They sell everything they put into laptops, in that market they can’t keep up with demand. Similar story for enterprise.
In the DIY desktop market, which this article is about, It’s been instilled into everyone to wait for the X3D chips, by basically every reviewer. And for good reason.
Certainly doesn’t help that:
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a Windows 11 bug made performance look over 10% worse than it actually was on release, which is when all benchmarks are done and opinions are set (E: btw this has been fixed, and the fix also helped older CPUs too)
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AMD decided to massively lower energy usage at the expense of out-of-box performance (I actually love this decision, I’m sick of components getting more and more power-hungry, and I’m sick of a hot stuffy room. Most gaming-focussed reviewers hated it though, which bugged me tbh because they also moan when power usage is high. I think they just like being negative because it drives engagement). At previous-gen TDPs, Zen 5 gains a lot of performance, but that’s not how they are benchmarked.
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the price of Zen 4 has dropped, and the 7800X3D in particular looks compelling to those who might’ve wanted Zen 5.
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most DIY PC builders are PC gamers, and what do we need new CPUs for? Most gamers are more GPU bottlenecked right now, especially as people are moving to 1440p, 1440p ultrawide, or 4K. Add to that the fact that there have been very few good PC game releases this year and of course we’re in a slump.
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the only people who can buy a Zen5 CPU and drop it in their machine easily are Zen4 users, who won’t see a large uplift and likely won’t bother. People with earlier systems are looking at a significant investment - new motherboard and DDR5 RAM, why bother with that when the 5700X3D is such an insanely good value proposition that still won’t be bottlenecked unless you’re running an insanely good GPU?
the price of Zen 4 has dropped, and the 7800X3D in particular looks compelling to those who might’ve wanted Zen 5.
This is the big one.
Literally the best gaming chip from any company is a Zen 4 and surprisingly cheap
For most people they won’t need anything more than a 7800x3d for 5 maybe even 10 years?
I’d hate to say what GPU it takes to make cpu the bottleneck on one of those.
Agreed, I bought a 7950X3D over the 9950X as it was $150 cheaper. Seemed like the smarter move.
For most people they won’t need anything more than a 7800x3d for 5 maybe even 10 years?
I know from experience, it is very difficult to get 10 years of gaming out of a processor. I’m a pretty frugal guy, and I’m actually ok with merely “acceptable” gaming performance, but I think the most I’ve ever managed was 8 years on the same processor, and that was with the core 2 duo. I called it the super chip, the chip that stayed competitive even when multiple new architectures were available. And honestly, 8 years was really pretty good. But when I switched to a quad core i5, it was definitely a necessary change.
The Phenom 2?!
I barely remember it, but yeah, it was a beast.
But my 1700x went hard for five years. The only reason I tacked the extra 5 on was x3d changes things up.
Now, since I’ve made that comment AMD has solved the Zen 5 latency issues but cutting it by more than half. That’s what was holding it back. So when the Zen 5 x3d comes out, it’s going to be nuts.
But…
It’s going to take a while for those changes to become industry standard. It might be a year before Zen 5 x3d, I’m not sure if they’ve even announced when. So games won’t take full advantage of them right away.
It takes like a 4070 super to CPU bound a 7800x3d, and fine tune some settings and it’ll balance out
We’re not going to have a new screen resolution jump, and that combo can max out 4k 120fps on pretty much anything thanks to frame generation without even touching upscaling.
There’s just not a lot to improve until we see a major jump like VR finally taking off.
100%, it’s the lack of the X3D parts. Zen 5 on its own is compelling but not for gamers and DIY, would I buy it in a pre-built desktop or a business machine, Yes I would all day long. But if I’m gaming and there’s no X3D part why would I get anything else other than a 7800 X3D. AMD really shot themselves in the foot and what’s worse is we warned them it was coming yet they chose not to listen.
Let me agree with you explicitly on loving the return to a sane power configuration here. I was watching Hardware Unboxed’s retest of this after the patches and it takes almost fifteen minutes of them reiterating that the 9700X and the 14700K are tied for performance and price before they even mention the bombshell that the 9700X is doing that with about half the wattage.
