown in the figure, the 64MB cache Die added by the Ryzen 7 5800X3D is superimposed on the top center of the ZEN3 CCD chip, with an area of 41mm2, while one of the CCD areas of the ZEN3 is 81mm2, so what about the vacated positions on both sides? Of course, it cannot be filled directly with thermal media. AMD adopts the method of adding structural Die, and fills two pieces of "structural silicon" on both sides of the cache Die to ensure that the heat of the CCD can be normally transferred to the metal top cover, thereby ensuring the heat dissipation effect. Therefore, the packaging method of 3D stacking not only ensures a perfect connection with the underlying chip, but also can adapt to various sizes of chips.
In addition, the cache Die superimposed on the CCD chip is connected to the CCD chip through AMD's hybrid bonding technology (using copper direct bonding), compared with the traditional C4 and Micro Bump (micro-bump, Intel technology) method, the pin spacing of the hybrid bonding is smaller, from 130 microns to 50 microns to 9 microns of the hybrid bonding, the increase is obvious, and the energy consumption per signal is less than 1/3 of the Micro Bump, which is very beneficial to the power control of the cache. This is also one of the important reasons why the TDP remains 105W after the Ryzen 7 5800X3D adds 64MB of L3 cache. In particular, it is worth mentioning that the biggest difficulty of hybrid bonding technology is the pin alignment between stacked chips, and it is clear that AMD has solved this problem and continues to lead in chip process.
There may be players who are worried about stacking such a large amount of cache, will it cause the Ryzen™ 7 5800X3D to have a heat accumulation problem? In response to this, you can find the answer from the test content later. Next, let's take a look at the real thing of the Ryzen™ 7 5800X3D.
The Ryzen™ 7 5800X3D is perfectly compatible with the full line of AM4 motherboards, and players can upgrade without pressure
The number on the top cover of our Ryzen 7 5800X3D indicates that it is shipped in Week 2 of 2022, and it seems that AMD has long been ready for this game "Big Killer". From the outside, the Ryzen™ 7 5800X3D is exactly the same as the other Ryzen™ 5000, and the top cover height and size are the same, so there is no need to worry about the compatibility of existing radiators. Of course, like the Ryzen 7 5800X, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D does not offer an original radiator. From the CPU-Z information, in addition to the Ryzen™ 7 5800X3D in addition to the level three cache increased to 96MB, the base frequency and acceleration frequency are also lowered by 400MHz and 200MHz compared to the Ryzen 7 5800X, which is obviously an adjustment made to maintain 105W TDP. However, since AMD dares to adjust it in this way, it also proves that the impact of this frequency on game performance is insignificant in front of the game performance benefits of the 96MB super tertiary cache, but it can better control power consumption and heat generation.
In terms of motherboard compatibility, AMD announced that AM4 motherboards from the 300 series to the 500 series can support the Ryzen™ 5000 full line of products after upgrading the BIOS (supporting agesA V2 PI version 1.2.0.6b), including the Ryzen™ 7 5800X3D. This can be said to be very thick, still using the old users of the first two or three generations of Ryzen, as long as the motherboard power supply can keep up, upgrading the Ryzen 7 5800X3D can be said to be no pressure.
And for the motherboard aspect of the test platform, we chose the ASUS ROG STRIX X570-E GAMING WIFI II. The motherboard provides 12+4 sets of digital power supply, equipped with solid pin ProCool II. high-strength power supply interface, using a 6-layer PCB with better interference immunity and heat dissipation. Such powerful electrical performance makes it easy to hold any Ryzen™ 5000 processor, and the 105W TDP Ryzen™ 7 5800X3D is naturally not a problem. In terms of heat dissipation, the ROG STRIX X570-E GAMING WIFI II is not only equipped with thick VRM cooling armor, but also the two VRM heat sinks are connected through L-shaped heat pipes to achieve better overall heat dissipation efficiency.
