No One Is Buying AMD Zen 5 CPUs, So What's Going On?
No One Is Buying AMD Zen 5 CPUs, So What's Going On?
Zen 5 sales have not gone well and AMD is struggling to sell Ryzen 9000 CPUs. Let's analyze the flow-on effects this is having across the rest...
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They sell everything they put into laptops, in that market they can't keep up with demand. Similar story for enterprise.
In the DIY desktop market, which this article is about, It's been instilled into everyone to wait for the X3D chips, by basically every reviewer. And for good reason.
Certainly doesn't help that:
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a Windows 11 bug made performance look over 10% worse than it actually was on release, which is when all benchmarks are done and opinions are set (E: btw this has been fixed, and the fix also helped older CPUs too)
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AMD decided to massively lower energy usage at the expense of out-of-box performance (I actually love this decision, I'm sick of components getting more and more power-hungry, and I'm sick of a hot stuffy room. Most gaming-focussed reviewers hated it though, which bugged me tbh because they also moan when power usage is high. I think they just like being negative because it drives engagement). At previous-gen TDPs, Zen 5 gains a lot of performance, but that's not how they are benchmarked.
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the price of Zen 4 has dropped, and the 7800X3D in particular looks compelling to those who might've wanted Zen 5.
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most DIY PC builders are PC gamers, and what do we need new CPUs for? Most gamers are more GPU bottlenecked right now, especially as people are moving to 1440p, 1440p ultrawide, or 4K. Add to that the fact that there have been very few good PC game releases this year and of course we're in a slump.
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the only people who can buy a Zen5 CPU and drop it in their machine easily are Zen4 users, who won't see a large uplift and likely won't bother. People with earlier systems are looking at a significant investment - new motherboard and DDR5 RAM, why bother with that when the 5700X3D is such an insanely good value proposition that still won't be bottlenecked unless you're running an insanely good GPU?
the price of Zen 4 has dropped, and the 7800X3D in particular looks compelling to those who might’ve wanted Zen 5.
This is the big one.
Literally the best gaming chip from any company is a Zen 4 and surprisingly cheap
For most people they won't need anything more than a 7800x3d for 5 maybe even 10 years?
I'd hate to say what GPU it takes to make cpu the bottleneck on one of those.
Agreed, I bought a 7950X3D over the 9950X as it was $150 cheaper. Seemed like the smarter move.
I did the same thing also assuming kernel drivers were more mature. I’ll let someone else beta test for me.
For most people they won't need anything more than a 7800x3d for 5 maybe even 10 years?
I know from experience, it is very difficult to get 10 years of gaming out of a processor. I'm a pretty frugal guy, and I'm actually ok with merely "acceptable" gaming performance, but I think the most I've ever managed was 8 years on the same processor, and that was with the core 2 duo. I called it the super chip, the chip that stayed competitive even when multiple new architectures were available. And honestly, 8 years was really pretty good. But when I switched to a quad core i5, it was definitely a necessary change.
idk I was using a 12 year old cpu and it worked fine for gaming. Only upgraded because I wanted to compile stuff in reasonable timeframes.
The Phenom 2?!
I barely remember it, but yeah, it was a beast.
But my 1700x went hard for five years. The only reason I tacked the extra 5 on was x3d changes things up.
Now, since I've made that comment AMD has solved the Zen 5 latency issues but cutting it by more than half. That's what was holding it back. So when the Zen 5 x3d comes out, it's going to be nuts.
But...
It's going to take a while for those changes to become industry standard. It might be a year before Zen 5 x3d, I'm not sure if they've even announced when. So games won't take full advantage of them right away.
It takes like a 4070 super to CPU bound a 7800x3d, and fine tune some settings and it'll balance out
We're not going to have a new screen resolution jump, and that combo can max out 4k 120fps on pretty much anything thanks to frame generation without even touching upscaling.
There's just not a lot to improve until we see a major jump like VR finally taking off.
I'm playing Satisfactory at High or Ultra settings 1440p ultrawide Lumen on with a Ryzen 7700x and a Radeon 7900GRE, and maintaining frame rates in the 80's. What is out now, or is in the works, that my machine can't run well?
100%, it's the lack of the X3D parts. Zen 5 on its own is compelling but not for gamers and DIY, would I buy it in a pre-built desktop or a business machine, Yes I would all day long. But if I'm gaming and there's no X3D part why would I get anything else other than a 7800 X3D. AMD really shot themselves in the foot and what's worse is we warned them it was coming yet they chose not to listen.
