Torn between 5800X3D and 7800X3D

[asdek]

Hey guys, currently I have a B450m Pro M2 Max mobo, and I've had people say that it's not enough for a 5800X3D and that I should get a new mobo if I wanna use it. So I've been considering waiting for the 7800X3D instead, but the AM5 build I'm thinking of is 568$ more expensive in my country than upgrading my mobo and buying 5800X3D. Also I've seen people having issues with AM5 and I just don't know if AM5 would be worth the price for me.

I'm also building purely for playing simulation games like EU4, VIC3, Stellaris, Factorio etc. so the 3D cache is a must. I do wanna upgrade my cpu in 3-5 years, and maybe AM5 will have more reasonable prices then?

 

[Dr. Dro]

Welcome to TPU, friend! That motherboard will be fine for the 5800X3D. Just update the BIOS beforehand, the 5800X3D is not a power hungry processor, and can be quite well optimized to reduce power consumption further. It's the route you should take, since you can get it, a nice 32 GB DDR4 kit and still pocket hundreds to spend on other things.

All of these sim games that you have mentioned will run smooth as butter on the 5800X3D. It's a no brainer, really. The 7800X3D will require an expensive motherboard (as even the cheapest AM5 boards are still relatively pricy), a mandatory upgrade to DDR5 (which will set you back with the cost of a new memory kit, as well), and it will be quite pricy itself in comparison to the 5800X3D.

From a value-minded perspective, I would not upgrade to it in your situation. Good luck!

 

[asdek]

Welcome to TPU, friend! That motherboard will be fine for the 5800X3D. Just update the BIOS beforehand, the 5800X3D is not a power hungry processor, and can be quite well optimized to reduce power consumption further. It's the route you should take, since you can get it, a nice 32 GB DDR4 kit and still pocket hundreds to spend on other things.

All of these sim games that you have mentioned will run smooth as butter on the 5800X3D. It's a no brainer, really. The 7800X3D will require an expensive motherboard (as even the cheapest AM5 boards are still relatively pricy), a mandatory upgrade to DDR5 (which will set you back with the cost of a new memory kit, as well), and it will be quite pricy itself in comparison to the 5800X3D.

From a value-minded perspective, I would not upgrade to it in your situation. Good luck!

I admit it's the motherboard that I'm most scared of. I've had someone even say I could damage my system with the 5800x3d if I don't upgrade my mobo. But at the same time, as you say, AM5 is so expensive right now, and I don't want to buy something like the b650 ds3h since I don't know if such an entry level board could handle the later AM5 cpus like a possible 9800x3d or something.

Also, if I keep the mobo, do you think I would have any problems mounting a Noctua NH-D15 on it since it's a mATX board?

 

[Dr. Dro]

I admit it's the motherboard that I'm most scared of. I've had someone even say I could damage my system with the 5800x3d if I don't upgrade my mobo. But at the same time, as you say, AM5 is so expensive right now, and I don't want to buy something like the b650 ds3h since I don't know if such an entry level board could handle the later AM5 cpus like a possible 9800x3d or something.

Also, if I keep the mobo, do you think I would have any problems mounting a Noctua NH-D15 on it since it's a mATX board?

That is very very unlikely, it's a basic motherboard but it's not an active fire hazard either. The most that can happen is that you won't get every last MHz out of the chip. It may not be suitable for overclocking, but the 5800X3D is locked. Instead of overclocking it, you can improve its performance by optimizing the voltage and frequency curve with AMD's Curve Optimizer, and almost every 5800X3D will do -30 on all 8 cores without much difficulty. Folks on the forum will be quite happy to help you out with that once you have the upgrade done.

The Noctua NH-D15 is compatible with your motherboard, you should have no problems according to Noctua's website. They're pretty reliable with that:

MSI B450M Pro-M2 Max | Motherboard Compatibility | Noctua Compatibility Centre

Socket: AM4

ncc.noctua.at

If you're concerned about RAM clearance, you could get the D15S which has better clearance for the memory as it comes with only one center fan configuration instead.

 

[asdek]

That is very very unlikely, it's a basic motherboard but it's not an active fire hazard either. The most that can happen is that you won't get every last MHz out of the chip. It may not be suitable for overclocking, but the 5800X3D is locked. Instead of overclocking it, you can improve its performance by optimizing the voltage and frequency curve with AMD's Curve Optimizer, and almost every 5800X3D will do -30 on all 8 cores without much difficulty. Folks on the forum will be quite happy to help you out with that once you have the upgrade done.