In the memory section, the motherboard supports ASUS's exclusive Optimem III memory optimization technology, which optimizes memory cabling, improves memory compatibility and overclocking space, so it can support DDR4 4400+ stably. The motherboard also offers dual PCIe 4.0×4 M.2 slots and thermal armor for players to use high-speed SSDs stably. In the network part, WiFi 6E wireless network card and 2.5Gbps wired network card are provided to meet the needs of high-speed and stable data transmission in various network environments, and the e-sports online game battle is also more smooth without Caton.
Next is the performance measurement part that everyone cares about the most, let's witness the strength of the strongest game U.
Game Practice:
The Ryzen™ 7 5800X3D is up to 23% better than the Core i9 12900K!
Test platform
Processor: Ryzen™ 7 5800X3D
Core i9 12900K
Radiator: NZXT Z73
Motherboard: ROG STRIX X570-E GAMING WIFI II.
Z690
Memory: XPG DDR4 3600 8GB×2
Chichi DDR5 5200 8GB×2
Graphics: RTX 3090 Ti water-cooled version
Hard Disk: WD_BLACK SN850 2TB
Power supply: ROG Thor 1200W
Operating system: Windows 11 Pro
Used to compare with the Ryzen™ 7 5800X3D is of course Intel's strongest game U Core i9 12900K, both platforms unlock the default power wall, unified with RTX 3090 Ti graphics card, while the game is set to 1080P / maximum image quality to reduce the graphics card burden, fully reflecting the processor's impact on the game frame rate.
Let's take a look at the actual tests of 6 AAA games with built-in Benchmark. The performance of Ryzen 7 5800X3D can be said to be quite eye-catching, 6 AAA masterpieces have 5 models leading 1 draw, of which "Tomb Raider: Shadow" actually led by as much as 15%, and both the lowest frame rate and the highest frame rate have achieved a significant surpass, originally we thought that the highest frequency 5.2GHz Core i9 12900K has been very strong, Ryzen™ 7 5800X3D can be a victory, did not expect Ryzen 7 The 5800X3D's 96MB super L3 cache gave us a big surprise. "Watchdog: Legion", "Assassin's Creed: Temple of Heroes", "Cyberpunk 2077", "Red Dead Redemption 2" several masterpieces, Ryzen 7 5800X3D also maintained a leading state, although the amplitude is not large, but the overall lead is also more telling.
Looking at the actual measurements of all 13 games, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D in DOTA2 is also quite amazing, up to 23%! This is almost equal to the improvement brought about by the two grades of graphics card upgrades, which is really powerful. "Monster Hunter: World", "World of Warcraft: Shadowland", "Final Fantasy XIV" in the Ryzen 7 5800X3D advantage has also reached more than 10%, the highest 18%, it is obvious that this time the Ryzen 7 5800X3D can be said to win very crisply and neatly.
Combining the test results of 13 games, the Ryzen™ 7 5800X3D is on average about 5% ahead of the Core i9 12900K, and the officially announced data is almost the same, it seems that AMD is not bragging, and the title of the strongest game U of the Ryzen™ 7 5800X3D can be said to be well deserved. In addition, tests have also shown that the ultra-large L3 cache provided by 3D V-Cache technology is indeed more suitable for most AAA games than pure high frequency, and the era of playing frequency as king has officially come to an end.
However, there may be players who have doubts, since the performance of the Ryzen 7 5800X3D game is stronger than the more expensive U such as the Ryzen 9 5900X and the Core i9 12900K, then these high-end U are not meaningless? This statement is not correct, please note that AMD to the Ryzen™ 7 5800X3D positioning is the "strongest game U", the specifications of the 8-core 16 thread are obviously designed for the current game needs, and the pursuit of more productive users, more core, higher frequency Ryzen™ 9 5900X and even Ryzen™ 9 5950X are significantly more suitable.
There are surprises in power consumption, the Ryzen™ 7 5800X3D is still the most energy-efficient and strongest game U!
