With the launch of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, the latest Ryzen CPU to feature 3D V-Cache, AMD has extended its gaming lead over Intel even further. Intel’s Core Ultra Arrow Lake processors, which weren’t able to hang with the vanilla Zen 5 CPU much less than the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, now look even worse gaming chips.
For instance, we noted in our review that the Ryzen 7 9800X3D not only beats the Ryzen 7 7800X3D but does so without consuming any more energy. Moreover, this increase in gaming performance has coincided with a lower operating temperature and a 200 MHz bump in the boost frequency. On the topic of the latter, Asus China’s Tony Yu has now pushed the Ryzen 7 9800X3D to far beyond its clock speed limit with the use of Liquid Nitrogen (LN2) and the results are pretty impressive.
Ryzen 7 9800X3D boost clock reached an incredible 6.9 GHz in Counter-Strike 2 during Tony Yu’s testing, resulting in a frame rate of 1,200 FPS. In Cinebench R23 Multi-Core, the overclocked Ryzen 7 9800X3D appears to net a score of 30,513 or a 31% increase vs our review sample.
Granted, these benchmarks were run with the Ryzen 7 9800X3D under LN2 cooling, so this isn’t a scenario that many users will find themselves in. But, the sheer capability of the CPU on show is a sight of behold, especially when we consider that the Ryzen X3D CPUs have always suffered in the frequency department compared to the non-X3D counterparts.
Ryzen X3D clock speeds have historically trailed non-X3D chips
Ever since the release of the first Ryzen chips with 3D V-Cache, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, the X3D chips have lagged behind their non-X3D brethren in terms of clock frequencies. For instance, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D took a 400 MHz and 200 MHz hit to the base and boost clock vs the Ryzen 7 5800X. Similarly, the Ryzen 5 7600X3D had a 600 MHz base and boost clock disadvantage vs the Ryzen 5 7600X (Available on Amazon). Other Zen4X3D CPUs like the Ryzen 9 7900X3D, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, and the Ryzen 7 7800X3D also follow the same pattern.
The Zen 5 Ryzen 7 9800X3D bucks this trend a little with a 900 MHz higher base clock and a 200 MHz slower boost clock than the 8-core Ryzen 7 9700X. With the architectural and structural improvements that AMD has been able to pack into the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, the clock speed gap will hopefully shrink further in the future.
Source(s)
Asus China/Tony Yu, VideoCardz, Teaser image: Sandro Katalina on Unsplash, edited