The Noctua NH-D15 is compatible with your motherboard, you should have no problems according to Noctua's website. They're pretty reliable with that:

MSI B450M Pro-M2 Max | Motherboard Compatibility | Noctua Compatibility Centre

Socket: AM4

ncc.noctua.at

If you're concerned about RAM clearance, you could get the D15S which has better clearance for the memory as it comes with only one center fan configuration instead.

It looks like I'll be buying 5800x3d and nh-d15 and see how it works out. Switching to AM5 when it's matured more and has more price/performance units sounds like the smarter thing to do as well. Thank you for all your help!

 

[Dr. Dro]

It looks like I'll be buying 5800x3d and nh-d15 and see how it works out. Switching to AM5 when it's matured more and has more price/performance units sounds like the smarter thing to do as well. Thank you for all your help!

You're welcome! Doing the curve optimizer stuff should lower the power consumption and ease up on your motherboard considerably, worst case scenario you can also enable Eco mode to make it as power efficient as any other CPU at the cost of some frequency. With the release of the 7800X3D, some people will also be getting ready to adopt DDR5 and AM5, so you may just find a very good deal on a high-end motherboard eventually. Just keep an eye on your local classifieds or eBay.

All in all, I think buying the 5800X3D now is a good idea.

 

[Shou Miko]

It looks like I'll be buying 5800x3d and nh-d15 and see how it works out. Switching to AM5 when it's matured more and has more price/performance units sounds like the smarter thing to do as well. Thank you for all your help!

I ran my old 5800X3D with only the middle fan on my NH-D15 Chromax Black and it kept the cpu cool and not bad nose either.

at the moment I am running a AMD Ryzen 7 7700 non-X and the NH-D15 still a wonderful performer.

I am not sure if I will upgrade to the 7800X3D but that depends on time and games.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

You really can't go wrong either way investing in am5 will last you likely much longer than am4 but the need to upgrade a 5800X3D might not be necessary for 2-3 generations.

 

[Selaya]

You really can't go wrong either way investing in am5 will last you likely much longer than am4 but the need to upgrade a 5800X3D might not be necessary for 2-3 generations.

doubt you'd want to keep your 1st-gen am5 board for later ryzens (well maybe one of those $1,000 halo boards ig), im pretty sure all the cheap(-ish) boards will bottleneck your memory speeds once later ryzens support something >6200mt/s

 

[Chrispy_]

It looks like I'll be buying 5800x3d and nh-d15 and see how it works out. Switching to AM5 when it's matured more and has more price/performance units sounds like the smarter thing to do as well. Thank you for all your help!

I just installed a couple of 5800X3D in my AM4 boards two days ago, evicting a vanilla 5800X in the process, not because it was struggling in any way, but because the 7950X3D is the best we'll likely see for a good year or so, and it's simply not enough of a gaming improvement over the 5800X3D to justify the insane $1000+ outlay that a whole new platform will cost. I figured doubling-down on AM4 for a generation or two is the right choice in today's market - especially for gaming.

I'm testing AM5 at work and it's fine but I'm not overly-impressed with the performance/$ and it still feels a bit rough around the edges - I'm not keen on being a paying beta-tester for AMD, Asus, MSI, Gigabyte etc...

Games don't currently need PCIe Gen5 in any way and by the time Gen5 is starting to show any use whatsoever, you'll probably be at the 3-5year point down the road you were talking about.
You've saved yourself a ton of money by not buying AM5. If you already have good DDR4-3200-CL14 or better, then you're all set, but if you're running cheaper RAM, pick up a kit of 3600CL16 to get the most out of your new CPU.

doubt you'd want to keep your 1st-gen am5 board for later ryzens (well maybe one of those $1,000 halo boards ig), im pretty sure all the cheap(-ish) boards will bottleneck your memory speeds once later ryzens support something >6200mt/s

Probably like trying to run Zen3 in an early Zen1 B350/x370 board. BIOS support was flaky, late to arrive (after some arguments over broken promises and backlash from the community) RAM speeds and compatibility was sub-par once those BIOS updated eventually arrived, and all of the board vendors learned from (and fixed) so many mistakes they'd made with 1st-gen AM4, making the 2nd-gen B450/X470 boards much more than just an updated chipset - they were the first "decent" AM4 boards generation.

Never be the early adopter unless you have excess free time, money to burn, and you enjoy being the proverbial guinea-pig.