I still have my 3700X and it keeps up well enough with a 4070 even on cyberpunk.
Let me agree with you explicitly on loving the return to a sane power configuration here. I was watching Hardware Unboxed's retest of this after the patches and it takes almost fifteen minutes of them reiterating that the 9700X and the 14700K are tied for performance and price before they even mention the bombshell that the 9700X is doing that with about half the wattage.
The fact that we keep pushing reviews and benchmarks focused strictly on pedal-to-the-metal overclocked performance and nothing else is such a disgrace. I made the mistake to buy into a 13700K and I have it under lower than out of box power limits manually both to prevent longevity issues and because this damn computer is more effective as a hair dryer than anything else.
We don't mention it much because Intel was in the process of catching on actual fire at the same time, but the way this generation has been marketed, presented to reviewers, supported and eventually reviewed has been a massive trainwreck, considering the performance of the actual product.
I'm still on my Zen1 1600, with DDR4 RAM and RX580 8GB which I built back in 2018. Whenever I'm thinking of upgrading I just look at the prices. I'd basically need to upgrade everything, maybe aside from GPU which would become a giant bottleneck, so it should be upgraded as well.
I really don't even want to think about gutting my PC and upgrading, I'd much rather switch to a console.Go grab you something later in the AM4 line, like a 5600 or so, and an RX6700, as long as your power supply is up to it.
You could chuck a 57 or 5800X3D up in there for a substantial boost if your board vendor offers BIOS support.
even a 5600 would be a massive leap for about $100. Add something like a used 6600XT or a 3060 and you'll be back at current gen gaming at around $300€ total.
Very true, just thinking about a terminal platform here, and just fully sending it off, but regular vermeer is no slouch either, and will serve well for many years to come (along with a shiny new gpu)
Jup, built a new pc last year and went with a Ryzen 7600. The next CPU will be whatever has the best price to performance ratio of the last gen my mobo supports.
I just wrote a reply to this post as well, where I wrote that I'm going to upgrade my CPU soon but I'm probably going to get a Zen 4 X3D because they're faster than a Zen 5 CPU but based on what you wrote, should I change my decision? They're a good bit cheaper and without that Windows bug (I use Linux anyway) and if I overclock it to the TDP of the Zen 4 X3Ds, might they be faster after all? I saw something about that Windows bug and that they run at a lower TDP out of the box but I didn't find anything about how they run now and if you can overclock them since there's more headroom.
Edit: Also to just give a little context, I'm currently running a Ryzen 5 3600 with 16 gigs of DDR4 RAM but since I need to get a new mainboard and RAM anyway, I'm upgrading to 32 gigs of DDR5 RAM
If you're gaming tbh I'd rather go with Zen4X3D or if you really want to, wait for Zen5X3D. Standard Zen5 isn't really worth it considering the dropping of Zen4 prices IMO
Even with the performance boost of turning up the TDP, you're looking at pretty similar performance to the X3D chips, and in some games that really love cache, still a decent amount worse
I also just upgraded from a 3600, but I did it to a 5700X3D, because it barely cost anything and only required dropping in a new CPU
The thing is, the Zen 5 CPUs are actually cheaper in Germany than the Zen 4 X3D CPUs but if the performance of Zen 4 X3D is still better, I'm getting that, thanks
Standard Zen5 isn't really worth it considering the dropping of Zen4 prices IMO
Unless you're like me and upgrading from something quite old like an i5-6600k. I switched to a R5 7600 for now that's at least on the AM5 and was less than 200 so I have a lot of upgrade paths later on when I have more funding (blew my entire budget on a 4080 LOLOL)
Still miles better than the i5 I had lmao
Yeah I’m still on my 5950X and it’s an absolute champ in terms of CPU load. Its second incarnation when I eventually upgrade is going to be a proxmox box.
My 3080 FE is starting to choke though… starting to get stutters and freezing and framedrops, and once in a while a full system lockup when I’m in Forza Motorsport… thinking of doing a coppermod to see if that addresses it, but I’m worried the GDDR may have just had to put up with too much heatsoak and might be going out :(
What's up with 5800x3d prices being all wacked out
I'm curious what you mean. I don't keep up with all the news, but it's <$200usd on Amazon right now.
Thats 5700x3d, 5800 is well over 300
Doh! You are absolutely right.
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