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 can 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 '24 CPUPro]}

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