Who else is waiting on Zen 4 x3D before upgrading?

I am. It is rumoured to be too good of an improvement to pass up.

I was going to build a new PC when the RTX 3000 series came out, but at that time there were rumours that Zen 4 would release in under a year. So, I decided to wait. Those rumours turned out to be bogus and I ended up waiting a long time. At this point, based on rumours, it's well worth waiting a bit longer for X3D.

And two things I can't stand are PC heat changing the room temperature and fan noise. X3D should be more powerful and efficient, letting me do more with less heat output and fan noise. And if AMD pushes the TDP to squeeze every last drop of performance out of the CPUs, I'll probably undervolt to reduce the performance a little while reducing the wattage and heat a significant amount. And the added performance of X3D will let me do that and still have more performance left over than regular Zen 4 would.

I'm still on Sandy Bridge: i7 2600k @4.5 Ghz, 16 GB RMA, but with a heavily-bottleneck RTX 3080 that I bought before deciding to wait for Zen 4 (and which I got at MSRP).
 
I have my doubts that the improvements will be as drastic on AM5 as they were on AM4. The speed of DDR5 should reduce the need for L3 cache hits in the first place. Maybe AM5 3D allow overclocking or something new but I'd be very surprised by that. Expecting another clock speed compromise due to heat.

I would like to see what the next round of CPUs looks like now that Intel kind of knocked them off their pedestal for this round. We'll see. A pissed-off Lisa Su is better than a greedy/content one.
 
I was blown away by the performance of the 5800X3D. Moving from my 5900X to my 5800X3D, even despite losing 4 cores, was a bigger upgrade than when I moved from a 3900X to a 5900X a year or two earlier. All of the games that I play make very effective use of the cache. My 5800X3D will probably hold me over until Zen 5 but when I upgrade it's definitely going to be another CPU with a lot of cache.
 
DDR5 may make that cache less effective. Also I’d like to see overclocking on the 3D parts. I’ve done plenty of research and I’m not on the 5800x3d bandwagon. Pretty limited for its advantages for me. But I’ll be waiting on the 7 series variants.
 
My plan was to upgrade next year anyway so I'm waiting to see if the x3D will be worth it or not. I may even wait until the end of 2023 for some more price drops on those if they are worth it.
 
1000% going to get one of the Zen 4 X3Ds. I am still rocking my [email protected] so this will be a nice upgrade. Add in the fact that since its AM5, I can drop in a new cpu in a few years, its a no brainer.
 
GotNoRice said:
I was blown away by the performance of the 5800X3D. Moving from my 5900X to my 5800X3D, even despite losing 4 cores, was a bigger upgrade than when I moved from a 3900X to a 5900X a year or two earlier. All of the games that I play make very effective use of the cache. My 5800X3D will probably hold me over until Zen 5 but when I upgrade it's definitely going to be another CPU with a lot of cache.
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Fuck yea. Went 3900x to x3d, Arma loves it
 
I am giving it the ol' best effort. If they truly announce at CES and have availability within 6-8 weeks... ish... I am definitely on board. But if its a CES sneak peak with no availability until summer then I dont know, it could be RPL time. I desperately need a new system, top down.
 
I'm running up against the wall for building my new system(s) time wise, so I'm considering grabbing the Black Friday deals (ie a 7950X is $550 ) for now even though I really wanted a 3D V-Cache variant.

The concern is that either A) they'll drag their feet on when X3D is actually available and/or B) they won't offer X3D proc's of the CPUs I wish or otherwise have some pretty severe limits on the ones that exist.

For A, it would be one thing if I knew that by CES they'd instantly say "Going on sale next week!" then I'd consider just waiting...but we don't know that. If it is a "Announced at CES, available in the very last week of Feb or March to qualify for Q1" that's still a heck of a delay. If it gets pushed to Q2 that's even more annoying and then there's the possibility of mid-year refreshes not just on CPUs but on Mobos and that's one thing I REALLY hope will not be the case. I commended AMD for coming out with the high end X670E boards and chipsets first, so if I grab the Asus ROG Extreme (which seems to be the best of them spec wise, but of fucking course is the only one that doesn't get a big discount for BF. Those who wanted the Hero however could pick up some nice savings. ) for nearly $1K I'm going to be very nonplussed if there is a "Dark Extreme Alpha" or whatever the fuck alongside the 3D cache CPU launches of similar pricing. There's no real evidence that this is very likely to happen, but the longer they go before releasing the 3D procs the more likely it seems to be given revamps or mid-year refreshes in the past. I figure i can stomach selling or swapping my existing CPU after the holiday to drop in its X3D replacement, but it becomes more frustrating buying both again.

