AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D review: obliterating the competition

AMD's Zen 5 processors all tend to be quite power efficient for the performance delivered, but how does the 9800X3D and its second-gen 3D V-Cache change that calculus? To find out, we performed a basic at-the-wall power analysis of the 120W-rated 9800X3D versus its closest AMD equivalent without V-Cache, the also-eight-core but 65W-rated 9700X.

We tested three games, taking measurements from a basic Kill-A-Watt-style mains plug to get a sense of the maximum power draw and a more typical load during the course of the benchmark. We also tested each title at three resolutions, giving a sense of how the comparison shifts as GPU power requirements are brought down and CPU grunt becomes the primary differentiating factor.

Fairly obviously, unlike our Core 285K versus 14900K power testing last time around, we used an identical setup here as both systems use the same platform - so that's the same motherboard, RAM, GPU, peripherals and power supplies. That should make the comparison a bit cleaner, though in a gaming workload where many cores aren't running at full tilt, we wouldn't expect to see the full 55W difference suggested by the respective TDPs of each processor.

Our first title is Counter-Strike 2, which is heavily CPU-limited at 1080p and 1440p but, thanks to the omission of DLSS/FSR 2, is surprisingly GPU-limited at 4K, even on an RTX 4090. Here, the 9800X3D used extremely similar maximum power to the 9700X, with the two results largely within the margin of error. Typical power was a similar story, with the 9700X consuming a little less power at 1440p and 2160p and a little more at 1080p.

Taking just the 1080p results, the 9800X3D is running around 10 percent faster on average than the 9700X, but the power draw is extremely similar - around two or three percent at most - so efficiency is up overall as we'd expect from the more advanced V-Cache design.

Far Cry 6 is a game where we recorded a substantial 35 percent performance advantage for the 9800X3D over the 9700X at 1080p, but power draw doesn't increase to anywhere near that extent. Instead, we see around a two percent higher peak power draw and around seven percent looking at measurements through less demanding parts of the benchmark, so efficiency is through the roof.

Finally, Forza Horizon 5 is more GPU-limited than the other benchmarks, and offers a correspondingly smaller difference in both frame-rate and power terms - the 9800X3D is around five percent faster at 1080p, but draws around two percent less power than the 9700X.

Given the relative coarseness of our measuring equipment, we won't try to extract a deeper analysis here, but the broad trend is simply that the 9800X3D doesn't draw noticeably more power while gaming than the 9700X, but does deliver noticeably better performance so its efficiency is higher as we'd expect.

Note that this doesn't hold true in our limited content creation testing, where both CPUs are fully utilising their eight-core, 16-thread designs and therefore getting closer to maxing out their respective power targets. For example, in our Handbrake HEVC transcode test, we saw the 9800X3D drawing 259W from the wall at peak load, versus only 191W for the 9700X, which is right in line with what we'd expect from a nominally 120W part versus a nominally 65W part.

Let's move onto our DDR5 testing before we get to the final page to discuss our findings overall.

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D analysis

• Introduction, test rig and content creation benchmarks
• Gaming benchmarks: Dragon's Dogma 2, Baldur's Gate 3, Starfield
• Gaming benchmarks: Flight Simulator 2020, F1 24, Forza Horizon 5
• Gaming benchmarks: Counter-Strike 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Crysis 3 Remastered
• Gaming benchmarks: Far Cry 6, Hitman World of Assassination
• Power analysis: Counter-Strike 2, Far Cry 6, Forza Horizon 5 [this page]
• RAM gaming benchmarks: Cyberpunk 2077, Far Cry 6, Flight Sim 2020
• AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D: the Digital Foundry verdict