The fact that we keep pushing reviews and benchmarks focused strictly on pedal-to-the-metal overclocked performance and nothing else is such a disgrace. I made the mistake to buy into a 13700K and I have it under lower than out of box power limits manually both to prevent longevity issues and because this damn computer is more effective as a hair dryer than anything else.
We don’t mention it much because Intel was in the process of catching on actual fire at the same time, but the way this generation has been marketed, presented to reviewers, supported and eventually reviewed has been a massive trainwreck, considering the performance of the actual product.
I just wrote a reply to this post as well, where I wrote that I’m going to upgrade my CPU soon but I’m probably going to get a Zen 4 X3D because they’re faster than a Zen 5 CPU but based on what you wrote, should I change my decision? They’re a good bit cheaper and without that Windows bug (I use Linux anyway) and if I overclock it to the TDP of the Zen 4 X3Ds, might they be faster after all? I saw something about that Windows bug and that they run at a lower TDP out of the box but I didn’t find anything about how they run now and if you can overclock them since there’s more headroom.
Edit: Also to just give a little context, I’m currently running a Ryzen 5 3600 with 16 gigs of DDR4 RAM but since I need to get a new mainboard and RAM anyway, I’m upgrading to 32 gigs of DDR5 RAM
If you’re gaming tbh I’d rather go with Zen4X3D or if you really want to, wait for Zen5X3D. Standard Zen5 isn’t really worth it considering the dropping of Zen4 prices IMO
Even with the performance boost of turning up the TDP, you’re looking at pretty similar performance to the X3D chips, and in some games that really love cache, still a decent amount worse
I also just upgraded from a 3600, but I did it to a 5700X3D, because it barely cost anything and only required dropping in a new CPU
Standard Zen5 isn’t really worth it considering the dropping of Zen4 prices IMO
Unless you’re like me and upgrading from something quite old like an i5-6600k. I switched to a R5 7600 for now that’s at least on the AM5 and was less than 200 so I have a lot of upgrade paths later on when I have more funding (blew my entire budget on a 4080 LOLOL)
Still miles better than the i5/1060 setup I had lmao
Yeah I’m still on my 5950X and it’s an absolute champ in terms of CPU load. Its second incarnation when I eventually upgrade is going to be a proxmox box.
My 3080 FE is starting to choke though… starting to get stutters and freezing and framedrops, and once in a while a full system lockup when I’m in Forza Motorsport… thinking of doing a coppermod to see if that addresses it, but I’m worried the GDDR may have just had to put up with too much heatsoak and might be going out :(
I’m still on my Zen1 1600, with DDR4 RAM and RX580 8GB which I built back in 2018. Whenever I’m thinking of upgrading I just look at the prices. I’d basically need to upgrade everything, maybe aside from GPU which would become a giant bottleneck, so it should be upgraded as well.
I really don’t even want to think about gutting my PC and upgrading, I’d much rather switch to a console.
You could chuck a 57 or 5800X3D up in there for a substantial boost if your board vendor offers BIOS support.
even a 5600 would be a massive leap for about $100. Add something like a used 6600XT or a 3060 and you’ll be back at current gen gaming at around $300€ total.
I wouldn’t say nobody, but most people with a working Zen 4 don’t see the need.
And they’re the only people who can easily do it.
Anybody else needs a new motherboard and RAM. And for those people, they’re like “hmmm I can spend $700+ upgrading to Zen5, or I could spend $180 on a 5700X3D, not have to pull my entire PC apart, and get about the same real-world performance because I’ll be GPU bottlenecked anyway.”
I’m still using a i7-3630QM and a R5-1600.
They are both enough for what I do with them. Why would I upgrade?
What are you using your computer for?? Just web browsing or something‽ I just upgraded from an i5-6600k/1060 setup and for like the past year and some change I’ve been hitting 100% CPU usage with just a few programs open, not even gaming lol
And that was with a CPU 3 generations newer lmao
Gaming, working (data processing, physical modelling).
