AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D falls short of 7950X in benchmarks

Will we see the X3D series flop?

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The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D is set to release alongside the 7900X3D on the 28th of February 2023, since we’re merely days away from release. It’s a miracle we’ve avoided leaks for this long. However, we just got our first leak regarding the performance of the 7950X3D.

Now read: Ryzen 9 7950X3D where to buy

We don’t have any gaming benchmarks yet, but we have some Geekbench data snagged from the Geekbench database. Below we will compare the performance of the 7950X3D to other CPUs using the Geekbench database.

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AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D performance

The Geekbench database paints a surprising picture of the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, with all the hype we have seen from AMD about double-digit gains we expected a little more from it. The results are as follows:

• Geekbench Single: 2157
• Geekbench Multi: 21841

As we can see, this is a valid score, submitted on the 17th of February 2023. This suggests that reviewers already have sampled a full 11 days ahead of launch.

We like to use our own in-house data when comparing CPUs of any nature if we can, so we compiled all the Zen 4 CPUs we had and tested them all in Geekbench 5 to see if they stack up against the 7950X3D. The results are as follows:

AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D

• Geekbench Single: 2157
• Geekbench Multi: 21841

AMD Ryzen 9 7950X

• Geekbench Single: 2237
• Geekbench Multi: 21920

AMD Ryzen 9 7900X

• Geekbench Single: 2209
• Geekbench Multi: 19020

AMD Ryzen 9 7600X

• Geekbench Single: 2143
• Geekbench Multi: 11320

As you can see, the 7950X3D falls behind, but it isn’t the end of the world, let us explain why.

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Ryzen 9 7950X3D benchmarks: don’t panic

The nature of the new 3D V-cache added to the Ryzen X3D series of CPUs means that AMD’s new CPUs have to be limited in thermal capacity. This is due to the extreme thermal sensitivity characteristic of 3D V-cache.

It’s a miracle that the performance of the 7950X3D isn’t more affected by the new cache. If you take the 5800X3D for example, AMD’s first implementation of 3D V-cache. You can see that its performance was heavily affected in areas that do not utilize the cache. However, this time around it’s not as extreme.

The 3D V-cache in the Ryzen 7000 X3D series is only stacked on one CCD, meaning only one cluster is affected by the limitations placed on it by the V-cache. It also does not give us much of a glimpse of how well the 7950X3D will do in gaming scenarios. Gaming workloads utilize the new 3D v-cache, allowing the 7950X3D to do much better in them than synthetic multi-core workloads.

The takeaway from this is that it’s better than it looks, and the performance we have seen could have been much worse. We will have to wait for reviewers to release benchmarks to get a full picture of the X3D series performance.