Review: AMD Ryzen 7800X3D is the cheapest way to get the most out of a $1,500 GPU

If you were intrigued by the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D but didn’t want to spend $700 on a processor, the $450 Ryzen 7 7800X3D could be the chip you’ve been waiting for.

Like the more expensive X3D chips, the 7800X3D is a regular Zen 4 processor with an extra 64MB of L3 cache on top of it. This extra cache isn’t always helpful, but it does tend to improve gaming performance, and AMD sells the X3D series mainly to PC gamers who are looking for a processor to pair with high-end GPUs like the GeForce RTX 4090 and Radeon RX 7900 XTX.

All X3D chips have trade-offs, mostly in the form of lower clock speeds and less flexible overclocking support. But if you’re mainly into gaming, the good news is that the 7800X3D runs just as well with them as the more expensive 7950X3D for less money, and it doesn’t generate too much heat or consume too much power.

People building a mid-range gaming PC should continue to save money with a cheaper processor and spend more on a GPU instead, and anyone using an AM4 socket system should still consider upgrading the processor before moving to a completely new platform. But if you’re trying to build a new high-end PC with a top-end GPU, the 7800X3D is probably the cheapest way to make sure you let that graphics card shine.

Price comparison

The 780X3D is priced at $449 (assuming you can find it in stock at that price) and could be described as “upper mid-range”or perhaps “low end high”. That’s a lot more than the $200-$250 you’d pay for a very good all-round processor like the Ryzen 5700/5800 series or any number of 12th and 13th Gen Core i5 chips, but still less than the top competitors. like Ryzen 9 7950X or Core i9-13900K.

Its price directly competes with processors such as the 16-core (8P/8E) Core i7-13700K or the 12-core Ryzen 9 7900 (note the lack of X). Both of these chips provide better performance in work, which benefits from a large number of CPU cores, but neither is as good in games.