I know that opting for the 7800X3D over the 5900XT requires a platform upgrade, especially if you’re coming from an older series like Ryzen 3000, which costs more money. Or does it? I mean, yes, technically, but it also saves you some money in the long run. I’m not here to tell you what to do with your money or how to spend it, but I will explain how these new Ryzen 5000 series CPUs don’t make that much sense.
AMD told us in an interview that they plan on keeping AM4 in support for as long as possible, but we didn’t expect that to mean supporting the platform with new CPU releases. As far as I was concerned, I thought the 5800X3D was the last AM4 CPU we would get. But AMD has surprised us with a couple of Ryzen 5000 series CPUs that I have no idea who will buy.
If you ask me, I’d rather buy a Ryzen 7 7800X3D and an AM5 motherboard. It’ll likely cost me less in the long run.
- Cores: 8
- Threads: 16
- Boost speed : up to 5 GHz
- Base speed: 4.2 GHz
- L3 Cache: 96 MB
- TDP: 120 W
- Platform: AMD (AM5)
What’s the target audience?
Let’s theorize for a second, You have a Ryzen 3000 series CPU with an AM4 motherboard, and you have been looking to upgrade for a while. Here comes Lisa Su with a new Ryzen 5000 series CPU, “great”, you think to yourself, “I need a new CPU”. You turn to look at your motherboard and find that you only have a b450. “hmm”, you think. “I should probably get a new motherboard too”.
That right there is the issue, the target audience that AMD had in mind is you and your 3000 series CPU. Hardly anyone gets the latest and greatest motherboard without upgrading the CPU, because that seems pretty counterintuitive. So you have two options, one, get the motherboard too, or two, don’t, meaning your CPU could be bottlenecked, or leave yourself devoid of features.
If you invest in this, you have a new Ryzen 5000 series CPU and a new X570 motherboard, let’s say you splashed out a little and got some faster RAM. You’ve just spent roughly $700 on something that will likely be obsolete in 2 years, or maybe less. AMD hasn’t given an official end date to AM4’s support, it could be tomorrow or 3 years from now, but $700 is a lot to gamble with.
The solution to the problem
It’s great that AMD wants to recycle and save chips that aren’t completely up to code from the landfill, electrical waste accounts for far too much of the population’s waste each year, but the solution to the obsolescence problem is just don’t buy the chip.
The Ryzen 7 7800X3D is a gaming-focused CPU a full generation ahead of the 5900XT that will likely beat the Zen 3 CPU at any task. To go with your new CPU, you’d have to buy a motherboard and DDR5 memory. So let’s do some shopping and figure out what kind of expense that will be.
Right now on Amazon, you can get a 7800X3D for $380, the cheapest X670 motherboard I can find is $199, and that is the ASUS TUF X670, not a bad motherboard at all. RAM is pretty loose, you can get a 32GB kit of @6400MHz for $90. All of this together makes $670. But the best thing about this hardware is it will be good physically for the next 5 or so years. If AM4 has managed to last almost 10 years, then it’s not unreasonable to assume that AM5 will too.
The best thing about moving to AM5 is the performance benefit and the fact you’ll be able to run AAA games for much longer. AMD may have marketed the new 5900XT toward people still low down on the Ryzen ladder, (AMD has never said that, it’s just my opinion) but even still it makes no sense to buy. Even if you JUST bought the CPU, it’ll be unsupported in a couple of years at most. I am not a financial adviser, if I were, I wouldn’t be writing articles about CPUs, but I know what a waste of money is.
