AMD Ryzen 5800X3D Beats the Core i9-12900KS in First Gaming Benchmarks

AMD’s first V-cache enabled gaming CPU, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, will be released on April 20th. Despite it being officially unavailable, a Peruvian tech site has already bought one at retail. Like any good silicon steward, it’s been running benchmarks on the chip and posting them online. The website Xenogaming started off with several synthetic CPU tests before moving onto the real juicy stuff: gaming benchmarks. Though it’s just a single gaming benchmark so far, the chip’s extra L3 cache looks like it has the potential to make a big difference in gaming.

The website ran the benchmark for Shadow of the Tomb Raider with the developers of CapFrameX, which is a frame time analysis tool. As reported by Tom’s Hardware, the website ran the benchmark at 1280×720 resolution with low quality. This is a common tactic to remove the GPU from the equation. Despite this setup, the AMD and Intel systems used in the tests had different hardware, so it’s not a direct comparison. The Intel system used both a 12900K and 12900KS CPU with an RTX 3090 Ti and DDR5-4800 C40 RAM. The AMD rig had an RTX 3080 Ti with DDR4-3200 C14 memory, so its specs are slightly lower than the Intel system’s. Despite this advantage, the 5800X3D still outpaced both Intel chips in the lone gaming benchmark.

At 720p the 5800X3D was able to rack up a score of 231 fps, while the 12900KS was only able to achieve 200 fps. The vanilla Core i9-12900K tallied up a score of 190 fps. That’s quite a decisive victory over the 12900KS, which is likely clocked a lot higher than AMD’s chip. The Intel CPU can run two cores as high as 5.5GHz, or 5.2GHz on all cores. However, Xenogaming’s screenshots show the 5800X3D was clocked at 4.45GHz during testing. It also shows overall CPU utilization across all 8 cores at 84.5 percent, while running at a chilly 55C. That’s a stark contrast to the reported temps of the 12900KS, which can run at 100C with power limits lifted according to Tom’s Hardware’s testing. The 12900KS is also a $799 CPU, compared to the $449 MSRP of the 5800X3D. Suffice to say, AMD’s newest CPU just might dethrone Intel’s chip to claim the “fastest gaming CPU” crown. It might even do that despite not being allowed to overclock.

It’s going to need that crown to move some units too. Xenogaming first posted standard CPU tests and the results were underwhelming. As reported by Videocardz, it scored 1,639 and 10,498 points in Geekbench 5.4.4 single-core and multi-core tests. That single-core number is lower than a stock 5800X’s in the Geekbench database. The 5800X3D also performed worse than a 12900K in CPU-Z. It salvaged its reputation a bit in Blender, however, offering a slight performance boost from three to 11 percent. It should be noted that the 64MB of V-Cache AMD added to the chip is for gaming purposes. AMD has specifically said it’s a gaming CPU, so nobody should expect big performance increases in other applications. We’ll see for ourselves where these chips land when it officially launches in just over a week.

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