Enlarge / The AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

If you were intrigued by AMD's Ryzen 9 7950X3D but didn't want to spend $700 on a processor, the $450 Ryzen 7 7800X3D might be the chip you've been waiting for.

Like the more-expensive X3D chips, the 7800X3D is a regular Zen 4 processor with an extra 64MB of L3 cache stacked on top of it. That extra cache isn't always useful, but it does tend to boost game performance, and AMD has marketed the X3D series mostly to PC gamers looking for a processor to pair with high-end GPUs like the GeForce RTX 4090 and Radeon RX 7900 XTX.

The X3D chips all come with compromises, mainly in the form of lower clock speeds and less-flexible overclocking support. But if you mainly care about games, the good news is that the 7800X3D runs them just as well as the more-expensive 7950X3D for less money, and it does so without generating too much heat or using too much power.

Enlarge / AMD has announced pricing and availability for its newest 3D V-Cache desktop CPUs. (credit: AMD)

AMD's pumped-up, 3D V-Cache-equipped Ryzen 7000 desktop processors will be available to buy on February 28, the company announced today . The rollout will start with the 12-core Ryzen 9 7900X3D and the 16-core Ryzen 9 7950X3D, which will start at $599 and $699, respectively. A cheaper model, the eight-core Ryzen 7 7800X3D, will be available for $449 but won't launch until April 6.

All of these CPUs are successors to the original Ryzen 7 5800X3D, and their sales pitch is similar. AMD is stacking 64MB of additional L3 cache on top of the regular Ryzen 7000 CPUs, which can provide a big performance bump for software (like games) that is especially sensitive to cache sizes and speeds.

These prices are actually not all that much higher than the launch prices for the original Ryzen 7000 CPUs back in August—the 7950X3D has the same launch price as the 7950X, and the 7900X3D and 7800X3D are only $50 more expensive than their counterparts. But prices have come down a lot since then; the 7950X usually costs between $550 and $600 now , and non-X-series CPUs like the Ryzen 7 7700 and Ryzen 9 7950 are even cheaper. The X3D chips' prices will eventually come down, too, but they're still significantly more expensive than the versions without the extra cache.

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Shortly after our review of the Ryzen 5 7600X and Ryzen 9 7950X were published late last month, AMD sent us a box containing the other two members of the Ryzen 7000 launch family: the $400 Ryzen 7 7700X , and the $550 Ryzen 9 7900X .

Absent a six-core member of the family in the $200 range, AMD's eight-core, 16-thread processors usually represent a sweet spot in the lineup—great gaming performance without being overkill and enough cores to handle fairly heavy professional workloads like photo and video editing and rendering without feeling slow.

That's still true of the 7700X, which handily outspeeds the six-core 7600X and costs $50 less than the first 8-core member of the Ryzen 5000 family did a couple of years ago. Right now, it has two problems. The first is that, like the other Zen 4 CPUs, it requires a substantial investment beyond the $400 that you'll spend on the CPU itself in the form of a pricey new motherboard and DDR5 RAM that's still quite a bit more expensive than DDR4. The second is that its out-of-the-box power settings aren't ideal—with a little tuning, the processor can run a little cooler and consume less power while delivering similar results. Here's what we found.

Enlarge / The MSI MEG X670E Godlike raises interesting questions, like, "could God make a motherboard so expensive that even He could not afford it?" (credit: MSI)

Building a PC around a new processor is expensive at the best of times, and that's triple-true of AMD's new Ryzen 7000 chips. AMD has started with its $300-and-up high-end chips , leaving mid-range options until next year. The CPUs only support DDR5 RAM, which is still more expensive than DDR4 at the same capacities. And the first round of motherboards that include the new AM5 CPU socket are here, and they're pretty expensive.

The cheapest motherboard currently available from the likes of Newegg and Micro Center is the ASRock X670E PG Lightning , which, despite being the least expensive motherboard available, is an X670E board that will support PCIe 5.0 GPUs when they eventually arrive (even the newly announced GeForce RTX 4000-series still uses PCIe 4.0). The motherboard is missing a few features we like to see—no built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, limited audio outputs, relatively small heatsinks for the voltage-regulator modules (VRMs) and other components—but it does have four M.2 SSD slots of varying speeds and plenty of hookups for case fans and front USB ports.

If it's something you care about, the cheapest X670E board with Wi-Fi is also one of ASRock's, the X670E Pro RS , available for $280 at Newegg and Micro Center .

