1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,640 This is how I used to eat breakfast. And this is how I eat breakfast now. 2 00:00:05,640 --> 00:00:09,560 See the difference? Thanks to the Ryzen 7 9850X3D, 3 00:00:09,560 --> 00:00:12,800 I now do everything 7.69% faster, 4 00:00:12,800 --> 00:00:17,320 which doesn't sound like a big deal, but as far as mid-generation refreshes go, 5 00:00:17,320 --> 00:00:22,400 this one is pretty all right. TLDR, it costs a few dollars more for a chip 6 00:00:22,400 --> 00:00:25,680 that is by and large the same as the 9800X3D 7 00:00:25,680 --> 00:00:29,320 that you already know and love, except it boosts its clock speeds higher, 8 00:00:29,320 --> 00:00:33,240 resulting in measurable gains across productivity and eSports gaming. 9 00:00:33,240 --> 00:00:36,800 And it does so without running hotter or louder 10 00:00:36,800 --> 00:00:40,720 or drawing a ton more power. Is it the most exciting chip launch 11 00:00:40,720 --> 00:00:43,960 we've ever seen from AMD? No, but it never claimed to be. 12 00:00:43,960 --> 00:00:48,200 It's just some mid-generation fine wine aging for the AM5 platform, 13 00:00:48,200 --> 00:00:52,680 while we wait for a true successor based on Zen 6 toward the end of this year or early next. 14 00:00:52,680 --> 00:00:58,760 So with that in mind, let's take a look at performance to see who should be interested in the 9850X3D 15 00:00:58,760 --> 00:01:03,240 and maybe more importantly, who should be holding on to their existing hardware 16 00:01:03,240 --> 00:01:06,640 and saving their money. And also, who should be checking out our sponsor? 17 00:01:06,640 --> 00:01:09,480 ["RTX 5090s"] 18 00:01:15,480 --> 00:01:18,680 RTX 5090s are in short supply, even here at LTT. 19 00:01:18,680 --> 00:01:22,400 So we set up four identical benches with RTX 4090s 20 00:01:22,400 --> 00:01:27,520 and got right to work on gaming performance where AMD's claims were immediately validated. 21 00:01:27,520 --> 00:01:32,800 The king got a little king glir with the 9850X3D leading the pack 22 00:01:32,800 --> 00:01:36,880 across our entire suite of eSports titles and 1080p benchmarks. 23 00:01:36,880 --> 00:01:41,760 Now I could spend the rest of my slideshow presentation here talking about the cases where it leads by a little bit 24 00:01:41,760 --> 00:01:47,000 and the ones where it leads by a little bit more. But instead, I'm simply gonna say it wins 25 00:01:47,000 --> 00:01:52,000 and I'm gonna use the rest of my time to explain why reviewers even bother to test like this. 26 00:01:52,000 --> 00:01:55,640 I mean, surely no one buying a $500 gaming CPU 27 00:01:55,640 --> 00:01:59,520 is gonna be running at 1080p low on an RTX 4090, right? 28 00:01:59,520 --> 00:02:05,480 Well, yeah, you're right. But we do this because we wanna know which chip is faster, period. 29 00:02:05,480 --> 00:02:09,080 Not which one handles better, not which one is more likely to impress the chicks 30 00:02:09,080 --> 00:02:14,560 at the club, which one is faster. And when you wanna know which chip pumps out frames better, 31 00:02:14,560 --> 00:02:17,840 lowering both your resolution and your in-game details 32 00:02:17,840 --> 00:02:21,360 helps to isolate the CPU's game engine handling performance 33 00:02:21,360 --> 00:02:26,400 and really separate the fastest chip from the almost fastest chip. 34 00:02:26,400 --> 00:02:30,060 And AMD's 9850X3D is the fastest gaming chip 35 00:02:30,060 --> 00:02:35,080 that we tested, thanks to all of the things that made its predecessor processor the fastest before. 36 00:02:35,080 --> 00:02:38,680 Eight of AMD's Zen 5 cores coupled with ample 3DV cache 37 00:02:38,680 --> 00:02:44,760 creates a combo that puts both Intel's latest Core Ultra desktop chips and their older 14th gen flagship 38 00:02:44,760 --> 00:02:48,800 to absolute shame. But does any of this matter? 39 00:02:48,800 --> 00:02:53,760 To answer that, we need to get a little more realistic, both in terms of in-game visuals 40 00:02:53,760 --> 00:02:56,800 and the real world use cases for these chips. 41 00:02:56,800 --> 00:03:02,160 Let's step up then to 1440P resolution and throw in some tests with ray tracing where, 42 00:03:02,160 --> 00:03:06,640 whoa, the 9850X3D no longer sits alone atop the roost, 43 00:03:06,640 --> 00:03:11,000 king of his domain, but becomes simply another runner in the race. 44 00:03:11,000 --> 00:03:14,280 Still a very fast chip boasting the highest average FPS 45 00:03:14,280 --> 00:03:19,160 in both Counter-Strike 2 and Rocket League. So it's clear then that once we start 46 00:03:19,160 --> 00:03:24,000 to introduce more variables, the story becomes muddier to say the least 47 00:03:24,000 --> 00:03:29,800 with certain games favoring some CPU architectures more than others and those advantages shrinking 48 00:03:29,800 --> 00:03:35,200 the more GPU eye candy you turn on with ray tracing being the ultimate equalizer, 49 00:03:35,200 --> 00:03:39,760 bringing every chip we tested within about 5% of the rest. 50 00:03:39,760 --> 00:03:43,120 Which isn't to say though, that you should just buy any chip 51 00:03:43,120 --> 00:03:47,720 and expect exactly the same experience. In the longer term, theoretically, 52 00:03:47,720 --> 00:03:51,680 a faster gaming chip will last you through more GPU upgrades, 53 00:03:51,680 --> 00:03:57,400 extending the time before your next platform upgrade. And with upscaling technology becoming more 54 00:03:57,400 --> 00:04:02,520 and more important all the time, rendering high frame rates at lower resolutions 55 00:04:02,520 --> 00:04:08,200 and then upscaling them with AI could become increasingly important for high-end gaming. 