Everyone, including us, has recommended the AMD Ryzen 5700X3D
for gaming on a budget at some point or another.
But like, who wants to pay for a gaming PC that is out of date
before you even click add to cart? Not you, but fortunately, there's a secret gaming CPU,
one that goes blow for blow with the 5700X3D
and sits on a future-ready platform and, most importantly, is cheaper.
Meet the AMD Ryzen 5 7500F.
We ran it through the lab's gauntlet to find out if this, off-menu CPU,
is the one budget-minded gamers should be targeting. Just like we're targeting you,
it's you, Howard, with this segue, to our sponsor.
The 7500F isn't exactly new,
so why are we covering it now? Well, the main reason is that unlike CPUs
that come in retail boxes, this one is targeted at system builders and bulk buyers,
and therefore has mostly flown under our radar.
Now, you can find them on sites like New Egg, but at the time of writing,
the most reliable place to get one for a good price
seems to be Aliexpress, not exactly a mainstream US retailer.
But what is it? Well, on paper, it is strikingly similar
to a Ryzen 5 7600 non-X,
except that it lacks onboard graphics, hence the Dash F suffix, and hence the lower price.
There are some compromises here. Compared to the 5700X3D,
it's got only about one third of the cash,
none of AMD's amazing 3DV cash here, and being an OEM chip,
it comes with no AMD direct warranty or box cooler.
But if you're willing to live on the edge, it boosts nearly one gigahertz higher,
uses newer Zen 4 cores, supports faster DDR5 memory,
and sits in a more modern AM5 socket,
giving us room to upgrade it in the future. Let's see how these differences manifest in gaming.
Starting with our test that best isolate CPU performance,
the 7500F does pretty darn well. It trails the 7600X and 5700X3D in games like
Saber Punk and Shadow the Tomb Raider, but on average, it remains within striking distance,
falling short by a smaller gap than the price difference between those chips.
And that's kind of the worst case scenario. In games where clock speed is king, like Rocket League,
these 7500F sees a big lead of over 24%
over its primary competitor. And I say primary competitor,
because Intel still exists for now, but it's hard to call them competition.
When we throw in some similarly priced chips from Team Blue on the chart,
they do not put up a fight. Not a single one beats our 7500F even once.
Even worse, our other secret value gaming monster,
the Ryzen 8400F, gets in on the beatdown too.
Often available for just over $90.
Sometimes cheaper. This almost an 8600G, but without the iGPU,
beats the more expensive 1300F in all but one of our tests.
Even then, it was a draw for 1% lows, which I still consider to be a win.
Even considering that the 8400F is on average
about 20% slower than the 7500F,
and even occasionally falls behind the older 5600X in games like F1,
the price to performance of this little fella
is kind of outstanding. And that positive look continues
when we match our CPUs with GPUs that might be a little more price appropriate.
Price appropriate. Like this quality stretchy wicking button-up sports shirt
from LTTstore.com. Breach! As soon as we switch to a more reasonable 4060-class GPU,
both the 8400F and 7500F make us question why gamers are even bothering
with gaming CPUs at all. The 8400 does show its limitations more often,
but the 7500F stays remarkably close
to the old budget gaming king, even pulling slightly ahead overall at 1440P,
and matching the gold standard for PC gaming,
the 9800X3D in Cyberpunk and F124.
Of course, a lot of this changes once we swap out our GPU,
which we know from a lot of audience surveys, is the most likely upgrade to an existing system.
Paired with a 4070 Super, the 8400 starts to fall behind, especially at 1080P,
where on average, the 9800X3D beats its 1% lows by 41%,
which is a lot, even considering that it costs five times as much.
And remember, it's more fair to compare the total system price
versus the price of individual components when evaluating bang for the buck of a new PC purchase.
Focusing back in on our head-to-head showdown between the 7500F and the 5700X3D,
they trade blows with each other, performing about 15% better than the 8400F,
with the 7500F taking F1 in Rocket League
and the 5700X3D holding strong in Cyberpunk
and Shadow the Tomb Raider. As we jump to 1440P, the results are same-same,
but with smaller gaps. And by the time we make it all the way to 4K,
we're so GPU bound that even the 8400F
is back within a margin of error of the gold standard.
Now, this is where we had planned to end our testing, but then we thought, okay,
but what if we switch over to an RTX 4090
for some legitimate 4K gaming? That would obviously be a pretty imbalanced choice,
given that the MSRP of that GPU is more than 10 times the cost of our 7500F,
but wouldn't you know it, the little F gin that could
is breathing down the neck of the 9800X3D
in most games with the 1% lows of City Skylines 2
being the only really meaningful performance difference
across our UHD gaming testing. But what does all of that mean?
Well, first of all, while this isn't really news, it means, hot damn Intel, y'all need to get it together.
While AMD has dominated the CPU gaming performance charts
at both the mid-end and high-end for a while, their budget lineup has withered to almost nothing,
leaving an opportunity for Intel. An opportunity they should have taken while they had it,
because now, with these two stealthy budget risings,
it's hard to see a single bright spot for Team Blue.
I mean, we didn't even include the latest generation of Core Ultra chips in our testing,
because there aren't any Core Ultra CPUs
and compatible motherboards that are in a comparable price bracket.
That means that any Intel budget purchase is gonna be on a dead platform, yonkers.
But what about compared to AMD's own products? Should you be considering these effing cool chips?
Well, yeah, both offer strong real-world performance,
as long as you can find one for the right price. And while I lean more towards recommending the 7500F
as a long-term proposition for gamers, the 8400F is one of very few quality
sub-$100 processors these days, and could be a great way to game today
if you're on a strict budget. Just be aware that someday, and that day may never come.
Being limited to eight PCIe Gen4 lanes for your GPU
may make you feel the pinch, making this one the less future-proof of our options.
Though, of course, that won't matter if the only future-proofing you care about
is putting something new in your AM5 socket, sometime between now and 2027,
when AMD says that this platform will be abandoned.
Oh, and there is one more thing. While AliExpress is pretty reliable these days,
we actually ordered a second chip off of Newegg just to make sure,
and we found that both were equally genuine, import tariffs could impact the viability of these CPUs
for our American neighbors. Wait, sorry, did I say one more thing?
I meant two more things, and the second is this segue to our sponsor.
If you're looking for a GPU to pair with your new CPU, we've reviewed a ton of GPUs recently
with the AMD RX9070 and 9070XT
looking like a pretty solid match for the 7500F,
as long as you can get it at a fair price. Or actually, maybe the Intel B580.
Wow, what a hellfroze over system that would be.
AMD CPU Intel GPU.