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The chipset drivers also install the AMD PPM Provisioning File Driver, which improves performance by parking the slowest cores when Game Mode or Mixed Reality Mode is active. In effect, this shuts down the ‘standard’ CCD when Game Mode or Mixed Reality Mode is active, thus constraining latency-sensitive workloads (like games) to the 3D V-Cache chiplet. This improves the cache hit rate and reduces high-latency communication between the two CCDs, resulting in faster performance for workloads that don’t need access to (or benefit from) all the cores. In terms of power draw, the minimum I recorded for the 13900K is a meager 2.882W, and it could hover around this for hours if you're not using your computer thanks to its energy-efficient hybrid-core design. Meanwhile, the 7950X3D is still slurping up just over eight times as much power as a baseline. If the software detects a certain high level of thread utilisation, however, it will spin up that dormant chiplet and bring it online if its extra core count is needed. And this test highlights that even at 1440p the extra L3 cache of the 7950X3D tangibly makes a difference to the gaming performance of the system at the highest graphical presets. But, as always, at 4K it's all about the GPU. Metro is the only benchmark that displays some difference between the three chips attached to the RTX 4090, and then that's more down to some vagaries in optimisation and drivers.
The compromise of that asymmetrical chiplet design, however, become obvious when you start to look at the raw CPU performance in more dedicated productivity tasks. Looking at the rendering benchmarks it's regularly behind both competing chips. However, the efficiency gains are clear even when you're maxing out the traditional CPU cores. AMD’s decision to add extra cache to only one of these chips is somewhat unconventional, as the two CCXs will have different performance characteristics as a result, but there’s a logical reason behind it. The added cache chip and its position on top of one of the CCXs introduce power and heat considerations to the CPU that didn’t exist before. PlaneInTheSky said:The cons just weigh too heavy for me to even consider the CPU or the AM5 platform.
Testing the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D: Cache Writes Checks It Can't Cash
The fact performance of X3D CPU is all over the place bothers me too. Yes it's fast in -some- games, but then you get less overall performance in several important applications. If I just used my PC for gaming, I would have bought a console, I don't like the idea of having to make a trade-off with X3D CPU. AMD’s new thread management technique requires Windows 10 (1903) or 11 (21H2) and four components — a new chipset driver, updated BIOS, Windows Game Mode, and an updated version of the Xbox Game Bar (you can update through the Microsoft Apps store). If the CPU utilisation gets high enough, you may find that one or more cores on the inactive CCD wake up and become active and begin work. This is normal and expected and exactly how the CPU is designed. It offers extra performance vs keeping highly utilised cores to one CCD, which is what happens to those poor folks using Process Lasso. People that advocate for apps like Process Lasso often think this is a bug and it hurts performance, it doesn't, It helps performance. Thoroughly tested on a 4090 and a 7900 XTX over many games and settings. Editors' Note, March 2, 2023: Some scrutiny by Tom's Hardware scrutiny by Tom's Hardware and online commenters pointed out that our integrated graphics (IGP) testing numbers for the earlier Ryzen 9 7950X chip were unnaturally low; this was likely due to early-driver issues that only became evident with this review of the 7950X3D, and made the 7950X3D's IGP look like a leap forward by comparison. We have retested the Ryzen 9 7950X and updated the numbers in the IGP testing table here and in that original review, and made minor tweaks to this article's intro and IGP Testing section to reflect the new numbers. We'll also be retesting the IGPs on the Ryzen 7 7700 and 7700X in the coming days. The original, fundamental conclusions we made about this chip, though, have not changed.]
I also tried the tool CapFrameX. This tool allows you to override the default behaviour and you select the CCD to use yourself, you can even switch between them in games. This is basically a simpler version of process lasso. Every time I changed the default behaviour, performance dropped, sometimes significantly. This tells you that things are working so stop messing around. But the end result isn't quite the AMD line of "one processor can do it all." The Ryzen 9 7950X3D is an expensive gaming processor that falls just a little short of its now-cheaper 16-core forebear when it comes to specifically CPU-intensive tasks even if it can demonstrably top it in the gaming frame rate stakes. Cache is simply a very direct form of working memory that the processor keeps close by for instructions and data that it is using at that very moment. The more cache a processor has, the fewer trips to RAM it needs to make for data or instructions, which greatly improves performance for many common tasks. Generally, more cache is better, and the 7950X3D has more cache than any consumer processor available today. Just upgraded to a 7950X3D and was wondering how you guys have setup the OS and Chip to get the most out of it? The Ryzen 9 7950X3D pretty much matches the 7950X in Blender and Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere tests, though it lags a bit in VRay 5 (though not by that much). Where it really shines though is with HandBrake 1.6. This is one of the creative tests we use where we get to measure it's true real-world performance on a creative workload, especially one that is highly CPU dependent.The 16-core processor that can do it all with incredible performance from AMD for the most demanding gamers and creators. Plus, enjoy the benefits of next-gen AMD 3D V-Cache™ technology for low latency and even more game performance. Starting with the Ryzen 7000 series, AMD began adding low-power IGPs to all of its Ryzen desktop processors. (Before, it was limited to the subset known as the G-series.) But this has been a bittersweet change since its introduction. The heat produced by the 3D V-Cache forced AMD to lower the max operating temperature of the processor from 95 degrees C on the Ryzen 9 7950X to 89 degrees C on the Ryzen 9 7950X3D. A corresponding reduction in thermal design power (TDP) rating also occurred, with the Ryzen 9 7950X having a 170-watt (W) TDP and the Ryzen 9 7950X3D having a 120W TDP.
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