AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D – 210€ vs AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D – 328€
Posted by Hecleas@reddit | buildapc | View on Reddit | 9 comments
Do you think the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is worth the extra €120?
And in the long run, do you think it will make a significant difference compared to the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, or not?
From what I've seen, in most current games the performance gain is often around 10%, although some CPU-intensive titles can show much larger improvements.
I'm mainly looking for opinions regarding long-term value, future games, and overall price-to-performance ratio.
BaronB@reddit
At that price delta, absolutely not worth it.
As you said, the 9800X3D is \~10% faster in games on average, and around 15% faster at the extremes for especially CPU heavy titles or non-gaming heavily multithreaded applications. By the single fact you're asking the question of if it's worth it means it's not. And what I mean by that is some people won't care that it's that much more expensive and just want the fastest CPU. But \~15% performance in the extreme case is not worth a >50% increase in price.
You mentioned Total War and Europa Universalis V as an examples of the games you play. Between the 7800X3D and 9800X3D they'll perform essentially identically with <5% difference. They are the kinds of games that bring the average down to 10% from the 15% highs. A lot of strategy games tend to be entirely single thread limited, and the biggest benefit the 9800X3D has is it can keep higher clock speeds when using multiple cores than the 7800X3D. And that's assuming you're not GPU limited which you're more often going to be.
...
For RAM, 2x16GB is recommended for DDR5 as there are some performance implications with going with 2x8GB and especially 1x16GB just due to how DDR5 is physically designed. But the impact of both of these on CPU performance is greatly diminished with X3D CPUs. If you're looking to save some money and the DDR5 is giving you sticker shock, 2x8GB is going to be fine. Just maybe don't leave your browser with 100 tabs open in the background when gaming.
The main thing I'd say when it comes to DDR5 is just buy the cheapest kit you can find. DDR5 5600 CL40 vs DDR5 6000 CL28 won't meaningfully affect performance with an X3D CPU. Even DDR5 4800 CL50 is only going to loose you around 2% with an X3D CPU, though most of that will come from the 1% lows meaning a slightly less stable framerate. But, as you play mostly strategy games, that's not really a huge deal. I see too many people going for 2x16GB Corsair DDR5 6000 CL30 kits that cost $800 when a kit of Silicon Power DDR5 6000 CL36 will perform functionally the same. In the past we'd often recommend people go with 6000 CL30 or even CL28 kits over slower kits because they are slightly faster and 6 months ago you could generally find them for the same price or less than slower kits.
EfficientMongoose317@reddit
At those prices, I'd take the 7800X3D and put the €120 toward the GPU, storage, or just keep it in my pocket.
The 9800X3D is definitely faster, but the 7800X3D is already one of the best gaming CPUs you can buy. Unless you're chasing every last frame at 1080p with a high-end GPU, I doubt you'd notice a huge difference in day-to-day gaming.
For me, the question is whether the 9800X3D is 50% more money, and the answer is probably no.
€210 for a 7800X3D is honestly a really good deal.
SatisfactionKlutzy18@reddit
What gpu are you pairing these with and what resolution are you targeting?
Unless you are using a gpu faster than a 5080 it will likely be hard for you to tell the difference between a 7800x3D and 9800x3D. To put things into perspective a 9800x3D can pretty much feed a 5090 at 1080p and the 7800x3D is only about 8% slower than a 9800x3D in gaming.
Hecleas@reddit (OP)
rx 9070 xt
SatisfactionKlutzy18@reddit
At that gpu level you won’t be able to tell the difference between a 7800x3D and 9800x3D.
I would get the 7800x3D and use the money saved towards ram, storage or other components you want to put into your build.
Hecleas@reddit (OP)
Is 32GB of RAM essential nowadays, or can I get away with 16GB for now and upgrade later when RAM prices come down?
SatisfactionKlutzy18@reddit
You can get away with 16gb of ram in a lot of situations. But there are a good chunk of times you won’t especially if you have multiple things like discord or a few tabs in chrome open for example while you are gaming.
I would suggest using the money saved from choosing the 7800x3D here and use it towards a 32gb ram kit my friend. A 16gb ram kit is really only for ultra budget builds and a system built around 7800x3D with a 9070xt is an enthusiast level build (far from an ultra budget builds).
pragomatic@reddit
The 9800X3D has a better thermal design, support for AVX-512 instructions, and tends to run much cooler. I probably would if I could afford it.
No_Spare1827@reddit
I'm gonna say no, I mean both seem like a really good deal but the 7800x3d will be Identical to a 9800x3d if u have anything below a 4090/5090.
plus with AMD announcing AM5 support till 2029 there are hopefully better CPUs in store for us later