 

[Selaya]

pcie5.0 is a 100% certified upsell and waste of poor consumers money.
im sad to see ppl fall for that ploy, but pcie5.0 will be 100% useless for the entire useful lifetime of am5 (now that optane's dead). mark my words.

 

[Chrispy_]

That is very very unlikely, it's a basic motherboard but it's not an active fire hazard either. The most that can happen is that you won't get every last MHz out of the chip.

I was playing with benchmarks and stress-testing one of my 5800X3Ds yesterday and the most I could feed it, even in the most ridiculously unrealistic power-virus way was about 135A (EDC). This is on a decent X570S board that I've seen feed 190A to a 5950X so even given all the power it wants, the 5800X3D really isn't very hard to drive.

I don't think I've seen many AM4 boards that can't handle 135A, IIRC even a 3800X needs 140A for a motherboard to claim it supports the CPU properly.

pcie5.0 is a 100% certified upsell and waste of poor consumers money.
im sad to see ppl fall for that ploy, but pcie5.0 will be 100% useless for the entire useful lifetime of am5 (now that optane's dead). mark my words.

Agreed. We're 4+ years into PCIe 4.0 SSDs and I would bet my house that if you took 100 consumers and blind-tested them to do their regular daily things, not a single one of them would be able to tell the difference between Gen3 and Gen4 without opening up a synthetic benchmark to see numbers. Real data needs to be processed by an application and that's the bottleneck. NVMe 3.0 x2 SSDs are just about fast enough to shift the bottleneck away from the storage interface and over to even the fastest CPUs on the market right now in just about every conceivable consumer application.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

doubt you'd want to keep your 1st-gen am5 board for later ryzens (well maybe one of those $1,000 halo boards ig), im pretty sure all the cheap(-ish) boards will bottleneck your memory speeds once later ryzens support something >6200mt/s

Possibly, I've been torn between dropping a 5800X3D into one or my system vs doing an am5 upgrade it's a hard decision to make because regardless of how viable a 5800X3D will be 2-3 years from now a 7800X3D is going be even better. Especially with high end gpus like a 5090/8900XTX down the line.

I have 2 very good am4 boards which should make a 5800X3D a no brainer but I'm still at least waiting till I see it compared to a 7800X3D with a 4090 at 1440p/4k

 

[Selaya]

i'd have said that the problem is more due to the fact that nand isn't properly bit-addressible which means it's bottlenecked on random performance, and conveniently its the random performance that matters most for (perceived) speed - optane (which is properly bit-addressible ... i believe? :^]) would've made sense for faster mt/s storage; however its prohibitive cost means that even despite its usefulness for certain workstation/server workloads it's going no-fucking-where simply because the amount of people willing to spend $3/gb on such a class of storage is too low to continue its developement.

so yeah, as long as we're stuck w/ nand for storage the bandwidth will remain useless.

as for gpus, there will certainly come a day where pcie5.0x16 will make a noticeable difference (compared to pcie4.0x16), but looking back it's safe to assume that will happen when am5 has exhausted its useful lifetime (well, maybe not quite, but if we were to give, lets say an 8700K pcie4.0 it would be all but wasted regardless even tho the 13900K's seeing a 2% performance uptick - the 8700K is simply not powerful enough to get to those performances to begin w/)

but yeah, i digress

Possibly, I've been torn between dropping a 5800X3D into one or my system vs doing an am5 upgrade it's a hard decision to make because regardless of how viable a 5800X3D will be 2-3 years from now a 7800X3D is going be even better. Especially with high end gpus like a 5090/8900XTX down the line.

I have 2 very good am4 boards which should make a 5800X3D a no brainer but I'm still at least waiting till I see it compared to a 7800X3D with a 4090 at 1440p/4k

wait 2-3 years and buy x770 instead

 

[Chrispy_]

I have 2 very good am4 boards which should make a 5800X3D a no brainer but I'm still at least waiting till I see it compared to a 7800X3D with a 4090 at 1440p/4k

Did the 7950X3D review not convince you to stay with AM4? That's all it took for me.

The 7800X3D will lose the benefit of the 7950X3D's choice of faster clocked cores or cache, so it'll run like the simulated 7800X3D, albeit at slightly lower clock speeds too.

IMO, the difference between the simulated 7800X3D and 5800X3D was marginal for everything except possibly 240Hz gaming. I have 1440p240 but I play at 120Hz with strobing by choice. If you really really want the high framerates from your 4090 rather than the high-resolutions, then yeah - you can argue that the marginal improvement of the (simulated) 7800X3D is worth the enormous cash outlay and effort involved.