Enlarge / AMD's Ryzen 7600X, nestled into the brand-new Socket AM5. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

AMD's latest Ryzen processors are here , along with the Zen 4 CPU architecture that powers them. And if you don't want to wade through a bunch of words, tables, and charts, the short version is: They're pretty good! Even if we miss the days when AMD prioritized midrange systems as much as it did high-end ones, and even if Intel's offerings now are more compelling than they were in 2020 when Zen 3 was competing against the fifth consecutive iteration of Intel's Skylake architecture , there's a lot to appreciate here.

For those of you prepared to read on, this piece will focus on two Ryzen 7000 CPUs. AMD sent us a $299 six-core, 12-thread Ryzen 5 7600X and a $699 16-core, 32-thread Ryzen 9 7950X. These are (respectively) the lowest- and highest-end members of the Ryzen 7000 family as it exists today. (The company also provided a motherboard and DDR5 RAM, as well as travel and lodging for the Ryzen 7000 unveiling and tech sessions we attended in August.)

We'll compare both chips to each other as well as to various members of the Ryzen 5000 and 12th-generation Intel Core CPU families to get a sense of how Ryzen 7000 and Zen 4 improve on their immediate predecessors and their competition. If you're more interested in a high-level overview of the Zen 4 architecture, the AM5 socket and 600-series chipsets that AMD is also launching today, and other Ryzen odds and ends, that info is available in a separate piece for your reference and convenience.

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AMD's Ryzen 7000 launch is bigger than just the processors. The processor architecture is changing, but it's also being accompanied by changes to everything from the chipset to the physical socket that the chips plug into. The last time this many things changed at once was back in 2017, when the first-generation Ryzen chips originally launched .

So we're publishing two Ryzen pieces today. One is a look at the actual chips' performance and power efficiency, located here . This one will focus on all the other changes, including the ones that will be with us long after Ryzen 7000 is old news.

We'll split this piece up into four parts that cover the four major components of the Ryzen 7000 launch: 1) the Zen 4 CPU core, 2) the on-chip I/O die that supports the CPU's non-CPU features and handles internal connectivity, 3) the 600-series chipsets that handle most external connectivity, and 4) the physical AM5 socket that will outlive all of the other components by a few years.

Enlarge / This "170W" number caused some confusion earlier this week because there are so many different numbers you need to know to understand CPU power consumption now. (credit: AMD)

AMD released some of the first details about its upcoming Ryzen 7000 processors , 600-series chipsets, and the new AM5 CPU socket earlier this week. We learned that Ryzen 7000 chips will perform at least 15 percent faster than comparable Ryzen 5000 CPUs and that they'll require DDR5 RAM. We learned that all Ryzen 7000 chips will come with integrated RDNA2-based GPUs, though AMD still plans to offer a separate line of APUs with more capable integrated graphics for people who want to play games. And we found out some details about how PCIe 5.0 support will work for SSDs and GPUs.

Another bit of information AMD gave was about the AM5 socket's power limits—the amount of power an AM5 socket will be able to provide to a processor. Power limits have become more important for PC builders and enthusiasts as core counts have increased and power consumption has gone up. Some of our recent Intel CPU reviews have explored how differently the same processor can perform with different power settings, though we've also discovered that boosting performance this way can have diminishing returns (that is to say, you can double your power use without doubling your performance).

AMD's processors can work similarly, though the terminology is different. Intel uses different power limits, with the PL1 value determining power usage under a sustained workload and the PL2 value determining how much power the CPU can use in short bursts (a third number, Tau, defines how long the CPU will run at that PL2 limit). AMD has a few acronyms for different power figures , but the most relevant is package power tracking (PPT). PPT is the maximum power that a CPU package can draw from the processor socket.

Enlarge / AMD's Ryzen 7000 chips are due out in the next few months. (credit: AMD)

AMD first teased its upcoming Ryzen 7000-series CPUs and its new Zen 4 CPU architecture at CES back in January. The company said that the chips would use the new AM5 CPU socket, that they would be built on a 5 nm manufacturing process from TSMC, and that they would be available this fall.

None of those facts has changed, and AMD still hasn't announced pricing or more specific availability info for the new chips. But at its Computex keynote this week, AMD revealed a few additional details about the Ryzen 7000 processors and the motherboards and chipsets that will support them when they're all released to the public in the next few months.

Zen 4’s foundation: Socket AM5

If you build an AMD-based PC in the next few years, you'll probably be using socket AM5. (credit: AMD)

Before covering any specific features of Zen 4, Ryzen 7000, or AMD's 600-series chipsets, we should cover some basic facts about the upcoming AM5 CPU socket.