5800x3d only makes sense as an upgrade, drop-in replacement and even then, I'd argue that the 5950x has dropped enough in price that you may just go with that instead,(reply>), @kaldo star citizen will scale to 16 cores/32threads, but if you want something mainstream cp2077 or battlefield will use a full 8 cores/16threads. A 5800X3D would start to choke with how I multitask, if I tried to play CP2077 with all the dials on…..which is a real life scenario since I do exactly that. 16 cores/32 threads + 64Gb RAM is the minimum I’d put in my personal rig nowadays; I don’t want to have to think/micromanage how I’m using my system, it just needs to get out the way.,(reply>), @Jonathan Allbritten Which games actually use 16 cores?,(reply>), @kaldo if you're playing anything that came out in the last few months, they will happily use more than 4; up to all 16 cores of the 5950x in some cases.<br><br>Also, I commenting on the fact that when you gave 9 things in your task tray, three browser windows with multiple tabs, a YT video/music playing, outlook, etc open in the background...then you will certainly notice a difference in how games run. It makes an appreciable difference in the frametimes alone; that scenario is also a norm for me.<br><br>Most people are not closing every single thing to run a single game.<br><br>Edit:<br><br>Also threads =/= cores.<br><br>Having a bunch of threads is NOT the same as having full dedicated cores.,(reply>), @Jonathan Allbritten That's not really true though. This is a 16 thread chip. Most games utilize 4 maximum so that's 12 left for the OS and other tasks.,(reply>), @Eliran Tuil The difference between 5900x and 5950x has been as little as $50 sometimes, nowadays, so there's no really much to hold one back from just going to the top SKU. I agree that at the beginning of each gens life, the 12700K and 5900x were the best picks