56 00:04:08,200 --> 00:04:11,760 Okay then Linus, so just buy the one at the top of the chart then. 57 00:04:11,760 --> 00:04:17,240 Well, not that either. It's horses for courses. If all that matters to you is the highest FPS 58 00:04:17,240 --> 00:04:23,040 at lower medium details or any sports titles. Yeah, it doesn't get any better than the 9850X3D, 59 00:04:23,040 --> 00:04:28,200 but for almost anyone else, we need to at least think about the bigger picture. 60 00:04:28,200 --> 00:04:31,480 What about whole platform pricing? Where could I score a deal? 61 00:04:31,480 --> 00:04:36,000 Intel's older generation 12th gen CPUs are still potent gaming chips 62 00:04:36,000 --> 00:04:40,080 and they support cheaper DDR4 memory. We'll have a full video on that coming soon, 63 00:04:40,080 --> 00:04:43,120 but the TLDR is, it's a pretty compelling value. 64 00:04:43,120 --> 00:04:49,960 Or if I'm willing to go to the second hand market, 5700X3D pricing has not spiked nearly as high 65 00:04:49,960 --> 00:04:54,400 as 5800X3Ds and AM4 motherboards and matching DDR4 66 00:04:54,400 --> 00:04:58,440 can be had for cheap at an open box 1440P gaming monitor. 67 00:04:58,440 --> 00:05:04,920 And that's an entire platform refresh for the price of a 9850X3D CPU alone, 68 00:05:04,920 --> 00:05:09,600 which would leave plenty of budget to get some nice new cables at lttstore.com. 69 00:05:09,600 --> 00:05:14,760 We'll have that link down below. Of course, none of what I just said means the 9850X3D is bad 70 00:05:14,800 --> 00:05:19,840 or a bad deal, it's bad CPU. No, it's not. The best of the best always comes at a premium 71 00:05:19,840 --> 00:05:23,240 and honestly, it's a better product than I thought it was gonna be. 72 00:05:23,240 --> 00:05:28,680 My initial reaction was, ah, it's probably gonna be a righted out 9800X3D. 73 00:05:28,680 --> 00:05:32,100 And I expected a big boost to both power draw 74 00:05:32,100 --> 00:05:38,200 and heat output in order for AMD to reach their lofty 5.6 gigahertz boost frequency targets. 75 00:05:38,200 --> 00:05:41,800 But that turned out to not be the case. In our Cinebench power draw test, 76 00:05:41,800 --> 00:05:45,440 AMD's finest hit higher clock speeds than its predecessor, 77 00:05:45,440 --> 00:05:50,960 while running ever so slightly cooler and drawing ever so slightly less power. 78 00:05:50,960 --> 00:05:54,040 We didn't see quite the same thing in F124. 79 00:05:54,040 --> 00:05:59,280 Power draw was actually up a little bit on average. But still, both of these results are so close 80 00:05:59,280 --> 00:06:03,560 that it is safe to say that this is not a meaningfully more power hungry chip 81 00:06:03,560 --> 00:06:08,000 and it does clock noticeably higher. This translates to a better experience 82 00:06:08,000 --> 00:06:13,080 outside of games as well, where the 9850X3D consistently beats its 50-less cousin 83 00:06:13,120 --> 00:06:18,320 across both our productivity and our creative benchmarks with small victories in multi-threaded workloads 84 00:06:18,320 --> 00:06:23,280 and larger ones in single-threaded applications where it really gets to flex its boosted clock speed. 85 00:06:23,280 --> 00:06:28,120 It's worth noting, by the way, we didn't run our entire suite here since these X3D chips really are marketed 86 00:06:28,120 --> 00:06:31,160 primarily towards gaming, but we still wanted to show a snapshot 87 00:06:31,160 --> 00:06:35,400 of what they're capable of outside of games. Now, I'm not gonna go into this too much, 88 00:06:35,400 --> 00:06:39,700 but Intel's core count advantage translates into some really lopsided results 89 00:06:39,700 --> 00:06:42,920 in our multi-threaded benchmarks. And that's what their last-gen Core Ultra 90 00:06:42,920 --> 00:06:46,920 can't wait to see what happens when their new architecture makes its way from mobile to the desktop. 91 00:06:46,920 --> 00:06:51,160 Core Ultra next-gen versus Zen 6 is gonna be a heck of a battle. 92 00:06:51,160 --> 00:06:57,400 Of course, that's a story for tomorrow. The story for today is Ryzen 7 9850X3D. 93 00:06:57,400 --> 00:07:01,560 It's a little faster and it costs a little more. Not the most exciting chip, 94 00:07:01,560 --> 00:07:04,680 but certainly better than AMD simply resting on their laurels 95 00:07:04,680 --> 00:07:08,840 and waiting for Intel to close the gap. And I was really impressed to see that their manufacturing 96 00:07:08,840 --> 00:07:14,360 has improved so much in the last year that they can do this without juicing power consumption. 97 00:07:14,360 --> 00:07:18,240 Now, to juice this segue to our sponsor. If you guys enjoyed this video, 98 00:07:18,240 --> 00:07:24,000 why not check out our recent look at AMD's top of the top of the top of the line Workstation Pro chip. 99 00:07:24,000 --> 00:07:29,640 That thing is nuts. It costs more than an entire PC with this and a 5090 in it. 100 00:07:29,640 --> 00:07:30,680 Just a CPU.