• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Upgrade from 7800X3D to 9800X3D worth it or no?

D

Deimos

[H]ard|Gawd
2FA
Joined
Aug 10, 2004
Messages
1,285
I'm currently rocking the system in my sig and have had my eye on the 9800X3D for a while. I'm not looking to change anything else, has anyone with a similar system done this upgrade and is it worth it? I'll give the 7800X3D to my son as he currently has a 7600X.

I was holding out for the 9850X3D but after seeing the reviews, and the current NZ prices for the 9800X3D I think this is my most likely upgrade choice.
 
It 100% depends on the games you play, the resolution you play at, and whether or not you're CPU limited in any of them. Without that information it's hard to say.

Also, the other thing to note is that at best you'll get a 20% improvement. You'll have to decide for yourself whether getting a 20% improvement is worth the cost. Similarly, your son going from a 7600x to a 7800X3D will be ~15% improvement.
 
It's arguably never worth it to upgrade to the same tier CPU one generation apart. In this situation, you will probably not feel much of a difference.

What you're doing with the PCs and at what resolution factors into the equation as well.
 
I have both cpus and can hardly tell the difference between the two unless the game is 2 render threads or less. The the 9800 is notably faster if the game has a low thread count like many older DX11 titles do.
 
I upgraded from a 7800X3D to a 9800X3D, and at 4K I saw quite the improvement in FPS averages and minimums in the primary game that I play - Star Citizen. SC is a very CPU demanding game, and I'm still CPU bound in certain places (some areas of cities) with a 4090.

Was it worth it? For me, yes. I sold the 7800X3D and got the 9800X3D for ~$200 so it wasn't a huge cost to upgrade.
 
It is 34% more $$ to get the 9950X3D over the 9800X3D where I am (compared to the US where it's 47% more). I'm tempted to get this for a more meaningful upgrade. I'm very surprised by the pricing of the 9950X3D, I thought it would be $2k NZD or higher.

The only thing that is making me hesitate is the massive loss in efficiency, the GN review has the 7800X3D at the top of the charts for gaming efficiency. I don't have AC in my tiny office so I'm sure the extra wattage is going to be noticeable.
 
Deimos said:
It is 34% more $$ to get the 9950X3D over the 9800X3D where I am (compared to the US where it's 47% more). I'm tempted to get this for a more meaningful upgrade. I'm very surprised by the pricing of the 9950X3D, I thought it would be $2k NZD or higher.

The only thing that is making me hesitate is the massive loss in efficiency, the GN review has the 7800X3D at the top of the charts for gaming efficiency. I don't have AC in my tiny office so I'm sure the extra wattage is going to be noticeable.
Click to expand...
It actually makes sense given what we knew about Zen 5 during launch. Zen 5 was just barely more power efficient than Zen 4 (taking a step backwards depending on the test) and power usage skyrockets when clocks are pushed to their limits. The 9xxxX3D do not have the same thermal limitations that 7xxxX3D chips have, allowing them to clock higher and thus farther out of the efficient operating range.
 
Tsumi said:
It 100% depends on the games you play, the resolution you play at, and whether or not you're CPU limited in any of them. Without that information it's hard to say.

Also, the other thing to note is that at best you'll get a 20% improvement. You'll have to decide for yourself whether getting a 20% improvement is worth the cost. Similarly, your son going from a 7600x to a 7800X3D will be ~15% improvement.
Click to expand...
Yea, nothing more to say.

I am an aggressive user of DLSS and own a secondary 1440p 360hz monitor, plus I spend the majority of my time in CPU bound games to begin with. So with that in mind, despite owning a 7800X3D, I decided to upgrade (to 9950X3D) as the 5090 is extremely unappealing to me (coming from a 4090). Minor gains in a couple of single player games I have already finished, none in the others, while guzzling down 600w? Makes zero sense. The CPU bound games - I'm playing those every day.

I also want to tinker a bit with the dual CCD setup as it seems much better now, so that is another appeal.
 
It would be a sidegrade going from 7800X3D into a 9800X3D at best.
You could also get no improvement depending on the game, gpu and resolution you play with.
If you play competitively, then every FPS increase would be worth it.
 
Picked up a 9950X3D today.
20250314_145840.jpg
 
rcarlos said:
It would be a sidegrade going from 7800X3D into a 9800X3D at best.
You could also get no improvement depending on the game, gpu and resolution you play with.
If you play competitively, then every FPS increase would be worth it.
Click to expand...
From someone who has done the "upgrade" I would agree with this statement.
 
Installed today, what a fkn day. I swapped out the CPU and left the PC in the garage for leak testing. Went out to my in-laws farm so my daughter could ride her horse, she asked me to cut a track for her. I ran over a small piece of super thick fencing wire, stopped the mulcher to take a look, went to collect the wire and it was super fkn hot and I severely burnt my hand. Farm injuries are the worst.

Anyway, this thing is decent but I don't know WTF I'm doing. Core parking is not working as expected and there are two unknown devices in the device manager now. I have reinstalled the chipset drivers, I even re-flashed my bios. No dice. I changed to the Balanced power profile and made sure 'game mode' is on and the game bar is working. No idea what the deal is.