For B, I've seen some rumors that AMD will not be able to contain 2 CCD CPUs and will be offering 3D versions of the 6 and 8 core, but that's it. Now most informed speculation sites seem to still continue to think that there will be a 7950X3D, which is the proc I'd prefer, but if they can't manage to get their fab process going or thermal envelope performance or whatever the hell, then I'll have to make a decision.. Likewise, I am a bit concerned that they may end up having to limit the tweaks/performance of the 3D procs like they did with the 5800X3D, which would be disappointing if they didnt reach the clocks or whatnot, but given the 5800X3D still does well that is at least a lesser concern in and of itself, but then again the Zen4 setup is clocked WAY higher as well as the IPC improvements. I'd hope to be able to get the most out of both single/few core overclocks and many/all core usage as necessary - a feature that I know Asus has built into all of their high end X670E this time and was unique to the X570 Dark Hero when it launched, but I guess we'll see.

So ultimately I'm leaning toward buying now, I've got 2 systems that need to be built before something old (my venerable core2quad file server) goes kaput.
 
Randall Stephens said:
We waited quite a while for the x3d. I don’t expect it to drop so quickly after announcement. Component sales are down, I imagine they will want to sell some existing inventory for a bit.
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This. The idea of a) 16 core X3D + b) any time soon, seems like fantasyland. Yields would likely be the worst, price would therefore have to be very high, and it would potentially cannibalize non X3D sales or at least cast a big shadow over it. Unclear what AMD's business play or upside really could be here.
 
I built a 7600x machine for a buddy last week and he moved from a 6700k build. It’s of course a massive upgrade even carrying his Strix 1080 over for now. He plays a lot if 4x games like Stellaris and not surprisingly the cpu bump is noticeable. His plan is to run this for a couple of years and go x3D to top it off. —GPU upgrade soonish once 7000 Radeon it out and reviewed.

I liked it so much I jumped in with a 7700x and that free DDR5 6000 Kit at Microcenter with $50 off the board. It’s plenty fast and I’m interested in the x3D chips in the future as well but in no real hurry.

I feel that getting any AM5 cpu and splashing on a good board, yea they are spendy, is worthwhile because future CPU support.
 
Rev. Night said:
Are there any good am5 boards less than $200?
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Newegg has more B650 boards from 149-220 than a few weeks ago. Not sure if any are that great. The Gigabyte Aorus Elite mATX and ATX boards look decent enough though and are 199 and 219.

From there it seems mediocre at best until the 279-499 range. I’d get a B650e or x670/e for long term personally.
 
I'm but a simple man who games and has 2-3 hard drives, that's it. As long as the board will accept a new cpu a few years from now, that's really all I need
 
Any B650 board that has the connectivity you like should be fine in that case honestly.
 
DPI said:
This. The idea of a) 16 core X3D + b) any time soon, seems like fantasyland. Yields would likely be the worst, price would therefore have to be very high, and it would potentially cannibalize non X3D sales or at least cast a big shadow over it. Unclear what AMD's business play or upside really could be here.
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Isn't part of the issue that a lot of potential buyers especially for higher end CPUs are waiting for X3D or would buy if available? Not to mention the ability of X3D to take back and/or further lock in performance crown for gaming and many benchmarks - not just vs Intel Raptor Lake, but vs the 5800X3D in some particular circumstances. . In fact I thought this was how the pricing structure was set up with the standard 7950X at $800, assuming that the X3D version would take the $999 spot, with similar pricing gaps vs the 5000 series for other missing X3Ds. This allowed AMD to launch Zen4 at lower prices vs Zen3 at a time when most other components were WAY more expensive (legitimately or other) than previous generations, as well as to make up for the greater expense of especially the X670E high end platform before the X670 and B650 would arrive. As far as their ability to fabricate, that has always been my concern but this is not the first generation and many users who saw the promise (and limits) of the 5800X3D figured that when Zen4 arrived they'd see the tech spread wider across the product line, without previous limits on voltage/clock , and with all the Zen4 benefits itself.

