The gaming world is waiting with bated breath for the release of AMD’s Zen 4 V-Cache CPUs. The company has announced three high-end models, with the first two going on sale on Feb. 28 and reviews landing the day before. It’s launching the 16-core and 12-core SKUs first, with the eight-core model arriving in April. Although the flagship 7950X3D sports 32 threads with 144MB of combined L2 and L3 cache, it’s now rumored to be slower in some applications than the eight-core CPU with 16 threads.
The heart of the issue is that on AMD’s dual-CCD CPUs, the V-Cache is only on top of one CCD. Because of the extra heat the V-Cache generates, the two dies run at different frequencies. We know the CCD without the V-Cache will boost to 5.7GHz, the same clock speed as the regular 7950X. However, we don’t know the maximum frequency of the CCD with V-Cache. According to AMD, single-threaded apps that benefit from higher clock speeds and don’t need that extra cache will run on the regular CCD. Other apps, such as games, will run on the V-Cache die.
It’s rumored the V-Cache die will top out somewhere around 5GHz or so, but nobody knows for sure. Now reputable Twitter leaker 9550pro is reporting the V-Cache CCD frequency will be higher on the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. This seems plausible only because AMD is releasing it two months after the more expensive CPUs. Also, the 7800X3D is a 120W CPU, which is the same TDP as the 7950X3D despite having twice as many cores and threads. As Tom’s Hardware notes, earlier leaked benchmarks showed the 7950X3D as slower in Blender and Geekbench than the regular 7950X. That could be due to the V-Cache CCD running lower clocks.
If this pans out, it could disappoint enthusiasts hoping to crush every benchmark with a 16-core V-Cache CPU. The flagship 7950X3D is seen as the holy grail of CPU specs, with a ton of cores and a ton of cache. That’s a departure from the previous entry in the series; the eight-core Ryzen 7 5800X3D. Although that CPU is certainly a bang-for-the-buck legend, its lower core count left some hardcore users pining for more of everything. AMD will deliver it soon, but if the less-expensive 7800X3D ends up being faster overall, it would be a surprising development.
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