AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X3D giving gamers on AM4 a great upgrade option
Published: 12th April 2022 | Source: Xanxo Gaming | Author: Mark Campbell
An early review of AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X3D has been published
Xanxo Gaming has managed to acquire an early sample of AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X3D processor, allowing them to showcase the CPU's gaming performance across several popular titles. These benchmarks put AMD's new gaming flagship against Intel's i9-12900KF, both of which are using a 4x8GB kit of 3200MHz CL14 DDR4 memory.
Below, we have included some of Xanxo Gaming's results, though more benchmarks are available on their websites. Below, we will highlight some of their 720p gaming benchmarks, as these tests are the most CPU-limited. While no modern gamer is likely to game at 720p, these tests lower the GPU overhead of games as much as possible to ensure that these benchmarks are strictly CPU benchmarks. After all, what point is there in benchmarking a CPU using an application that is GPU limited.
The benchmarks below were tested using an Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition.
Game-by-game variance
While AMD and Intel both create x86 processors, their core architectures are very different. It is hard to create a CPU that wins in all areas, and in today's competitive market, there are areas where AMD are strong and areas where Intel is ahead. When it comes to gaming workloads, every game has a different performance profile and requirements. That means that there will be some games that prefer Intel, and others that prefer AMD.
With Assassin's Creed Origins, both AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X3D and Intel's i9-12900KF deliver similar performance. AMD's CPU achieves higher average framerates, and both CPUs have similar 1% lows.
In Borderlands 3, AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X3D is slightly ahead of Intel, with marginally higher average framerates and notably higher 1st percentile framerates. Based on these results, gamers should not notice any difference in Borderlands 3 when moving from Intel to AMD.
Control is the first game where AMD moves ahead of Intel, with AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X3D delivering much higher 1st percentile framerates. While both processors achieve similar average framerates, AMD's processor experiences smaller performance dips. As such, AMD's performance can be seen as more consistent.
In Death Stranding, AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X3D is able to sit comfortably ahead of its Intel rival. Even so, AMD's lead is relatively small. That said, a win is a win, and AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X3D is ahead here.
In Middle Earth: Shadow of War, AMD's new Ryzen processor is once again ahead of its Alder Lake rival. Average framerates jump from 219 FPS to 246 FPS when moving from Intel's i9-12900KF to AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X3D. 1st percentile framerates are also an area where AMD is ahead.
Lastly with The Witcher 3 we can see a huge lead for AMD. AMD's 1st percentile framerates here are ahead of Intel's average framerate. This is a game that loves AMD's V-Cache technology, and is certainly an outlier when compared to the results above.
If you look at all of Xanox Gaming's benchmarks, you will see that there are some games where Intel comes out ahead. While the Ryzen 7 5800X3D is a strong gaming processor, Alder Lake remains a strong challenger. There are some games that will prefer one architecture, and some that will prefer the other. As such, there is no "best gaming processor" for all workloads.
Regarding memory
One thing that's worth noting here is that neither AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X3D or Intel's i9-12900KF are tested using an ideal memory configuration. Both processors could be tested using faster DDR4 memory modules, and Intel's i9-12900KF could have been tested using DDR5 memory. The tests above are apples-to-apples comparisons using the fastest DDR4 modules that both processors officially supports, with DDR4-3200 memory being the fastest DDR4 memory modules that are supported by both CPUs without being considered "overclocking" by AMD or Intel. In time, we expect other reviewers to conduct testing using both of these processors using faster DRAM configurations.
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