AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800X3D processor is well-known for offering a sharp upgrade to gaming performance over all other CPUs compatible with the company’s now defunct AM4 motherboard platform. These days the processor costs around £290, but today the price has dipped to £271 – making it a good time to get that final CPU upgrade for your Ryzen 1000-5000 system.

The 5800X3D ranks alongside the Core i9 12900K as one of the best CPUs that can be paired with DDR4 memory, and even manages to compete with lower-tier Ryzen 7000 and 13th/14th-gen Intel CPUs paired with DDR5. These newer platforms offer a higher performance ceiling, of course, but for the money this is still an excellent value upgrade when it comes to gaming performance.

This is thanks to the 3D V-Cache design signified by the ‘X3D’ suffix on the CPU’s name. Essentially AMD stacked multiple levels of L3 cache on the CPU, tripling its size. This boosts performance in many games as the CPU can keep more data internally, cutting out time that it would otherwise have to wait for data to be fetched from RAM. This is particularly prominent in simulation games like Flight Simulator 2020 or Factorio, where the speed-up compared to the otherwise similar Ryzen 5800X is substantial.

However, note that the 5800X3D isn’t the zenith of AM4 for content creation workloads, where the higher core/thread counts and higher frequencies of the 5900X and 5950X result in much better performance than the 5800X3D overall. If you’re looking for a machine for video editing or 3D rendering then, it can make sense to opt for one of these higher core count AM4 options instead.

I think that just about does it for now, but feel free to share your comments below and have a wonderful day.