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AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D review: the new fastest gaming CPU

Flight Simulator 2020 and Hitman 3.

Will Judd avatar
Review by Will Judd Deputy Editor, Digital Foundry
Published on

Our benchmark results are presented a little differently to what you might be used to elsewhere on the web. On mobile, you'll get a basic overview, with metadata from the video capture of each GPU being translated into simple bar charts with average frame-rate and lowest one per cent measurements for easy comparisons.

On a desktop-class browser, you'll get the full-fat experience with embedded YT videos of each test scene and live performance metrics. Play the video, and you'll see exactly how each card handled the scene as it progresses; you can even choose exactly what GPUs at what resolutions you're interested in and it'll update in real time. Below the real-time stuff is a bar chart, which you can mouse over to see different measurements and click to switch between actual frame-rates and percentage differences. As always, all the data here is derived from video captured directly from each GPU, ensuring an accurate replay of real performance.

We'll start with two games that offer a stern test for gaming CPUs: Flight Simulator 2020 and Hitman 3.

Flight Simulator 2020

Flight Sim is our first contender, as we take an autopilot flight from London City to London Heathrow over some of the city's most well-known landmarks. This game is incredibly heavy on the CPU, and the 5800X3D recorded a huge 33 percent lead over the 5800X back in the day. The 7950X3D shows a similar lead over the 7950X, with around a 35 to 40(!) percent advantage depending on the resolution and RAM speed and even a 47 percent advantage over the (sometimes surprisingly performant) 7700X.

Mandatory game updates seem to have changed performance slightly across the board, requiring some retests of older CPUs, hence the relatively small chart below. For context though, the 13900K achieved about 72fps in our previous tests, putting the 7950X3D comfortably in a class of its own.

Flight Simulator 2020: DX11, Ultra, TAA

Hitman 3

Hitman 3's Dartmoor benchmark comes next. Of the two integrated benchmarks provided in the game's out-of-game option menu, Dartmoor offers the greater CPU load with a demonstration of the Glacier Engine's destruction physics.

Here we have the full spread of CPUs once again, and the 7950X3D offers a nine percent lead over the 7950X and a two percent margin over the 13900K. The 5800X3D remains an excellent performer here, outdoing many Ryzen 7000 chips, but the 7950X3D is still around six percent faster.

Hitman 3: DX12, Default, TAA

It's early, but so far the 7950X3D can look either a little better or incredibly faster than the 7950X and 13900K. Let's see how that changes when we look at the next set of games, this time three FPS titles.

AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D analysis