They sell everything they put into laptops, in that market they can’t keep up with demand. Similar story for enterprise.
In the DIY desktop market, which this article is about, It’s been instilled into everyone to wait for the X3D chips, by basically every reviewer. And for good reason.
Certainly doesn’t help that:
a Windows 11 bug made performance look over 10% worse than it actually was on release, which is when all benchmarks are done and opinions are set (E: btw this has been fixed, and the fix also helped older CPUs too)
AMD decided to massively lower energy usage at the expense of out-of-box performance (I actually love this decision, I’m sick of components getting more and more power-hungry, and I’m sick of a hot stuffy room. Most gaming-focussed reviewers hated it though, which bugged me tbh because they also moan when power usage is high. I think they just like being negative because it drives engagement). At previous-gen TDPs, Zen 5 gains a lot of performance, but that’s not how they are benchmarked.
the price of Zen 4 has dropped, and the 7800X3D in particular looks compelling to those who might’ve wanted Zen 5.
most DIY PC builders are PC gamers, and what do we need new CPUs for? Most gamers are more GPU bottlenecked right now, especially as people are moving to 1440p, 1440p ultrawide, or 4K. Add to that the fact that there have been very few good PC game releases this year and of course we’re in a slump.
the only people who can buy a Zen5 CPU and drop it in their machine easily are Zen4 users, who won’t see a large uplift and likely won’t bother. People with earlier systems are looking at a significant investment - new motherboard and DDR5 RAM, why bother with that when the 5700X3D is such an insanely good value proposition that still won’t be bottlenecked unless you’re running an insanely good GPU?
Let me agree with you explicitly on loving the return to a sane power configuration here. I was watching Hardware Unboxed’s retest of this after the patches and it takes almost fifteen minutes of them reiterating that the 9700X and the 14700K are tied for performance and price before they even mention the bombshell that the 9700X is doing that with about half the wattage.
The fact that we keep pushing reviews and benchmarks focused strictly on pedal-to-the-metal overclocked performance and nothing else is such a disgrace. I made the mistake to buy into a 13700K and I have it under lower than out of box power limits manually both to prevent longevity issues and because this damn computer is more effective as a hair dryer than anything else.
We don’t mention it much because Intel was in the process of catching on actual fire at the same time, but the way this generation has been marketed, presented to reviewers, supported and eventually reviewed has been a massive trainwreck, considering the performance of the actual product.
For most people they won’t need anything more than a 7800x3d for 5 maybe even 10 years?
I know from experience, it is very difficult to get 10 years of gaming out of a processor. I’m a pretty frugal guy, and I’m actually ok with merely “acceptable” gaming performance, but I think the most I’ve ever managed was 8 years on the same processor, and that was with the core 2 duo. I called it the super chip, the chip that stayed competitive even when multiple new architectures were available. And honestly, 8 years was really pretty good. But when I switched to a quad core i5, it was definitely a necessary change.
But my 1700x went hard for five years. The only reason I tacked the extra 5 on was x3d changes things up.
Now, since I’ve made that comment AMD has solved the Zen 5 latency issues but cutting it by more than half. That’s what was holding it back. So when the Zen 5 x3d comes out, it’s going to be nuts.
But…
It’s going to take a while for those changes to become industry standard. It might be a year before Zen 5 x3d, I’m not sure if they’ve even announced when. So games won’t take full advantage of them right away.
It takes like a 4070 super to CPU bound a 7800x3d, and fine tune some settings and it’ll balance out
We’re not going to have a new screen resolution jump, and that combo can max out 4k 120fps on pretty much anything thanks to frame generation without even touching upscaling.
There’s just not a lot to improve until we see a major jump like VR finally taking off.
I’m still on my Zen1 1600, with DDR4 RAM and RX580 8GB which I built back in 2018. Whenever I’m thinking of upgrading I just look at the prices. I’d basically need to upgrade everything, maybe aside from GPU which would become a giant bottleneck, so it should be upgraded as well.
I really don’t even want to think about gutting my PC and upgrading, I’d much rather switch to a console.
100%, it’s the lack of the X3D parts. Zen 5 on its own is compelling but not for gamers and DIY, would I buy it in a pre-built desktop or a business machine, Yes I would all day long. But if I’m gaming and there’s no X3D part why would I get anything else other than a 7800 X3D. AMD really shot themselves in the foot and what’s worse is we warned them it was coming yet they chose not to listen.
They sell everything they put into laptops, in that market they can’t keep up with demand. Similar story for enterprise.
In the DIY desktop market, which this article is about, It’s been instilled into everyone to wait for the X3D chips, by basically every reviewer. And for good reason.
