 This is the fastest gaming CPU on the planet! Or at least it was when AMD first announced it. Intel beats them to the punch with what they claim is the fastest gaming CPU, the Core i9-12900KS. They put that together so quickly, we didn't get a chance to review it before they shoved it out the door. What is it about this unassuming little square? The Ryzen 7 5800X3D that's got Intel so scared that they'd drop everything to come out ahead of it. I'll tell you, but first I'm gonna drop this message from our sponsor. Lambda! Created with Razer, their new Tensorbook comes with an RTX 3080, Linux, and Lambda stack with PyTorch and Tensorflow so machine learning engineers can develop AI models anytime, anywhere. Learn more at the link down below. AMD's new gaming CPU achieves its fastest ever gaming claims by using their shiny new 3D vCache technology where ultra-fast cache memory is stacked on top of the CPU die in addition to the cache that's already inside it. But why is cache so important for gaming that AMD would go out of their way to literally make a cache sandwich? Because it's so close to the CPU cores, it is fast. You can think of it roughly like the relationship between RAM and storage and there are different levels of cache that get even faster the closer they get to the cores. 3D vCache is L3 cache which for the 5800X3D is a shared pool of cache memory for all of its eight cores. For games, this cache is used for, well, everything. But especially for things like AI behavior trees, physics information, and other things that the CPU is constantly doing. If the cache fills up and this stuff has to be evicted back to RAM, the CPU not only has to wait for new data to arrive from RAM, but it also has to wait for the old data to come back when it's needed again. This is what you'd call a bottleneck and this one will lower frame rates of CPU bound games or cause hitching even when FPS is high. With three times the cache of its namesake, the Ryzen 7 5800X, the 5800X3D promises to basically never run out of cache under normal circumstances, which should improve gaming performance. To test that, we've got a range of CPUs from both Team Red and Team Blue, including the brand new 12900KS, and we've equipped our Intel bench with the fastest memory we had available to give it the best chance to rain on AMD's parade. You'll have all this linked down below. Right away, 3D vCache makes itself known in F1 2021, where it beats out the Core i9 12900K and matches the brand new 12900KS. And this continues to a lesser extent with Forza Horizon 4, where the 5800X3D slips a little bit, but nothing too major. Far Cry 6 brings the first maybe. 1% low frame rates and averages look good, but 5% lows are significantly lower, as they are with the standard 5800X. AMD is at a disadvantage here. Hitman 3 shows more of this pattern, albeit with better news for AMD in general, as average frame rates are higher than even the 12900KS at the cost of frame stability. Microsoft Flight Simulator brings the first flawless victory over the entire field, where it seems the extra cache really helps with maintaining not only high, but stable frame rates in this very CPU-bound title. CSGO, also famously CPU-bound, but with an older and more simplistic engine, tips the scales back towards Intel, with the 12900KS taking a commanding to almost 20% lead in average FPS. Oh, and you're not getting better turn times in Civilization VI FYI, but I don't think that's quite what they were talking about when they called it the world's fastest gaming CPU. You're also not getting better turn times with our recently restocked WAN hoodies from LTDStore.com, but at least you'll look good while you wait. Tallying it all up, the 5800X3D pulls about a 7% lead over the 12900K, which would have made it the fastest gaming CPU if only the 12900KS didn't exist, a fact certainly not lost on Intel. The 12900KS is about 3% faster across our benchmarks, but it's worth remembering that that CPU costs $800. More on that later. AMD hasn't really marketed the 5800X3D for productivity, and the slower clock speeds are probably going to hurt it more here than the extra cache will help. Sure enough, we see about a 5% performance drop across the board in Cinebench R23 over the OG 5800X, and Blender doesn't fare much better in BMW. Surprisingly, 3D vCache appears to help with the more complex Gooseberry render, likely thanks to being able to keep more asset data close to the cores. Creative Cloud shows a similar performance uplift, with Premiere picking up a good 5% lead over the 5800X. Finally, Specview Perf shows a similar give and take depending on the tests, with life sciences and general operations seeing a performance boost, and energy and financial services taking a hit. Looking at all our tests, it works out to roughly equal performance to the non-3D 5800X at the end of the day, so you'd have to pay attention to the specific benchmarks to know if it's better for a given workload. Intel, meanwhile, is firmly on top, and it's not even close. Even the Core i7-12700K is way out of head. That means that unless you're in the market for a top-end CPU, the 12700K represents a better value for productivity overall than either of those Ryzen 7 chips. For thermal testing, I decided to give these chips a workout using Prime95 to see just how hot they'll get, and the 5800X 3D pleasantly surprises in this torture test with a consistent 90 degrees using our Noctua NH-D15S. That's just a few degrees more than the standard 5800X puts out, and significantly lower than either Core i9. What's more, it maintained 4.1 GHz all-core throughout most of the run, with power consumption below the OG 5800X. Even though both CPUs are rated for 105W TDP, precision boost doesn't seem to be pushing the X3D quite as hard. Why the hotter cores, then? Well, you've got the 3D vCache sitting between the cores in the IHS, so it's less thermally efficient. Which brings up the other reason the Ryzen 7 5800X 3D is special. Overclocking. Or rather, lack thereof. For the first time on the Ryzen platform. AMD says that this is a limitation for this one specific CPU because the 3D-stacked cache memory needs a hard-capped maximum voltage for reliability. Not only does that mean that overclocking one of these things would potentially be dangerous, it also means that thanks to the extra power draw required to run the 3D vCache, core clocks are lower than the vanilla 5800X as we saw. Obviously that hasn't hurt it much in practice, but you can imagine how much faster things could be if only that limitation weren't in place and they can drive the clocks just that little bit faster. Overall, it's a weird chip, but it's not a bad one. Is it the most powerful gaming CPU in the world? No. It's beaten out by the Core i9-12900KS. But again, that CPU is a power-hungry beast that costs $800. The Ryzen 7 5800X 3D is $450, which makes it the fastest gaming CPU at a price that makes any sense. And that's why the Core i7-12700K at $400 is in our test lineup. That chip still represents an extremely good value as it's not far off for gaming and dominates for the price if you need productivity. Plus, it's running on a brand new platform. Speaking of platforms, get subscribed because we've got a brand new storage platform with a petabyte of flash and we are totally going to benchmark it. But the 5800X 3D is a fitting send-off to a platform that's been around since I started writing for Linus Tech Tips. By all accounts, this is probably the last CPU that AM4 is going to see, so I wouldn't recommend it for new builds. The platform's a dead end. But if you're primarily a gamer, you're probably going to be a gamer who got into AMD's ecosystem early, and you've been waiting for a chip to upgrade to, then this is a solid choice for top-tier performance that won't require you to take a second job. It doesn't need fancy cooling or a big power supply or even new RAM. Could you get similar performance by overclocking a plain Ryzen 7 5800X or even the new $300 5700X? Probably, yeah. But if you don't want to deal with that, or if you're a small form factor enthusiast, then for you, the 5800X 3D has few downsides, and neither does our sponsor. Zoho CRM! Zoho CRM is a 360-degree solution for managing your business sales, marketing, and customer service. 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