AMD’s Ryzen 7000 CPUs are out and about, offering up to 40-50% more performance than their Zen 3 predecessors, albeit at a higher price. However, the added costs of an AM5 motherboard and DDR5 memory mean you’ll be spending twice as much to upgrade to a Zen 4 PC. If you’re a gamer into CPU-intensive ray-traced games, it’s a worthy investment to go alongside the GeForce RTX 4090/4080. Below, you can read our reviews of the Ryzen 7 7700X and the Ryzen 9 7900X:
CapFrameX has discovered that the Ryzen 9 7950X is faster in some gaming workloads with half of its cores disabled. With one of its CCDs (chiplet/die) disabled, it is 17% faster in Metro Exodus with better average and minimum frame rates. The reason behind this deficit is likely twofold. Firstly, the eight cores on the primary CCD run at a higher boost clock than the secondary (5.7GHz vs. 5.4GHz). Second, the inter-core latency is higher when both CCDs are turned on.
When the CPU runs with a single CCD enabled, all the game’s assets are on one die (at least as many can be cached). This results in lower overall latency and faster communication between the various cores on the die, especially with relatively lightly threaded workloads such as gaming. With both CCDs enabled, the resources are spread across the two chiplets with a non-zero distance, increasing the latency and performance in cache-sensitive workloads like gaming. Developers can alleviate this by programming the program to store data related to a particular process on the same die, but there are limits to this workaround.
Processors, PC gaming, and the past. I have written about computer hardware for over seven years with over 5000 published articles. I started during engineering college and haven't stopped since. On the side, I play RPGs like Baldur's Gate, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Divinity, and Fallout. Contact: areejs12@hardwaretimes.com.
