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AMD’s Ryzen 7000X3D processors will launch in February, the company told us at CES 2023, but now we have an alleged release date for the supercharged chips that will be of great interest to gamers – and it’s February 14.
OC3D (opens in new tab) saw that this release date was shared via the official webpage for the Ryzen 7 7800X3D on AMD’s site, but looking at the page now, that information has been removed (not before being caught on screen).
So we can assume this was an accidental leak by a less-than-cautious AMD employee, although as always we have to be a bit cautious about assuming the screenshot is real. We only have an image here and as we know photos can be manipulated.
However, OC3D seemingly took the screen grab themselves, as the image source is credited to AMD and not a third party, so it seems unlikely that this is a fabrication.
On February 14, we will not only see the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, but also the 7900X3D and 7950X3D. All of these chips will use 3D V-Cache to significantly improve gaming performance, as we saw with the 5800X3D of the Zen 3 family.
Analysis: Say it with flowers, or chocolates… or 3D V-Cache?
So the launch date is Valentine’s Day, but will we like AMD’s pricing? That remains to be seen. On the one hand, we witnessed price cuts on the still-fresh vanilla Ryzen 7000 CPUs late last year after sales weren’t great to begin with. However, that was partly a reflection of the total upgrade cost, taking into account the AM5 motherboard required (with no wallet-friendly options) and need for DDR5 RAM (unlike Raptor Lake, you can’t use DDR4, and DDR5 is still fairly pricey).
Now that there are more affordable AM5 motherboards around (and even cheaper ones shouldn’t be far away), and gamers are likely eager to get a piece of the Zen 4 3D V-Cache action, we can foresee AMD pushing a little harder with the prices here. Time will tell, but in any case, the Ryzen 9 spins on X3D are going to be expensive anyway.
Aside from the potential hole they could blow in your wallet, the other nagging concern about the higher end Ryzen 9 X3D models is how Windows might handle their new design. Basically, these CPUs have two CCDs (chiplets), but only one has the 3D V-Cache on top – the other runs at a higher boost rate instead. Now some games will benefit from more cache, and some will find the higher clocks more of a boon, so each game should be set up to favor the right CCD that is best for it.
Could that introduce problems and performance teething problems? Microsoft and AMD are working closely together to make sure this doesn’t happen in Windows gaming, but of course we won’t know until we get these processors in for review. It won’t be long now, and we can’t wait to see how they will perform and how much of a threat the new X3D CPUs will pose to Intel’s powerful Raptor Lake lineup.