From Ryzen 5 3600 to 5800X3D: The Big Upgrade

Love these reviews. I too am a little puzzled by the requests for this review, why compare 6 core cpu's to an 8 core cpu with a different architecture! It would make more sense if you were reviewing against a 6 core 5600X3D (hopefully AMD will release this before AM4 is EOL. I have 3 PC's at home all of which are using 6 core cpu's, 2600X, 5600X and 3600X. I would have liked to see data from a 2600X in this review as well.

Just saying. No-one is ever going to be totally happy with your reviews though :)
 
Lol at people that don't own/use the chip talking like they know something. I have a 5800x3D and conventional wisdom about cpus and gpus doesnt apply to this chip. Bottom line: don't listen to people that have never used one.
 
How did you decide on a 5600X?
Because people on reddit were claiming it was a massive difference.

Yeah, I know that reddit is full of people that would buy AMD chips even if they pulled another Bulldozer, but I thought enough people said it's a huge difference that it would be.

At least it was only $200, but in hindsight I would have just waited to upgrade to a totally new platform next year instead.
 
Because people on reddit were claiming it was a massive difference.

Yeah, I know that reddit is full of people that would buy AMD chips even if they pulled another Bulldozer, but I thought enough people said it's a huge difference that it would be.

At least it was only $200, but in hindsight I would have just waited to upgrade to a totally new platform next year instead.
Ah. More cores isn't what you needed then.
 
Because people on reddit were claiming it was a massive difference.
Puget Systems tested the 5600X against the 3600XT and saw an 8% increase in their Lightroom benchmark performance, so absolutely not massive! If you want to see if you 5600X setup is all peachy, Puget Systems offer a benchmark suite for Photoshop and Lightroom (plus a few others), and you can compare your result to other 5600X systems on their database:


Worth a try, just to ensure everything is all fine and dandy.
 
Lol at people that don't own/use the chip talking like they know something. I have a 5800x3D and conventional wisdom about cpus and gpus doesnt apply to this chip. Bottom line: don't listen to people that have never used one.
Impressive chip but unless you're playing at 1080p I have no idea why anyone would spend that kind of money on it. Even at 1080p it's hard to justify imo but I'm one of those people that prefer not to spend more than needed generally.
 
Impressive chip but unless you're playing at 1080p I have no idea why anyone would spend that kind of money on it. Even at 1080p it's hard to justify imo but I'm one of those people that prefer not to spend more than needed generally.

WOW…looking just a few months ahead higher prices again, combined with more expensive motherboards, CPU’s, more expensive DDR5 memory and much more beefy power supplies. All of this will make the next generation a costly thing to acquire and basically unreachable for the man on the street! At the local computer show here I was talking with many gamers on a tight budget, and they are now looking at the Ryzen 5800X3D for a super-special deal before the Ryzen 7000 launches. Some of the dealers talking across the folding tables said the 5800X3D 'with a manual overclock' can even outperform the Core i9-12900K. As to pricing many here are thinking to picking-up a 5800X3D, which by the dealers without charging sales tax and with paying cash is seen quite possible at a cool $225 or even less. I can also see previous generation MB’s being thrown into a 'hard to turn down' bundled deal to clearing out the aging inventory and very much as seen with the GPU saga having unfolded itself in the past 30-days! All good news for the simple man on the street and who knows very well not to spend more than needed generally.
 
What happened to Fortnite, why has that dropped off your list again? It uses hardware a bit differently to most doesn't it and is quite cpu intensive. I just upgraded from the 3600 to the 5600x which seems fine and at less than half the price of this 5800x3d, I can't imagine the extra cost of which is justifiable.
Probably because it is very well optimized and runs on potatoes?
 
WOW…looking just a few months ahead higher prices again, combined with more expensive motherboards, CPU’s, more expensive DDR5 memory and much more beefy power supplies. All of this will make the next generation a costly thing to acquire and basically unreachable for the man on the street! At the local computer show here I was talking with many gamers on a tight budget, and they are now looking at the Ryzen 5800X3D for a super-special deal before the Ryzen 7000 launches. Some of the dealers talking across the folding tables said the 5800X3D 'with a manual overclock' can even outperform the Core i9-12900K. As to pricing many here are thinking to picking-up a 5800X3D, which by the dealers without charging sales tax and with paying cash is seen quite possible at a cool $225 or even less. I can also see previous generation MB’s being thrown into a 'hard to turn down' bundled deal to clearing out the aging inventory and very much as seen with the GPU saga having unfolded itself in the past 30-days! All good news for the simple man on the street and who knows very well not to spend more than needed generally.
Paid 190 for my 5600x. Won't mind the performance bump at 225.
 