From the Cinebench R23 test machine (full core full load frequency of 4.35GHz ~ 4.375GHz) situation, even if the addition of 64MB of large tertiary cache, the power consumption and temperature of the Ryzen 7 5800X3D have not "exploded" as everyone feared, less than 130W full load peak PPT power and less than 82 ° C peak temperature is even lower than the Ryzen 7 5800X (ambient temperature 26 ° C)! At the same time, we also saw that the L3 temperature monitored by HWINFO was up to 46.5 °C, which showed that the temperature of the 3D V-Cache cache machine was not high.
It seems that the impact of cache capacity on power consumption and temperature is indeed much smaller than frequency (of course, the hybrid bonding process used by 3D V-Cache is also indispensable), which is one of the important reasons why AMD chose to increase the cache capacity to improve CPU game performance.
Another change of the Ryzen™ 7 5800X3D is the removal of the processor overclocking function, which we have also verified. Enter the motherboard BIOS to look carefully, the PBO option is gone, but the multiplier adjustment item is still there. We tried to manually adjust to 47 times the frequency, you can boot normally, running the CPU-Z test showed that the highest frequency is still about 4.5 GHz, the running score has not changed, it seems that the multiplier is indeed locked.
However, although the Ryzen 7 5800X3D cannot be overclocked, it still supports lowering the voltage to reduce power and heat generation. Measured manually lowered the core voltage of 0.075V, the full load power dropped by about 10W, and the peak temperature of the R23 test machine was also reduced to 80 °C. Interested players can also tap the potential of a drop voltage when they get U.
Overall, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D in the case of the addition of 64MB of L3 cache, the full load power and temperature are lower than the Ryzen 7 5800X, which is indeed a bit surprising, it can be seen that 3D V-Cache technology has indeed been quite mature, it is entirely possible to popularize on future AMD processors. In contrast, the Core i9 12900K full load power of up to 200W or more, the game performance is not as good as the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, so the Ryzen 7 5800X3D is not only the strongest game U, but also the most energy-saving strongest game U is no problem.
summary:
The process performance is fully ahead of the Core i9 12900K, and the Ryzen™ 7 5800X3D is firmly on the throne of "the strongest U in the game"
Finally, let's sum it up. The Ryzen™ 7 5800X3D, the first desktop processor to feature AMD 3D V-Cache technology, did achieve the average game frame rate claimed at the conference to be about 5% higher than the Core i9 12900K, and some game advantages were even as high as 23%, while the full load power and temperature were even lower than the Ryzen™ 7 5800X. The 8-core 16-threaded game U specification that specializes in games makes its full load power half lower than 12900K, which is not only the current "strongest game U", but also the most energy-saving "strongest game U".
Of course, don't forget that AMD gives Ryzen 7 5800X3D positioning is "game specialization", most of the current productivity software has not been optimized for the ultra-large tertiary cache (3D V-Cache technology can be said to be the trend of the future development of the processor, so it is not excluded that various productivity software in the future is optimized for large caches), so at present, for designer users, the core of more Ryzen™ 9 5900X and Ryzen™ 9 5950X is more suitable.
Therefore, the Ryzen 5000 family now has two types of "specialized" product positioning, gamers and designers take what they need, the pursuit of top game performance of the enthusiast level players to buy Ryzen™ 7 5800X3D, the pursuit of extreme productivity can choose Ryzen™ 9 5900X/5950X. As can be seen from the previous table, under the premise of providing the strongest game performance at present, the price of the Ryzen 7 5800X3D machine is more than 3200 yuan compared to the Core i9 12900K, and players can also use this budget to upgrade high-end e-sports monitors, large-capacity memory hard disks and so on, to get a better gaming experience.
Based on the above analysis and testing, it can be seen that whether it is from the manufacturing process, the architecture of the game specialization or from the perspective of practical performance and cost performance, the Ryzen™ 7 5800X3D has achieved a significant lead over the Core i9 12900K, with an advantage of up to 20% or more, and the title of the strongest game U is well deserved, and it is the best choice for top fever gamers. With the support of highly scalable technology such as 3D V-Cache, we have reason to believe that the future Ryzen processor will continue to maintain its advantage in terms of game performance and become the first choice for more enthusiast gamers.