When AMD launched its new Zen 4 CPU lineup in September, there was an elephant in the room. What about the V-Cache versions? AMD showed no such CPUs, even though it had shown them on the official roadmap. This left a lot of potential upgraders unhappy, as the company’s previous V-Cache CPU — the Ryzen 7 5800X3D — was a very special chip. It provided tremendous gaming uplift in certain titles, despite having middling clock speeds. It naturally led to people to salivate over the combination of the Zen 4 architecture along with abundant L3 cache. “I’ll wait for the V-Cache chips” was a common refrain online after the Zen 4 launch. Now it appears AMD is preparing several of these models, instead of just one like it did previously. A new report states it’ll be offering three V-Cache CPUs, with eight, 12, and 16 cores.
News of AMD’s plans comes courtesy of an hour-long video from Korea by Quasarzone. It was translated by Twitter user @harukaze5719. It states that although AMD only offered a single eight-core CPU previously, it will be expanding the offerings for Zen 4. That includes eight, 12, and 16-core models, which is a huge break from precedent. Previously, the 5800X3D was the only V-Cache chip, which made sense from a financial perspective. Its gaming performance is so good that it threatened to cannibalize AMD’s higher-end CPUs. In fact, when Zen 4 reviews finally dropped and people saw how competitive the 5800X3D was compared with Zen 4, many people just bought the older chip and called it a day. Also, the fact that it could be dropped into an X370 motherboard tempted a lot of upgraders.
Two of the new chips will be the 16-core Ryzen 9 7950X3D and the 12-core Ryzen 9 790X3D. The name for the eight-core part is not determined yet; it’ll either be a Ryzen 7 7800X3D or 7700X3D. All three CPUs will reportedly be 170W parts. The company’s current lineup features two 170W chips at the high-end, but the eight-core model, the Ryzen 7 7700X, is a 105W CPU.
Unlike the previous chip, which had lower clocks than its source CPU, the Zen 4 versions are reported to have similar clock speeds. For context, the 5800X3D’s 3.4GHz base clock was 400MHz slower than the 5800X’s. Its 4.5GHz boost clock was 200MHz slower. Despite these low-ish clocks, the CPU was still able to dominate in gaming benchmarks. Intel even sheepishly included it in its Raptor Lake launch slides (below), where it can be seen beating its latest CPUs in some games.
Intel famously included the 5800X3D in its Raptor Lake launch decks, but obscured it slightly by using a red “dash” instead of a vertical bar. Click to expand. (Image: Intel)
In addition to higher clocks, the new chips will also sport double the L3 cache from the previous version. The 5800X3D offered 96MB of L3, and the new versions will sport 192MB according to Videocardz. That addition combined with the much-higher clocks afforded by Zen 4 makes for a tempting combination. A 5.7GHz 7950X3D would be an incredible threat to Intel’s 13900K, not to mention the upcoming 13900KS version. That chip will reportedly be clocked at 6GHz, which is 200MHz higher than its predecessor.
As far as when we can expect these chips, here’s another surprise: They’re reportedly arriving next month, which means they’ll be at CES. The company will likely announce them at the trade show and then offer them for sale on Jan. 23. This is a stunning turnaround from its previous strategy, where it launched the V-Cache chip years after Zen 3’s launch. AMD doesn’t appear to want to wait around this time. That could be due to weaker-than-expected sales of Zen 4, or simply to head off any competition from Intel.
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