Looks to me that if you dont have a +800$ GPU, make no sense upgrading.
Just for the better 1% lows.....not worth it.

1% lows is the only thing you should care about as a gamer. What good is 200fps average if you dip to 30fps....
 
1% lows is the only thing you should care about as a gamer. What good is 200fps average if you dip to 30fps....
I have been building PC's for 22 years and I have never had a system that could do over 60 fps in game randomly dip all the time.

This is a BS benchmark made up when Ryzen was new and not quite ready to compete with Intel for gaming. The idea needs to die. If your computer is randomly choking like that, you probably have malware installed. If you are trying to encode video while playing a game, well, nothing will help you there.

When you see these graphs showing a dip, no one is feeling it or seeing it. This is not the system choking for a second or more.

Please just let this stupid idea about 1% lows being a thing to worry about just die already.
 
1% lows is the only thing you should care about as a gamer. What good is 200fps average if you dip to 30fps....
What shlt games you play for +200 fps, either very old games or very low resolution? If you go for a modern GPU+CPU and CS-GO or Fartnite then you waiste your money for gaming. No current gen game top's above 100 fps with 2k or 4k all maxed up, without a 3080 at least.
Not true when CPU is bottleneck for the engine like it is for Frostbite games.
I dont play EA games, so my R5 5600x is good enough.

So excuse us who dont like/want to pay $5000+ for a gaming setup. Some of us have a family and a home to support. And btw, winter is coming.

For my old and tired eyes v-sync at 60 to 100hz is good enough. I get dizzy from free sync.

Gaming is a hobby for me, not a money provider.
 
Love these reviews. I too am a little puzzled by the requests for this review, why compare 6 core cpu's to an 8 core cpu with a different architecture! It would make more sense if you were reviewing against a 6 core 5600X3D (hopefully AMD will release this before AM4 is EOL. I have 3 PC's at home all of which are using 6 core cpu's, 2600X, 5600X and 3600X. I would have liked to see data from a 2600X in this review as well.

Just saying. No-one is ever going to be totally happy with your reviews though :)
You make a good point but I think that the reason for this comparison is simply to see if the R7-5800X3D is a worthwhile upgrade if you already have an R5-3600 (or 3600X for that matter).
 
Time will tell whether it was worth it, but I just ordered this exact upgrade myself. This is the first time I've actually done such an upgrade, as historically I've tended to build whole new rigs. It's only when switching to AMD that I had the luxury of a much better processor without any real need to swap out the motherboard and RAM.

It may seem an unusual upgrade path but my reasoning

1) I'm going from what was generally seen as best bang for the buck in 2019 when I built my rig, to what's generally seen as best bang for the buck now. That buck has increased a lot but... eh, haven't they all since the pandemic?

2) I'm a heavy VRChat user and just upgrading to a much better - albeit much more expensive GPU even second hand (RTX 2060 6GB to 3090 24GB) turned out to only be part of the lag equation once a bunch of people are in a room. The 3600 isn't generally seen as a bottleneck for that GPU but issues like comparatively poor single thread performance meant it does actually bottleneck in VRC a fair bit. Or, that's the theory I was told. If it's still bad then "oh well that's VRChat for ya" and I still get a good boost in performance for other things. I did spot 50+ms CPU frames in busy rooms though which is what I imagine this to solve.

3) Partly related to 1, I've not had to swap out the motherboard and RAM like I normally would for a full rig rebuild every 4 or 5 years. So that saved some money that could be spent on a better CPU.

All in all I've spent about the money I'd spend on a full rig, on a CPU+PSU+GPU bump. But the mobo, RAM, case and SSD are just fine still so have been able to afford to, and the upgrade from mid tier to high end is justified by my ~2 hours per day playing the game that benefits from it (I mean, you can just hide more people, but when I'm spending so much time on something I might as well have the best experience)
 
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