AMD Ryzen Gaming, What's More Important: CPU Cores or Cache?

Buy relevant products from Amazon, Newegg and others below:

Video Index
00:00 - Welcome to Hardware Unboxed
00:52 - Core i5-10600K vs i9-10900K [cores disabled]
04:40 - Test System Specs
05:19 - Baldur’s Gate 3
06:17 - Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty
07:11 - Hogwarts Legacy
07:53 - Star Wars Jedi Survivor
08:42 - Assetto Corsa Competizione
09:32 - Spider-Man Remastered
10:14 - A Plague Tale: Requiem
10:51 - Assassin's Creed Mirage
11:33 - Watch Dogs: Legion
12:04 - Hitman 3
12:28 - 12 Game Average
13:19 - Final Thoughts

AMD Ryzen Gaming, What's More Important: CPU Cores or Cache?

Disclaimer: Any pricing information shown or mentioned in this video was accurate at the time of video production, and may have since changed

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. We may also earn a commission on some sales made through other store links

FOLLOW US IN THESE PLACES FOR UPDATES

Outro music by David Vonk/DaJaVo

[DragonOfTheMortalKombat]

The one thing that improves gaming performance for sure is more Cash.

[FantomasARM]

AMD has hit a jackpot with it's 3D V-Cache technology.

[Kossmok]

I just upgraded to 5800x3d from my old 2700x.I see about 30% performance gain in average FPS with my 6700XT, and the stuttering, frame time spikes are all gone, I can finally enjoy fluid gaming in most of the games.

[theglobol]

I love these kinds of comparisons. Thank you for doing them.

[QuentinStephens]

When I saw the title I thought, "Haven't you already done this with Intel?" I wonder what would happen if you took the 64 core or 96 core Threadripper and disabled all but 8 cores. Would that give those 8 cores 384 MB of L3 cache?

[ScottOmatic]

As someone who plays a lot simulation type games, I am continually grateful that you included Assetto Corsa Competizone in your testing suite. For people that primarily play racing sims, flight sims, and large scale military sims, like ARMA, testing and comparing CPU cache as well as core count is integral to find out what hardware is the best choice for these kinds of titles. The way these games operate is so greatly different than most other games, mostly being console ports with not a lot of instruction sets being sent to the CPU in comparison.

[zJerichoz]

It's allways worth revisiting these types of subjects if only to help newbies learn more about the machines they are buying. Also updated / expanded testing data is allways good.

[carllavery]

I actually upgraded from the 5700G to the 5800X3D last year and it'd one of the best PC components I've ever bought

[jrherita]

Funny we forgot the lessons learned during the Core 2 Duo and Quad era. The extra cache on Penryn vs Conroe (especially 2M Conroe) mattered more than the # of cores for gaming

[sivu]

Excel, browser and other productivity applications' impact on core frequency, ipc and cache will be much appreciated as most of the day to day tasks are still single threaded

[Ziontrainism]

This was one of the most informative CPU videos I've ever seen. Good job making great content in a time where there isn't much happening as far as new parts.

[gamingoptimized]

Cache itself is important, but it depends on how accessible it is to all the CPU's cores. If you have 20mb of cache but a core can access only 1/8th of it, its far worse than if one core can access all of the cache. That's basically why zen 3 is so much faster than zen 2. A core can access twice as much cache on zen 3 compared to zen 2

[katzicael]

Love the blowing up of the "More cores/multi-tasking!" argument points. Well done guys.

[Diegonando]

3D cache also improves winRAR performance a lot, because the dictionary fits inside cache and the processor won´t go to main memory frequently.

[AdalbertSchneider_]

3:10 wow, dictator Steve :D:D:D But hey, you are good dictator ! :D

[romzen]

I was running Intel for at least 4 of my last builds and was about to go for the 14700k a week ago. Then I stumbled over some information on the lifecycle and the fact that AM5 would be more future proof for another couple of years while being superior for gaming anyway due to the cache. And then I also noticed that the R7 7800X3D also was way more efficient and cooler. All that while costing less in total together with an Aorus Master mainboard. Had to reconfigure my cart eventually and go with AMD of course. Super glad right now.

[QuantumSngularity]

I will be forever thankful to you guys for the review of the 5800X3D almost 2 years ago. If it wasn't for your benchmark with ACC i probably wouldn't have jumped on the X3D train and wouldn't have experienced the monster that this chip is. 18 months plus and counting and still feel completely blown away by the performance every time i load a game.

[iansrven]

very interesting, will be installing 5700X3D tomorrow from 3500X, my wife's PC ended up being a good upgrade path from 8700K PC.

[roblyc]

I had a 5900x 12 core and changed to a 7800x3d 8 core and don't regret it for gaming now.

[danield.]

That's why I love you guys from down under. You're making videos to topics or questions the viewers would like to get answered. 👌👍