Review: AMD Ryzen 7800X3D is the cheapest way to get the most out of a $1,500 GPU

If you were intrigued by AMD's Ryzen 9 7950X3D but didn't want to spend $700 on a processor, the $450 Ryzen 7 7800X3D might be the chip you've been waiting for.

Like the more-expensive X3D chips, the 7800X3D is a regular Zen 4 processor with an extra 64MB of L3 cache stacked on top of it. That extra cache isn't always useful, but it does tend to boost game performance, and AMD has marketed the X3D series mostly to PC gamers looking for a processor to pair with high-end GPUs like the GeForce RTX 4090 and Radeon RX 7900 XTX.

Further Reading

The X3D chips all come with compromises, mainly in the form of lower clock speeds and less-flexible overclocking support. But if you mainly care about games, the good news is that the 7800X3D runs them just as well as the more-expensive 7950X3D for less money, and it does so without generating too much heat or using too much power.

People building a midrange gaming PC should continue to save money with a cheaper CPU and spend more on a GPU instead, and anyone using a socket AM4 system should still consider a CPU upgrade before upgrading to a whole new platform. But if you're trying to build a new high-end PC around a top-end GPU, the 7800X3D is probably the cheapest way to make sure you're letting that graphics card shine.

Pricing comparisons

At $449 (assuming, as ever, that you can find it in stock at that price), the 780X3D's pricing could be described as "upper-midrange" or maybe "the low end of the high end." It's way more than the $200-$250ish you'll pay for a very good all-around CPU like the Ryzen 5700/5800 series or any number of 12th- and 13th-generation Core i5 chips, but still less than top-end contenders like the Ryzen 9 7950X or Core i9-13900K.

Its pricing competes most directly with processors like the 16-core (8P/8E) Core i7-13700K or the 12-core Ryzen 9 7900 (note the lack of X). Both of these chips offer better performance in work that benefits from a lot of CPU cores, but neither is quite as good at gaming.