AMD’s 7800X3D and 9800X3D CPUs, priced over $400 USD, are widely marketed as “the best gaming CPUs in the world”. This is demonstrated at low resolutions with a 4090-class GPU, whilst conveniently ignoring 0.1% lows (frame drops). Under cherry-picked cache-bound conditions the X3D chips do excel, but there’s a trade-off: the additional cache results in 6% lower boost clocks and 50% to 80% higher prices than their regular counterparts (9700X and 7700X). As with their Radeon GPUs, AMD is looking to drive demand through advanced marketing rather than delivering real-world performance. While Nvidia has effectively countered AMD’s marketing in the GPU space, Intel's marketers remain asleep (terminally?) at the wheel. Nevertheless, the 13600K and 14600K still deliver almost unparalleled real-world gaming performance for around $200 USD. Spending more on a gaming CPU is often pointless, as games are normally limited by the GPU. Without significant improvements in social media marketing: forums, reddit, youtube etc., Intel now face the very real risk of bankruptcy (third worst-performing S&P500 stock from Jan to Aug 2024). Since this summary was published just two days ago, hundreds of twitter threads, thousands of “pcmasterrace” reddit posts, multiple magazine articles, and several youtube videos have emerged in unanimous support for the $480 USD 9800X3D. All of these supposedly disinterested actors are working the weekend to convince you to pay their favourite billion-dollar brand an extra $280 USD this holiday season. [Nov '24CPUPro]
The Ryzen 9000 CPUs have the same integrated graphics, PCIe lanes, USB support and DRAM controller as the Ryzen 7000 series. The only difference is improved cores which have moved from TSMC's 5 nm process to 4 nm. The new cores offer 15% more performance under cherry-picked conditions but for latency-sensitive workloads, like gaming, they are just few percent faster. The 9600X, 9700X, 9900X, and 9950X are priced at $280, $360, $500, and $650, respectively, making them $80-$200 USD more expensive than the 7000 series. Since the 7000 series flopped (7800X3D somewhat excluded) due to unrealistic pricing, slow boot times, high platform costs and windows gamebar requirements etc., the 9000 series is more or less DOA. When the 9000X3D variants launch (expected in early 2025) gamers who play cache sensitive games such as SoTTR or Factorio with a 4090 and don’t mind frame drops, may find value in the 9800X3D. Meanwhile, Intel’s 12th and 13th gen CPUs continue to offer the best value for money in today’s market. Furthermore, Intel is scheduled to launch Arrow-Lake (est. +10% performance vs 14th gen) and Lunar-Lake (snapdragon competitive x86 battery life) this year, but they face serious challenges due to reliance on marketers who are mostly funded by AMD. Even if Arrow and Lunar Lake deliver stellar performance, without significant improvements in social media marketing: forums, reddit, youtube etc., Intel now face the very real risk of bankruptcy (third worst-performing S&P500 stock from Jan to Aug 2024). [Aug '24CPUPro]
We calculate effective speed which measures real world performance for typical users. Effective speed is adjusted by current prices to yield a value for money rating. Our calculated values are checked against thousands of individual user ratings. The customizable table below combines these factors to bring you the definitive list of top CPUs. [CPUPro]
Welcome to our PC speed test tool. UserBenchmark will test your PC and compare the results to other users with the same components. You can quickly size up your PC, identify hardware problems and explore the best value for money upgrades.