If they just don't have the technical ability to fabricate it yet that's one thing , disappointing as it may be.. However, concern for cannibalizing standard proc prices, fitting into the product line, or lack of users willing and interested in making those purchases doesn't seem to be an issue. Conversely, it seems there are many waiting for X3D that could be limiting current sales.
 
RanceJustice said:
Conversely, it seems there are many waiting for X3D that could be limiting current sales.
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It seems like this is definitely a thing. Threads all over have people saying that they will delay purchase until the x3D chips are announced at least with an availability date or are actually available. Realistically if you have a decent set up now no reason to be in a hurry. DDR5 and AM5 boards will get cheaper over time to a point and so on.
People on sites like [H] as we know dabble more in the latest tech. Hell my last 3 personal builds have been pure indulgence and not out of need. I’m slowing down though and I mean it this time !
 
Not waiting. Grabbed a 12700kf for 250 a short while back. I'm good for the next 5 years easy.
 
It depends... If we get a 16 core part, most likely. If it's 8 core I'll be out unless it's at least a 15% bump in games. It also will depend on if I can actually get ahold of a 4090.
 
As much as I would like to snag a 5800x3d at $329. I planned to wait. Can you imagine if they release a 12 or 16core Zen4 with v-cache? Thats a lot of cache on 1 CPU lol.
 
I'm more interested in their AM5 APU as raphael has IMC limitation on memory overclocking.
Already can achieve 6800 c32 daily with my previous ADL setup (i3 12100F + b660i strix), so don't want to go back to sub 6800mhz daily for ddr5 platform.

Hopefully, the IMC of their last APU arch (cezanne) that can go up to 4733 1:1 can translate to their AM5 APU.
 
I know I'm not gonna upgrade for any of the 7000 series parts, so I'm waiting for the 3D version of the 8k/9k (whatever they call it.).

Also allowing some early adopter motherboard kinks to be worked out, and for DDR5 prices to come down, as I'm gonna be looking at 128GB of RAM when I upgrade next. Also probably PCI-E 5 NVME SSDs.

Honestly I don't think i'm gonna be upgrading in less than 4-5 years on the CPU side of things. I got my 5950X to last me as long as it possibly can.

AM4 has been extremely good to me.
 
I look at CPU reviews these days and realize that unless you have a high refresh rate monitor, gaming wise, most of these things are really all quite capable. If you’re at 60hz still and 1080p, spend the money on the gpu and stop upgrading every gen on the cpu.

But there’s no fun in being content with what we have :)
 
And now people are back to "leaking" or rumor spreading that the 7950X3D is back on after all.

Presuming Amazon actually delivers the 7950 I ordered then it might be going up on the used market if that's actually the case.
 
i wonder how much of a gaming performance increase the various X3D chips will have. Also wonder if the price/performance curve will be linear
 
Teenyman45 said:
And now people are back to "leaking" or rumor spreading that the 7950X3D is back on after all.
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There is one big question that I'm pretty sure has not been answered yet. How does 3D cache relate to chips with more than one CCD? They never released a multiple-CCD Zen3 chip with 3D cache.

When you look at a chip with more than one CCD, you have to keep in mind that each CCD uses it's own L3 cache. The cores on each CCD can only use the L3 cache attached to that CCD. When you see a chip like the 5950x or 7950x, and see that it has 64MB L3 cache, that seems like a lot. But then you realize that it's actually 32MB per CCD. No individual core would ever be able to access more than 32MB of L3 cache. In comparison, the 5800X3D has 96MB of L3 cache, and since there is only one CCD, each core potentially has access to that entire block of L3 cache.

So would a "7950X3D" have 192MB of L3 cache (96MB per CCD)? Or would they find some yet unknown way to share a block of 3D L3 cache between both CCDs without simply dividing it in half?

Also, it's important to remember that chips that have more than one CCD incur latency penalties when cores from different CCDs have to communicate with each other. This is often represented as micro-stutter. Single-CCD chips don't have this issue. I was hoping that Zen 4 would have a way to mitigate this, or that they would release chips with more than 8 cores per CCD, but neither of those things happened. So it really seems like the best gaming chip will be something like a 7800X3D - basically the fastest single-CCD chip that comes with 3D cache. That might very-well be why they never released a 7800x (7700x is currently the fastest single-CCD Zen 4 CPU), so that there would not be confusion between the 7800X and the 7800X3D.

