AMD’s 3D V-Cache Technology: Exploring the Differences Between the 7800x3D vs 7900x3D vs Ryzen 9 7900X vs Ryzen 7 7700x

What is 3D V-cache?

AMD’s 3D V-cache is a technology that allows AMD to place additional cache directly onto the CPU die. You can think of this as an extra bit of ultra-fast memory that the CPU can access faster than the system memory. As a result, computational processes that benefit from quick memory access, such as integer math, are greatly expedited.

Pros and cons of AMD’s 3D V-Cache technology and what it means for future CPU designs?

These CPUs are not without their caveats, though. One catch is that due to the presence of V-Cache, the CPU cores will run at a lower speed than the non-cached counterparts by 3-400mhz (this is not reflected in the official ratings for the 7900x3D and 7950x3D as non-cached cores are present). So, in instances where the cache is not netting benefits, a performance loss can be observed.

Another thing to be mindful of with the design of these CPUs is that the 7900x3D and 7950x3D options do not have V-cache directly attached to all cores. Instead, the cache is located over a single CCD of 8 cores; beyond that, there is a latency penalty in heavily multithreaded tasks where one CCD has to talk to the other.

Cinebench AMD Ryzen 9 7900x3D vs 7900x vs AMD Ryzen 7 7800x3D vs 7700x Benchmarks

As demonstrated by Cinebench, when dealing with complex rendering calculations, the cache does not make up for the lack of clock speed as the system memory needs to be accessed for most of the work, so the lower clock speeds on the 3D counterparts are readily observable in the scores.

Metro Exodus Benchmarks AMD Ryzen 9 7900x3D vs 7900x vs AMD Ryzen 7 7800x3D vs 7700x

However, for those who use their systems primarily for gaming or simple repetitive calculations, you will see the benefit shown in this Metro Exodus benchmark. There is a penalty to the 12-core models as the game is better optimized for 8 cores. This is also the case in many titles, so choosing a model with v-cache above the 7800x3d is a tradeoff to having more cores.

The importance of considering your specific usage needs when choosing between V-Cache and non-V-Cache CPUs

AMD is in the early stages of this technology, so there are many give-and-take scenarios. For those who exclusive game on their gaming PCs, the 7800x3D is the best CPU available on the market. For other mixed scenarios, such as gaming and streaming or workstation PC use-cases, it’s going to depend more on what you want to see out of your PC.

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