Certainly doesn’t help that:
a Windows 11 bug made performance look over 10% worse than it actually was on release, which is when all benchmarks are done and opinions are set (E: btw this has been fixed, and the fix also helped older CPUs too)
AMD decided to massively lower energy usage at the expense of out-of-box performance (I actually love this decision, I’m sick of components getting more and more power-hungry, and I’m sick of a hot stuffy room. Most gaming-focussed reviewers hated it though, which bugged me tbh because they also moan when power usage is high. I think they just like being negative because it drives engagement). At previous-gen TDPs, Zen 5 gains a lot of performance, but that’s not how they are benchmarked.
the price of Zen 4 has dropped, and the 7800X3D in particular looks compelling to those who might’ve wanted Zen 5.
most DIY PC builders are PC gamers, and what do we need new CPUs for? Most gamers are more GPU bottlenecked right now, especially as people are moving to 1440p, 1440p ultrawide, or 4K. Add to that the fact that there have been very few good PC game releases this year and of course we’re in a slump.
the only people who can buy a Zen5 CPU and drop it in their machine easily are Zen4 users, who won’t see a large uplift and likely won’t bother. People with earlier systems are looking at a significant investment - new motherboard and DDR5 RAM, why bother with that when the 5700X3D is such an insanely good value proposition that still won’t be bottlenecked unless you’re running an insanely good GPU?
Let me agree with you explicitly on loving the return to a sane power configuration here. I was watching Hardware Unboxed’s retest of this after the patches and it takes almost fifteen minutes of them reiterating that the 9700X and the 14700K are tied for performance and price before they even mention the bombshell that the 9700X is doing that with about half the wattage.
The fact that we keep pushing reviews and benchmarks focused strictly on pedal-to-the-metal overclocked performance and nothing else is such a disgrace. I made the mistake to buy into a 13700K and I have it under lower than out of box power limits manually both to prevent longevity issues and because this damn computer is more effective as a hair dryer than anything else.
We don’t mention it much because Intel was in the process of catching on actual fire at the same time, but the way this generation has been marketed, presented to reviewers, supported and eventually reviewed has been a massive trainwreck, considering the performance of the actual product.
This is the big one.
Literally the best gaming chip from any company is a Zen 4 and surprisingly cheap
For most people they won’t need anything more than a 7800x3d for 5 maybe even 10 years?
I’d hate to say what GPU it takes to make cpu the bottleneck on one of those.
Agreed, I bought a 7950X3D over the 9950X as it was $150 cheaper. Seemed like the smarter move.
I know from experience, it is very difficult to get 10 years of gaming out of a processor. I’m a pretty frugal guy, and I’m actually ok with merely “acceptable” gaming performance, but I think the most I’ve ever managed was 8 years on the same processor, and that was with the core 2 duo. I called it the super chip, the chip that stayed competitive even when multiple new architectures were available. And honestly, 8 years was really pretty good. But when I switched to a quad core i5, it was definitely a necessary change.
idk I was using a 12 year old cpu and it worked fine for gaming. Only upgraded because I wanted to compile stuff in reasonable timeframes.
The Phenom 2?!
I barely remember it, but yeah, it was a beast.
But my 1700x went hard for five years. The only reason I tacked the extra 5 on was x3d changes things up.
Now, since I’ve made that comment AMD has solved the Zen 5 latency issues but cutting it by more than half. That’s what was holding it back. So when the Zen 5 x3d comes out, it’s going to be nuts.
But…
It’s going to take a while for those changes to become industry standard. It might be a year before Zen 5 x3d, I’m not sure if they’ve even announced when. So games won’t take full advantage of them right away.
It takes like a 4070 super to CPU bound a 7800x3d, and fine tune some settings and it’ll balance out
We’re not going to have a new screen resolution jump, and that combo can max out 4k 120fps on pretty much anything thanks to frame generation without even touching upscaling.
There’s just not a lot to improve until we see a major jump like VR finally taking off.
I’m still on my Zen1 1600, with DDR4 RAM and RX580 8GB which I built back in 2018. Whenever I’m thinking of upgrading I just look at the prices. I’d basically need to upgrade everything, maybe aside from GPU which would become a giant bottleneck, so it should be upgraded as well.
I really don’t even want to think about gutting my PC and upgrading, I’d much rather switch to a console.
I still have my 3700X and it keeps up well enough with a 4070 even on cyberpunk.
100%, it’s the lack of the X3D parts. Zen 5 on its own is compelling but not for gamers and DIY, would I buy it in a pre-built desktop or a business machine, Yes I would all day long. But if I’m gaming and there’s no X3D part why would I get anything else other than a 7800 X3D. AMD really shot themselves in the foot and what’s worse is we warned them it was coming yet they chose not to listen.