You really do need to take a look at specific games and specific resolutions though, becuause unless you spend huge amounts of time with a title that sees any significant gain from zen4, you can forget it. Newer games will be more demanding on GPUs and bring framerates down year-over-year meaning that the AM5 advantage will vanish as newer games push your 4090 harder.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

wait 2-3 years and buy x770 instead

I definitely need to grab a 5800X3D at a min my 5800X/5950X struggle in some games even at 4k with a 4090 especially with heavy RT.

Grabbing X670 wouldn't prevent me from Grabbing X770. I always have two semi up to date systems one targeting 1440p the other 4k.

Did the 7950X3D review not convince you to stay with AM4? That's all it took for me.

The 7800X3D will lose the benefit of the 7950X3D's choice of faster clocked cores or cache, so it'll run like the simulated 7800X3D, albeit at slightly lower clock speeds too.

IMO, the difference between the simulated 7800X3D and 5800X3D was marginal for everything except possibly 240Hz gaming. I have 1440p240 but I play at 120Hz with strobing by choice. If you really really want the high framerates from your 4090 rather than the high-resolutions, then yeah - you can argue that the marginal improvement of the (simulated) 7800X3D is worth the enormous cash outlay and effort involved.

You really do need to take a look at specific games and specific resolutions though, becuause unless you spend huge amounts of time with a title that sees any significant gain from zen4, you can forget it. Newer games will be more demanding on GPUs and bring framerates down year-over-year meaning that the AM5 advantage will vanish as newer games push your 4090 harder.

It made it very tempting for sure. Only the Motherboards I'd actually want to own MSRPs are holding me back lol.

As dumb as it may seem it's hard for me to swallow spending 700 on a motherboard even though I have zero issues with a 1700 gpu lol.

 

[Selaya]

id just buy 5800x3d and then skip x670 then

 

[asdek]

I just installed a couple of 5800X3D in my AM4 boards two days ago, evicting a vanilla 5800X in the process, not because it was struggling in any way, but because the 7950X3D is the best we'll likely see for a good year or so, and it's simply not enough of a gaming improvement over the 5800X3D to justify the insane $1000+ outlay that a whole new platform will cost. I figured doubling-down on AM4 for a generation or two is the right choice in today's market - especially for gaming.

I'm testing AM5 at work and it's fine but I'm not overly-impressed with the performance/$ and it still feels a bit rough around the edges - I'm not keen on being a paying beta-tester for AMD, Asus, MSI, Gigabyte etc...

Games don't currently need PCIe Gen5 in any way and by the time Gen5 is starting to show any use whatsoever, you'll probably be at the 3-5year point down the road you were talking about.
You've saved yourself a ton of money by not buying AM5. If you already have good DDR4-3200-CL14 or better, then you're all set, but if you're running cheaper RAM, pick up a kit of 3600CL16 to get the most out of your new CPU.


Probably like trying to run Zen3 in an early Zen1 B350/x370 board. BIOS support was flaky, late to arrive (after some arguments over broken promises and backlash from the community) RAM speeds and compatibility was sub-par once those BIOS updated eventually arrived, and all of the board vendors learned from (and fixed) so many mistakes they'd made with 1st-gen AM4, making the 2nd-gen B450/X470 boards much more than just an updated chipset - they were the first "decent" AM4 boards generation.

Never be the early adopter unless you have excess free time, money to burn, and you enjoy being the proverbial guinea-pig.

Current AM5 mobo's are stupid expensive as it is, but not being able to upgrade to the latest AM5 cpus for their price isn't something I wanna risk. Would rather wait a couple years and buy into AM5 with much better mobos that guarantees I'll be able to run the latest the platform will have to offer. Besides, as it is I've seen people return their entire systems, trying to figure out why it's not stable and spending this much money and possibly ending up with a problematic system is crazy.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Current AM5 mobo's are stupid expensive as it is, but not being able to upgrade to the latest AM5 cpus for their price isn't something I wanna risk. Would rather wait a couple years and buy into AM5 with much better mobos that guarantees I'll be able to run the latest the platform will have to offer. Besides, as it is I've seen people return their entire systems, trying to figure out why it's not stable and spending this much money and possibly ending up with a problematic system is crazy.

I've built 5 AM5 system for people admittedly all with 400+ motherboards all have been awesome so far. Both Win 10/11

The only issue if you can call it that is the 90+ C the majority of am5 cpus run stock it makes people uncomfortable especially ones who've switched from intel..