On the plus side, I enabled PBO, did a minus 10 all cores, not much else and I'm seeing pretty good all core boost of 4.9ghz on CCD0 and 5ghz on CCD1.
 
OK so core parking is working but I wouldn't call it 'solved'. I loaded up Alan Wake 2 and CCD1 is fully parked. More or less the same with CS2 but GTA V Enhanced is bugged. Game Bar refuses to remember that it is a game and I'm pretty sure that has something to do with it.
 
7800x3D owner playing games at 4K here. Not a chance would it be worth the swap.

I've forgotten about it and am instead looking forward to Zen6 and 12-core single CCD parts with V-Cache.
 
I moved from 7800X3D to 9800X3D. All I saw were bench improvements for CPU. In gaming at 4K there wasn't any difference. Both tweaked perform the same even though there is 400 MHz diff between the two (OC to OC). I think I did a whole post with results in one of the threads. Just look for a thread talking about 4K gaming and 9800X3D benches.

Here you go
 
I'm happy with mine, but I just disabled the high frequency CCD for now as the driver solution didn't work out well with my games. But I may try again later. I kinda liked the thought of offloading non game stuff to second CCD, but when I tried either game bar or manual affinity, it was dramatically worse than just disabling second CCD. And yea I got latest BIOS and AMD drivers.

In any case I'm seeing fairly large gains coming from the 7800X3D, even at 4k. I thought the gains would be seen mostly in multi-threaded loads but no, even heavily single threaded titles like Arma 3 and some old MMOs got +20-30%.. even more in some scenes. And modern games play nicely with it too, as I do use DLSS agressively. On my 1440p 360hz monitor I play things like Marvel Rivals and BF2042 with DLSS perf, that's 720p yep, but with DLSS4 it looks pristine to my eyes.

I would also note that ~5% of the gains may in some cases be from just getting a very slightly theoretically better RAM kit than the one I used with the 7800X3D. (5600cl28 to 6000cl30)
 
Last edited:
kalston said:
I'm happy with mine, but I just disabled the high frequency CCD for now as the driver solution didn't work out well with my games. But I may try again later. I kinda liked the thought of offloading non game stuff to second CCD, but when I tried either game bar or manual affinity, it was dramatically worse than just disabling second CCD. And yea I got latest BIOS and AMD drivers.

In any case I'm seeing fairly large gains coming from the 7800X3D, even at 4k. I thought the gains would be seen mostly in multi-threaded loads but no, even heavily single threaded titles like Arma 3 and some old MMOs got +20-30%.. even more in some scenes. And modern games play nicely with it too, as I do use DLSS agressively. On my 1440p 360hz monitor I play things like Marvel Rivals and BF2042 with DLSS perf, that's 720p yep, but with DLSS4 it looks pristine to my eyes.

I would also note that ~5% of the gains may be from just getting a very slightly better RAM kit than the one I used with the 7800X3D. (5600cl28 to 6000cl30)
Click to expand...
What do the 9950X3D's X3D cache cores run at? I assume higher than the 9800X3D's stock 5.2GHz.
 
arestavo said:
What do the 9950X3D's X3D cache cores run at? I assume higher than the 9800X3D's stock 5.2GHz.
Click to expand...

5.5ghz locked in games, yeah. And that's stable, straight line on a graph.

Stress tests, I'm seeing 5.2ghz all core clock, again a steady line on a graph.

The numbers drop dramatically for all core load with 2nd CCD enabled obviously (power limit probably?).
 
arestavo said:
What do the 9950X3D's X3D cache cores run at? I assume higher than the 9800X3D's stock 5.2GHz.
Click to expand...
If you mess with PBO offsets and touch Scalar a little bit, you can easily see single core holding at 5.75Ghz and MT holding at 5.65Ghz, solid lines. It all depends on the load tho, P95 will drop things down to 5.2 or less depending on what part of the run. CB on the other hand, not as demanding and you will hold higher clocks.
 
Deimos said:
I'm currently rocking the system in my sig and have had my eye on the 9800X3D for a while. I'm not looking to change anything else, has anyone with a similar system done this upgrade and is it worth it? I'll give the 7800X3D to my son as he currently has a 7600X.

I was holding out for the 9850X3D but after seeing the reviews, and the current NZ prices for the 9800X3D I think this is my most likely upgrade choice.
Click to expand...
I just actually made this upgrade, two of the biggest things i noticed was my temps went down 8-10c, the other is all the cores boost to 5225ghz.

Edit: I enabled PBO in the bios with a -20mv offset and my temps went down further. In Stalker 2 which is heavy on the CPU, with the 7800X3D my temps were averaging 65c and up, now I'm at 50-52c.
 
Last edited:
A few weeks ago, I sold my 7800 build to my brother-in-law who wanted a nice gaming PC for his kids. Thought about getting a 9950 for my next build, but chose the 9800 instead. No regrets. It'll run any game at 1440p/High settings for years. Playing Oblivion Remaster since last night and loving every minute of it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Niner
like this
Mad Maxx said:
A few weeks ago, I sold my 7800 build to my brother-in-law who wanted a nice gaming PC for his kids. Thought about getting a 9950 for my next build, but chose the 9800 instead. No regrets. It'll run any game at 1440p/High settings for years. Playing Oblivion Remaster since last night and loving every minute of it.
Click to expand...
I thought about getting a 9950X3D, but stayed with the 9800X3D as it does everything I need it to do.
 
