Wednesday, May 1st 2024
AMD Ryzen 9 7900X3D Now at a Mouth-watering $329
AMD Ryzen 9 7900X3D, the 12-core/24-thread Socket AM5 processor with 3D V-cache, is selling at a new low price of just $329. A retailer-specific discount by AntOnline puts the processor at a price lower than the launch price of the Ryzen 7 7700X, and Core i5-14600K. While we haven't had a chance to test this chip, testing by Tom's Hardware puts its gaming performance higher than the Core i9-13900K, with a multithreaded productivity performance in a similar range. The 7900X3D probably suffers from bad sales due to the popularity of the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, which remains the fastest gaming processor, and the 7950X3D, which is AMD's flagship processor.
That's not all, prices of even some of the recently launched processors for the older Socket AM4 platform are on a slope, which could attract sales from those that want to upgrade. The Ryzen 7 5700X3D is a slightly slower version of the 5800X3D—the fastest gaming processor for AM4, with a gaming performance rivaling the Core i9-12900K. This new chip can be had at just $229 on Amazon US. The Ryzen 7 5800X was once a solid gaming processor when AMD dominated Intel's 10th- and 11th Gen, it's now going for just $179.
Source:
VideoCardz
That's not all, prices of even some of the recently launched processors for the older Socket AM4 platform are on a slope, which could attract sales from those that want to upgrade. The Ryzen 7 5700X3D is a slightly slower version of the 5800X3D—the fastest gaming processor for AM4, with a gaming performance rivaling the Core i9-12900K. This new chip can be had at just $229 on Amazon US. The Ryzen 7 5800X was once a solid gaming processor when AMD dominated Intel's 10th- and 11th Gen, it's now going for just $179.
104 Comments on AMD Ryzen 9 7900X3D Now at a Mouth-watering $329
Mind you the 13900K is a $475 CPU so it's a 43.9% price increase over the 7900X at $330 for 33% more MT performance. Objectively it's worse value for multi-threaded performance even at it's full power. Yes you get more MT performance overall but you are spending more money per point of performance. Enabling the baseline profile just makes it catastrophically bad value in comparison as you are just lowering performance at the same high price-tag.
That's before you consider that if you decide to run the 13900K at full power you have to spend on a motherboard and cooler than can handle it, thus making the value proposition even worse. If all the above weren't enough, there's also a potential that you'll have to accept lower performance due to Intel's stability issues that are still being investigated. The Intel platform is also a dead one while AM5 is not.
You could spend $45 more and get the 7950X or $100 more and get the 7950X3D if you wanted to match or beat the 13900K if you have the money to spend and want a superior platform. Alternatively if value is a concern the at $330 the 7900X is providing more of that.
The performance of the 7900X already has scheduling inefficiencies baked into the number. It's not something the end user has to deal with unless they explicitly want to go out of their way to increase performance above what benchmarks show.
They can pull this off because they are a local store and can afford to lose money on some items and make up for it on other items. No different than your local grocery store. With that being said I am thankful to have one near me and have been shopping at mine for a long time
When the 7950X3D is the fastest it's usually by a small margin, probably because it works as intended in games, which is pretty much like a 7800X3D. The clock speed difference between the two chiplets in question is only 250 MHz.
When the 7950X3D is the slowest it's slower by a wider margin on average, as the dual chiplet doesn't work well with the game in question.
A quick look at TPU's review shows that the 7950X3D is faster in 5 games, and slower in 7.
Given the price, it shouldn't be slower in any of them, but this gives me more info than saying that it's x % slower than the 7800X3D.
7900X3D: 17,840 million
7800X3D: 11,270 million
Clock Speed
7800X3D: up to 5 GHz
7900X3D: up to 5.6 GHz
L3 Cache
7900X3D: 128 MB (shared)
7800X3D: 96 MB (shared)
This is why the 7900X3D will make all of these statements that it is a weak/foolish CPU redundant. As I stated before, I you are on a 5900X and up and are thinking of jumping on AM5. The $5 makes the 7900X3D academic for me. I mean specs still matter right? As far as the scheduler goes, if Windows 11 was made to work better with Intel''s new chips AMD chips have also benefited from Windows updates in that regard and I am willing to bet that anyone on TPU could not tell me that my PC was slow if they used it for a week. The other caveat to all of it is in Gaming, when you have a 4K 144Hz Freesync panel does 120 Fps feel slower than 140? Well I can promise you that with Freesync even at 75 FPS you will not feel it either. Keep in mind that the 7900X3D has access to that entire 128MB of L3 Cache so that is how those 1% lows are Golden. I would not pair this with an Nvidia card either (personal choice) but AMD is doing something with their software that has the IGPU doing some things in Games. I can't tell you what but if it keeps data from going to Systen RAM or Page File you will feel that speed.
The only reason I am saying what I am saying is that the 7900X3D has been my main PC since I bought one at launch so I have had more than a year's use out of this machine. I also have plenty of other PCs to compare it to as well.
I said it when it was released and I still say it now. The Ryzen 9 X3D CPUs were a huge mistake on AMD's part and the cynicism of its creation really irked me. The R9-7900X3D is especially bad as there's literally nothing that stands out about this CPU to make it compelling to anyone.
The R9-7950X3D is at least compelling as AMD's current flagship CPU (overall, it still sucks though).
The R9-7950X is compelling as the most potent productivity CPU that AMD currently produces.
The R9-7900 offers the best overall value in the Ryzen 9 lineup along with the lowest power draw (TDP of only 65W) and comes with the Wraith Prism included, a CPU cooler that can easily handle it.