And of course I would also like to know if Zen 4 CPUs benefit as much from 3D cache as the 5800X3D does. Some seem to think that DDR5 will make the benefit smaller, but we really won't know until we see benchmarks.

Rev. Night said:
i wonder how much of a gaming performance increase the various X3D chips will have. Also wonder if the price/performance curve will be linear
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The benefit from 3D cache is much harder to quantify. Some games benefit tremendously while others only benefit a tiny amount. It's practically the opposite of a "linear" increase. It's really more of a case where you simply need to check benchmarks for games that you care about. Thankfully, since we already have a 5800X3D, you can check those benchmarks. If it shows a significant benefit from the 3D cache on the 5800X3D (compared to a regular 5800X) then it will probably also show a similar increase from a 3D cache Zen4 chip (perhaps slightly less due to DDR5?).
 
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Teenyman45 said:
In theory? Each CCD has its own top-mounted hat of cache?
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Yeah, that would be the most straight-forward way to do it. Simply double everything up. But that is a lot of extra silicon on a TSMC process that is already in high-demand ($$$). And it would still do nothing to address the latency penalty of communicating between separate CCDs.
 
I was initially planning on holding off migrating to AM5 until after seeing how the Zen4 X3D chips stacked up, but some of the BF deals got me. 7700X + 32GB Gskill Z4 Neo DDR5-6000 + Asus Prime X670E Pro Wifi all for $730 (not including taxes) was tempting enough for me to swap now. Still might swap to X3D later if they look good enough.
 
GotNoRice said:
Yeah, that would be the most straight-forward way to do it. Simply double everything up. But that is a lot of extra silicon on a TSMC process that is already in high-demand ($$$). And it would still do nothing to address the latency penalty of communicating between separate CCDs.
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Wouldn't an obvious solution to the first problem be using the 6nm process for the cache? It's what they are doing for the new radeons, after all. Or am I missing some obvious problems with mixing processes for stacked chips?
 
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I made the jump. I figured AMD will support the socket for a few generations so I'll get in early and upgrade again when the socket is near the end of support. I purposely bought the more expensive motherboard "X670E" as well for that reason thinking Asus will have good bios support. My 7700x is a huge step up from my 6700k.
 
psy81 said:
I made the jump. I figured AMD will support the socket for a few generations so I'll get in early and upgrade again when the socket is near the end of support. I purposely bought the more expensive motherboard "X670E" as well for that reason thinking Asus will have good bios support. My 7700x is a huge step up from my 6700k.
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I've been on the fence too, planning to get asus b650e-i strix as the previous strix I had (b660i) has great memory overclocking capabilities.

But the ryzen 7000 imc(s) so far are bad the max mem clock limited to 6800 (LoL).
So I hold back and wait till APU version (probably) release next year
 
Im waiting for the 7000 x3d but im starting to spec the system now. My use case is office work and gaming, that's it. Any particular reason that I shouldn't get a 'GIGABYTE B650M AORUS Elite AX'? It has built in wifi, bluetooth, 2 nvme slots though only 1 is pci 5. Only $200 on Amazon too. A few reviews complain that the x16 port (gpu port) is only PCI 4.0 and not PCI 5.0, but I saw tech powers ups review of PCI-E scaling on the 4090, and the difference between 3.0 and 4.0 was pretty small.

They do make 5.0 boards, but damn they aint cheap

On a related note, whats a good ddr 5 ram to use? I remember reading that the sweet spot for am5 was DDR-6000, so thats what I want to aim for. 16gb, non-rgb, not going to be use for overclocking the cpu, just gaming.
 
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Rev. Night said:
Im waiting for the 7000 x3d but im starting to spec the system now. My use case is office work and gaming, that's it. Any particular reason that I shouldn't get a 'GIGABYTE B650M AORUS Elite AX'? It has built in wifi, bluetooth, 2 nvme slots though only 1 is pci 5. Only $200 on Amazon too. A few reviews complain that the x16 port (gpu port) is only PCI 4.0 and not PCI 5.0, but I saw tech powers ups review of PCI-E scaling on the 4090, and the difference between 3.0 and 4.0 was pretty small.