The trick is to use a lower overhead OS than Windows.
Gaming is one thing, a lot is GPU bound anyways, probably the same with “physical modeling”
But you cannot tell me your “data processing” would not be greatly sped up by using a newer proc (assuming it’s not also GPU bound). Does it work, sure, but if it takes you 2 hours for it to process now but <30 minutes on something newer that’s just a waste of time, resources and money. It’s incredibly inefficient.
On the flip side, if all your work is GPU bound no wonder a 3rd gen proc from 2012 is keeping up lol
Sounds like some bad software or something extra CPU intensive then. I use R5 2600 on W11 and it can handle everything I need with ease like web browsing (depending on pages and tab count it can be quite demanding), at least 3 VMs at the same time (2 Windows, 1 Linux), gaming, video transcoding. All that is not happening at the same time, but I can’t remember last time I checked Task Manager to see what is using my CPU.
The R5 2600 is not only newer than my old i5 and faster, it also has a LOT more threads (12 vs 4) and an extra 2 full cores
Making it excellent for the multi threaded workloads (VMs) and leaving room for non-multithreaded optimized workloads
I have an RTSP client program running all the time displaying a handful of camera feeds. It had a ~45-55% average CPU usage even with GPU decoding/encoding enabled on it.
That same piece of software on my much newer 7600 changing absolutely nothing else software wise (I just dropped in the SSD from my old build) that same software barely cracks 5%
iCUE (for Corsair RGB control (yes I know there’s open source versions I just never got around to it lol)) had a similar story with ~30-40% before and barely 4% now
Let’s see… seems like i can upgrade my Asus PRIME X70-A to a Ryzen 9 5950X for about 300€… interesting…
The 5950X is now pretty midrange when it comes to some desktop benchmarks, but mine is still serving me well and I don’t feel I’m hitting the limits of the CPU. If I were shopping now I’d certainly find that price appealing for what it offers. I’m not considering Intel these days, but the price premium on latest-generation AMD CPUs is high.
It’s one of the latest my mobo can handle AFAIK, and i like to maximize my hardware for longevity (one of the reasons i prefer AMD over Intel, their CPU generations span multiple sockets).
Also, not a gamer.
Yes, I went up to a 5950x a while back from a 3600 for the same reason: it was the best CPU I could get without upgrading motherboard and RAM. And I hardly ever play games. Looking at the performance benchmarks it seems the X3D stuff actually slows down non-gaming workloads a bit (perhaps because it increases temperatures), so I don’t feel the need to chase after that tech.
I thought about an upgrade for a minute from my 3700X, but I realized none of the games I play or programs I use are demanding on CPU enough that it would make any real difference in my experience.
Games have kind of stalled out for me too, I haven’t played a AAA game in years it feels like, and the other games I do play are not that demanding on modern hardware.
I would also need to upgrade to DDR5 RAM which is just more cost for a marginal upgrade.
I’m in the same boat.
Have the 3600 with a 1050ti (!), and its does a good job when I play the 2-3 games I like to play. 32gb for my apps and docker containers. Plenty.
I see no reason to upgrade.
It has always been like this for me. Sticked to a platform until it died and never upgraded (OK ram maybe) until I was forced to.
Same here. I have a 3600X with 32GB RAM and a 3070ti. I see no sense in upgrading for a performance boost that I have no need for. I mostly play indie games and AA Titles. And even graphically heavier hitters like Space Marine 2, Wukong and The First Descendant run fine on 3440x1440.
Before Playstation 6 and Xbox Series X MK. 2 Y Type Z (or whatever MS will name that) i don’t think there will be a significant need to upgrade.
Most of the flag ship titles of this generation run perfectly playable on most mid tier gaming PCs and laptops. And the PC handheld market is also cutting into the traditional PC gamer market as well. Things like the steam deck, legion go or ally x all have taken away a share of people that would have usually bought an upgrade by now.