We put a 7900x3d in a htpc but it was loud to cool with an air cooler so we did 1)360 aio and 2)9800x3d but it's in a sff build and my fingers are huge so I pawned it off on the local shop to do. His son spent 5 hours on it to get all the wires to fit without hitting the fans but it works great and quietly now. I'd say it was worth it but only if all you use it for is games and think your dual ccd chip is too loud to cool for your use case. This spins all the fans around 800 rpm and stays cool all the time.
 
killroy67 said:
Edit: I enabled PBO in the bios with a -20mv offset and my temps went down further. In Stalker 2 which is heavy on the CPU, with the 7800X3D my temps were averaging 65c and up
Click to expand...
7800X3D has a major cooling bottleneck due to being insulated by the top layered V-cache. It will have temps like that on pretty much any off the shelf cooler. Buuuuuut, its extremely easy to keep it from heating past the early 70's. Because with a CO undervolt, it will only use like 50 watts in a game.

I had it staying in the early 70's, with one of these little babes:
https://www.thermalright.com/product/axp90-x47-full/

And one of these passive with no fan, would complete a few passes of Cinibench with stock clocks and stay in the 80's.
https://www.thermalright.com/product/si-100/
 
chameleoneel said:
7800X3D has a major cooling bottleneck due to being insulated by the top layered V-cache. It will have temps like that on pretty much any off the shelf cooler. Buuuuuut, its extremely easy to keep it from heating past the early 70's. Because with a CO undervolt, it will only use like 50 watts in a game.

I had it staying in the early 70's, with one of these little babes:
https://www.thermalright.com/product/axp90-x47-full/

And one of these passive with no fan, would complete a few passes of Cinibench with stock clocks and stay in the 80's.
https://www.thermalright.com/product/si-100/
Click to expand...
I did like the 7800X3D, it served me for a while, but moving back to 1440p really heated it up. When starting Stalker 2 the shader optimization would make it hit 80c, while in game it was 65-70c using the Thermalright peerless Assassin, which is fine but it literally heated up my room while gaming. With the 9800X3D I'm getting 45-50c on the average, which doesn't have me sweating while gaming.
 
killroy67 said:
I did like the 7800X3D, it served me for a while, but moving back to 1440p really heated it up. When starting Stalker 2 the shader optimization would make it hit 80c, while in game it was 65-70c using the Thermalright peerless Assassin, which is fine but it literally heated up my room while gaming. With the 9800X3D I'm getting 45-50c on the average, which doesn't have me sweating while gaming.
Click to expand...
9800X3D uses more power in gaming, on average. By law, it is heating your room more.
 
killroy67 said:
I did like the 7800X3D, it served me for a while, but moving back to 1440p really heated it up. When starting Stalker 2 the shader optimization would make it hit 80c, while in game it was 65-70c using the Thermalright peerless Assassin, which is fine but it literally heated up my room while gaming. With the 9800X3D I'm getting 45-50c on the average, which doesn't have me sweating while gaming.
Click to expand...
Just get a 5090. Then you won't care what your proc uses. :LOL:
 
zandor said:
Just get a 5090. Then you won't care what your proc uses. :LOL:
Click to expand...
I would never pay stupid money for that thing, I'd rather give up gaming and put the money into my truck. 😂

chameleoneel said:
9800X3D uses more power in gaming, on average. By law, it is heating your room more.
Click to expand...
I monitor the temps while gaming and it runs 10-15c cooler, plus my ambient temps are cooler in the room, that's what I noticed.
 
killroy67 said:
I would never pay stupid money for that thing, I'd rather give up gaming and put the money into my truck. 😂


I monitor the temps while gaming and it runs 10-15c cooler, plus my ambient temps are cooler in the room, that's what I noticed.
Click to expand...
9800X3D has lower core temps, because the Vcache is underneath the cores. So, the heat can be more efficiently removed by the IHS and heatsink. With the Vcache underneath the cores instead of on top of the cores (like the 7800X3D): it is possible for the 9800X3D to use more power and also have lower temps, if you have good cooling. But, the thermal energy is still going into your room, one way or another.

7800X3D's thermals are bottlenecked by the Vcache on top. It is difficult to get the temps truly low, even with really great cooling. But, because it uses so little power, its easy to keep the temps from being truly high. Especially gaming temps.
 
A 7800X3D can get hot but can't heat up your room no, it's hard limited by AMD in terms of how many watts and amps it can pull - you will struggle to get past 65w while gaming.

A 9800X3D can dump twice the watts in your rooms easily when you start to overclock it, but it's actually a lot easier to cool yep.

Though I seem to remember AMD saying they moved the sensors and it's not 1 to 1 comparison between the two gens? But I might be wrong about that.
edit: yeah they did https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-com...nt-cpu-rdna-35-gpu-and-xdna-2-architectures/2
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top