The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X is a high-end desktop processor that brings AMD’s typical multi-core domination, but with a rebuilt architecture that pushes single-core higher than ever before.
The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X may have just helped AMD shoot past Intel in the processor race. More than anything, this CPU symbolizes AMD’s complete domination of the mainstream desktop processor market, even more than the Ryzen 9 5900X. Intel has held the reins in the gaming processor market by always prioritizing the high clock speeds that PC games crave. To compete, AMD completely redesigned its Zen 3 architecture. So, while it’s still based on the same 7nm manufacturing process as its predecessor, AMD changed the Core Die (CCD) design to only allow for one Core Complex per die. To make up for this impactful change, each CCX now has 8 cores – that’s up from 4 cores per CCX on Zen 2, greatly reducing latency between cores, and each core has direct access to 32MB of L3 cache, helping improve gaming performance. It’s these improvements in speed and efficiency that give the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X the most meaningful upgrade to gaming CPU performance we’ve seen in years. Alongside a much stronger single-core performance, Team Red also packed it with 8 cores and 16 threads. With solid specs like these, the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X will likely show up in a huge number of gaming PCs over the next year or so. However, this redesign comes with a higher price tag. The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X is $449 (about £340, AU$620), up from the $399 (£349, AU$645) of the Ryzen 7 3800X. That’s the same price increase experienced across the board gen-on-gen with Ryzen 5000, it’s just disappointing that pricing saw an increase at all.