The R9-7900X3D can't game as well as the R7-7800X3D, it's not as productive as the R9-7900 or R9-7900X because of the clock and power limitations imposed upon it by the 3D V-Cache, something that has no place on a CPU that is most suited to productivity. The 3D V-Cache is also only on one of the R9-7900X3D's two CCXs which means that it's essentially a hexacore gaming CPU that can experience scheduling issues. Now, at $329, at least its price is compelling, because nothing else about it is.
Whoever made the decision to produce this CPU and price it the same as the R9-7950X instead of creating twice as many R5-3600X3D's should have had their employment at AMD terminated because it was literally the worst thing that they could do. High prices on AM5 parts literally crippled its adoption rate and this was only compounded by the fact that, until the R7-7800X3D was introduced, there weren't any really compelling CPUs for AM4 owners to upgrade to, because the R7-5800X3D is so damn good.
When you're a chipmaker that has adopted the practice of long-lived platforms (like AM4 is and AM5 is supposed to be), what you want is to get as many consumers on board as you can because they become a captive audience. I would estimate that over 90% of AM4 owners had the sense to stay with AM4 the whole way because being able to drop a CPU like the R7-5700X3D or R7-5800X3D into a motherboard from 2017 and get fantastic gaming performance without needing a new board or RAM is a huge boon for most consumers. This strategy not only brought AMD back from the brink of insolvency, it turned them into the market leader in less than five years, a turnaround that has never before been seen in the industry. If you had told me just ten years ago that AMD would be the CPU market leader after Intel had held a stranglehold on the CPU market for over 30 years, I would've asked you what drugs you were on (and where could I get some).
All AMD had to do to make AM5 an unmitigated success was to limit the 3D V-Cache to Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 models. Their pricing strategy was that an X3D CPU would be the same price as the X CPU from the tier above like this (with the exception of the R9-7950X3D of course because it was already the top-tier):
$R9-7900X3D = $R9-7950X
$R7-7800X3D = $R9-7900X
So, all AMD had to do was this: $R5-7600X3D = $R7-7700X and their adoption rate would have increased by a minimum of 50% with a doubling of the adoption rate not out of the realm of possiblity. Even if they didn't make huge profits initially, they would know that the users who adopted AM5 would be buying only AMD CPUs for the life of the platform. It's like Sony's brilliant tactic of making no profit (or even taking a loss) for every Playstation sold because they knew that someone who bought a Playstation would have to buy games (which is where they raked in massive profits). One cannot deny the success of Sony's method when one considers that the Playstation is the undisputed console king, holding a 57.5% share of the US console market.
An R5-7600X3D for the same price as the R7-7700X would've been a guaranteed home run for AMD. Instead they decided to bunt with the Ryzen 9 X3D CPUs (especially the R9-7900X3D) and this is the result, their attempted cash-grab is sitting on the shelves gathering dust just like the RX 7900 XT, RX 7700 XT, RTX 4060 16GB and RTX 4080 did.
It also doesn't help that AMD continues to churn out AM4 CPUs by the truckload, thereby cannibalising their own market for AM5. Unless you absolutely need PCIe 5.0, and again literally nobody does, you get very little benefit buying AM5 over AM4, and a much bigger hole in your wallet. So why would anyone buy AM5 then? This is the question AMD seems to be incapable of asking itself, let alone answering. Running a business based on what "the community" says it wants, is a good way to no longer have a business.
7900X3D is i7 competitor, and not i9. Still, it's super competitve with i9 in gaming, and way cheaper.
All complaints to greedy local distributors. Thank you. You can continue to complain, but why spam this thread with GPUs? Relax and enjoy good news about discounted CPUs. Great. Drink some water and apply a good lipstick.
The CPU was just poorly marketed and overpriced initially. Other than that, there's nothing worng with it. This is the best deal I have ever seen.
Also due to scheduling issues, on average 14700K is pretty close to the 7900X3D in gaming.
Yes the i7 also with 8 P-cores as the i9 is almost the same in gaming aka competitive with i9.
The difference is in clock speeds between the 2, the 14th i7 gen pretty much just got an overclock to close the gap with the i9.
It's very power efficient, while being excellent in many workloads for the price, such as media encoding, way faster than 7800X3D at it, plus still excellent in games I enjoy playing.
The problem with CPU was that it was poorly priced at the beginning and neglected by marketing, as all effort went elsewhere.
At this price, it's an outstanding value for buck. There is no doubt about it. 7950X3D sells well as power efficient productivity powerhouse. 7900X3D is a niche market offer for select group as people. In Germany alone it sells 70-100 units on a weekly basis, so there are folks who enjoy it.
Besides, AMD had a very strong Q1 revenues from client CPUs. Not all models need to sell the same amount. That's why we have diverse offer for different people.
I don't understand why people attack this CPU which was never created to be for majority of mainstream users, like 7800X3D is. In previous generation, majority of people never bought 5900X and it was, and is, a fantastic CPU. Some CPUs are for wider audiences, some not. It is as simple as that.
I mean, who are we to say that this current impopular product is more economically viable, than an 8 + 4 that could be sold for maybe $100 right now and have a better reputation?
It's all speculation, but using only 4 cores is bad for business, I get that. Putting it next to a 8 core 3D chip isn't the same thing, because now we're talking about AMD's theoretical next best CPU, which would be priced accordingly.
If the product tiering remains intact for two whoppin CPU generations the best gaming CPU bet would be at best a 9800X3D, no? There is no point whatsoever in overspending on CPUs for gaming. Never been.