They do make 5.0 boards, but damn they aint cheap

On a related note, whats a good ddr 5 ram to use? I remember reading that the sweet spot for am5 was DDR-6000, so thats what I want to aim for. 16gb, non-rgb, not going to be use for overclocking the cpu, just gaming.
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I've been pretty stalwart on saying i wouldn't upgrade this generation until Microcenter started throwing gobs of DDR-5 6000 out the window for free + substantial discounts for the new chips and motherboards. However, I may go this weekend and drop about 650 bucks and walk away with a Gigabyte X670 Aorus Elite AX which has surprisingly good reviews (but no PCIE 5.0 slot), a 7700X and 32 Gigs of DDR5-6000... that's 644 after taxes. I looked at intel 12 and 13th gen stuff but the dead platform is what's really stopping me there. AMD will (in theory) support this platform for the next 3-4 years.

So, as to your question. You have to do extensive research about the features of the individual boards. Each of these releases cuts out something, and no two boards are alike. The B650 series (non E eversions) have limited or no PCIE-5th GEN lanes, probably trash onboard audio (I always use my own discreet solution but this might be an issue for some people). So, looks like that board has 4 PCI-E 5 lanes, it's MATX, handles 60A instead of the 70 ln the 670 version. It's basically a stripped down version of the X670 Aorus Elite AX. Depends on your use case.

Sorry Missed the RAM thing: Lower CAS latency if possible, I think the entry level 6000 parts are 36... Here you're going to have to balance price of the RAM vs the benefits of the timings. You will likely be fine with anything that AMD can match their Fabric Speeds to at an equivalent level (so study what the Motherboard supports in RAM speeds too). Though fabric is less of a problem this gen.

I figure the MC special will get me on the platform and my investment will not be so brutal as to prevent me from considering adopting an X3D Chip as it emerges. I suspect they will be one CCD units not the speculated 2 CCD designs that seemingly have leaked... If you have a Microcenter nearby or even 1-2 hours away, its typically worth the drive.

UPDATE (AMD 7700X):

After like 20 Hours of rebuilds and nightmare fuel AMD early adopter woes I have given up. I had 2 motherboards: The Aorus X670 AX which was reviewed well and the Asrock X670E PG Lightning, 2 RAM kits the DDR5CL36 Gskill and the DDR5 CL30 Gskill. Brand new 1,000 Watt ROG PS.

The Aorus never made it into the OS an was never stable enough to flash the BIOS. This was the MC group of hardware that failed to function completely.

The Asrock X670E was stable enough to boot once, flash the BIOS to latest but EXPO memory training locked the system every time. This is the Amazon group of hardware that never worked properly.

Both boards required near constant CMOS clearing to function in any capacity.

I'm guessing you have to shoot high end to avoid issues this generation. Where with the X570 series stuff you could get stability and performance on the cheap... that is not true of the X670 stuff as far as I can tell.

Looks like I have verification from 2 Boards that the DDR5 CL36 was bad. Couldn't get it to boot on either board.

While the Gskill DDR5 CL30 booted into windows once it never locked at 6000, it only ran stable on the boards at 4800 Mhz.

This is probably the ugliest upgrade process I have ever lived through. Hell, I used to think setting IRQ and DMA addresses manually was bad. This process on 7000 Series was nightmare fuel. I swore a LOT during the process of the testing. The boot to BIOS times are slow as hell, the memory training times are absurd. The Adoption cost is ridiculous and ... First Gen Ryzen worked within minutes on a bullshit, immature BIOS that didn't even offer full support for RAM or many of their features until 6-12 months down the road. But it worked... Most Intel platforms I pickup work out of the box. After this experience, I may very well switch to Team Blue. I don't know how they can even sell this architecture with my experiences with it this past week.

Tossed in my 5900X and it fired fired right back up with no issues. After looking at the performance numbers in 4K I don't even know what I was thinking trying to upgrade, utterly pointless. If the AM5 shit had gone in smooth, I would have been pretty happy to be on a platform with some longevity. If all the 300 ish dollar Motherboards are garbage this gen, stay the hell away. I think AMD has some serious stability shit to work on for the average consumer.
 
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