 

[Chrispy_]

I've built 5 AM5 system for people admittedly all with 400+ motherboards all have been awesome so far. Both Win 10/11

I'm just finding the constant need for OS scheduler fixes, finicky DDR5 support for 5600 and 6000 kits, and frequent AGESA updates a bit of a faff. It's no worse than Zen1's launch was, but I was kind of expecting AMD and board manufacturers to have learned from those mistakes of 6 years ago. Clearly, I'm not half as cynical as I need to be and hopelessly naïve/optimistic

The only issue if you can call it that is the 90+ C the majority of am5 cpus run stock it makes people uncomfortable especially ones who've switched from intel..

Hah, not sure those people would be happy with 12th/13th Gen i9's either. AM5 is hot, but 12900K/13900K are way worse!

 

[asdek]

I've built 5 AM5 system for people admittedly all with 400+ motherboards all have been awesome so far. Both Win 10/11

The only issue if you can call it that is the 90+ C the majority of am5 cpus run stock it makes people uncomfortable especially ones who've switched from intel..

Where I live at least, the price/performance difference between 5800x3d build and 7800x3d build doesn't seem to be worth it. Looks like it makes more sense to wait for more AM5 products to come out and for prices to come down.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Where I live at least, the price/performance difference between 5800x3d build and 7800x3d build doesn't seem to be worth it. Looks like it makes more sense to wait for more AM5 products to come out and for prices to come down.

Region Definitely makes a huge difference. The 5800X3D is an awesome cpu that'll last you years. Can't go wrong with one.

I'd probably keep your motherboard though unless you need features it doesn't offer. Just make sure you have good case airflow and you should be fine.

 

[Chrispy_]

I mean, if you don't have a 4090 there's no difference between the 5800X3D or AM5 options.
If you do have, or plan to have a 4090, then these are the two most relevant results.

For sim games like Factorio, there's nothing TPU tests that really measures turn-time or tick rate. Check Hardware unboxed on Youtube, they test with Factorio and The Riftbreaker at least.
Here is a perfect example of when I say AM5 is "rough around the edges". Scheduler issues, Factorio running on the wrong cores, getting absolutely annihilated by the 5800X3D:

By the time all the kinks with AM5 are worked out, the next-gen will be here and Ryzen 7000 will be half the price they currently cost.

 

[asdek]

I mean, if you don't have a 4090 there's no difference between the 5800X3D or AM5 options.
If you do have, or plan to have a 4090, then these are the two most relevant results.

View attachment 287501View attachment 287502

For sim games like Factorio, there's nothing TPU tests that really measures turn-time or tick rate. Check Hardware unboxed on Youtube, they test with Factorio and The Riftbreaker at least.
Here is a perfect example of when I say AM5 is "rough around the edges". Scheduler issues, Factorio running on the wrong cores, getting absolutely annihilated by the 5800X3D:

View attachment 287505

By the time all the kinks with AM5 are worked out, the next-gen will be here and Ryzen 7000 will be half the price they currently cost.

Wow this is insane. Thanks for sharing this, people called out potential scheduler issues when these chips were first announced, and it looks like AMD failed to prove them wrong. Again, thanks for this, it's so hard to find people test these chips on sim games even though they are when they shine the most.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

I mean, if you don't have a 4090 there's no difference between the 5800X3D or AM5 options.
If you do have, or plan to have a 4090, then these are the two most relevant results.

View attachment 287501View attachment 287502

For sim games like Factorio, there's nothing TPU tests that really measures turn-time or tick rate. Check Hardware unboxed on Youtube, they test with Factorio and The Riftbreaker at least.
Here is a perfect example of when I say AM5 is "rough around the edges". Scheduler issues, Factorio running on the wrong cores, getting absolutely annihilated by the 5800X3D:

View attachment 287505

By the time all the kinks with AM5 are worked out, the next-gen will be here and Ryzen 7000 will be half the price they currently cost.

I definitely wouldn't grab the 7950X3D.... As nice as it is overall the 7800X3D especially with the total cost of the platform makes a lot more sense and doesn't have the scheduling issues.

Wow this is insane. Thanks for sharing this, people called out potential scheduler issues when these chips were first announced, and it looks like AMD failed to prove them wrong. Again, thanks for this, it's so hard to find people test these chips on sim games even though they are when they shine the most.

The simulated 7800X3D obliterates the 5800X3D, Well it's 80 updates ps faster anyway.....



Although I've seen others who test this game and the 13900K comes out on top I usually just ignore this result in techspots testing.