I'm mostly interested in flight sims (DCS and MSFS)

My current system:

5800X (water cooled)
3090 Ti FTW (air cooled)
Reverb G2
64 GB DDR4-3600 CAS 14 (24GB as a RAM disk for cache and user TEMP/TMP variable.)

I'm contemplating buying a 5800X3D next week.  Should I wait until Zen 4 gains traction?  Maybe that CPU will dump down to $250 soon - especially when they release the 7800X3D.

I personally don't think that going from a 5800x to an x3D is worth the jump in price. Now, if you were coming from a 3000 series, maybe. If they drop the price after the 7800x3D hits, then it might be a different story.

You are going to still be bottlenecked by the GPU in MOST cases anyway.

If you can find someone local selling a 5800x3D chip as they pay the bleeding edge prices of the 7950x3D, I'd grab that one first. If it boots, it's 99% going to be a good chip.

$299 at MicroCenter....

Sadly, no MicroCenter near me.

I play at 1440P
+18% fps
14% better 1% low (which is more important as it influences latency, ie. stuttering.)

The L3 cache makes a difference.

Well aware, I have one

5800x3D
Gigabyte Aorus Elite X570
32GB 3600 CL16 Gskill ram
Asus TUF 3090

I came from a 3600. At that point, I bought mine a couple days after it came out.

I will still stand by my PERSONAL feelings that I would try and pinch a few pennies and take advantage of people trying to offload "old hardware" if available before I went and paid full shelf price for it.

If Microcenter wants $300 for it, you might find someone that you can talk the price down to $200 for a "used" part.

I'm always out for a deal before I buy new. I've built some damn decent computers, with speakers, monitors, mechanical keyboards, and mouse for less than $400 by hitting marketplace (Ryzen 3600/B550/16GB/5700xt/1TB NVME) early last year.

I've got a Z590/I7 11600K/32gb/GTX1070/256 NVME setup right now at less thana $300 that only needs a good cooler.

Deals can be had, just give it a search first.

Sound advice.  Thanks.

Im going from a 5800x to 3d in the coming weeks. From what I gather games like star citizen will do much better.

I put a new computer together back in November. It was just spur of the moment, I hadn't built one in over 10 years. I went with:

5800X3D
MSI Tomahawk B550 MAG WIFI
32gb G.Skill 3600
XFX 319 MERC Black 6900XT 16gb
EVGA CLC 280

I built this to run a sim racing rig. I run triple AOC AGON 32's at 1440. My FPS run 90-110 with Assetto Corsa maxed out. It's pretty impressive actually. I've always stayed a step or two behind the latest and greatest due to cost. I couldn't be happier with this one though. I paid $328 for the chip back during the sale season. My main concern with this chip was the horror stories about heat. In real world gaming use (not unrealistic stress tests) it's never gone over 70c. It is water cooled.

A bit of a ramble but yes, it's a great gaming CPU.

I would not bother.  Extra cache only helps in some games and the maximum clock speeds are somewhat gimped on the X3D parts.

That's true.  AMD locks the chip, making it hard to overclock.  But user reviews report that in MSFS and DCS, the X3D gives a much smoother experience (i.e. lower frame latency,) especially in VR.  It's true that fps will not be improved much, if any.  But I'm getting plenty good fps with my 5800X.  It's the microstutters I'm looking to improve.

Had some time with the 5800x3D now and can say its worth it over the 5800x.

Tarkov is 75 to 100% fps improvement.
StarCitizen is about 25 to 50% improvement and a vast majority of stutters are gone.

That is with just plugging it in. No curve changes or pbo applied.

I think everything you see online is nerds looking at numbers and not pulling the trigger.

Also, Temps are way down.

Just did -30 all cores and it only pulls 109 watts. Cinebench score are right in line with the 5800x.

1440p high grfx in Tarkov are now 144-165fps.

Impressive.

Cool.  I'm going to install mine this weekend.

I'm logging some flights with my 5800X so I have a baseline.  Will fly same routes in the 5800X3D for comparison.

Don't forget to set the bios to defaults after install then reconfigure xmp/docp ect.

How did your install go?

Yep.  I was prompted that a new CPU had been installed.
My fan curves were all intact (oddly enough) but I did have to re-enable Smart Mode.

I reset:

XMP-2
FCLK to 1/2 RAM speed (XMP set it to 3600, so I set FLCK to 1800)
Enabled 'Above 4GB GPU'
Disabled 'Secure Boot'
With this BIOS RBAR was enabled by default.

I didn't change anything else.


It went very well.

I saw a 30% increase in FPS in MSFS with the same aircraft, flying the same route, with the same weather, and a very tangible improvement in frame times.
I turned rolling cache off for these tests, since that can (is designed to) improve performance when flying the same routes.

Temps are a touch higher, but nothing to worry about, maxing out around 62°C on the 240mm custom loop.  The 5800X seldom got above 60°.
I could attribute this to the thermal paste I used.  I've always spread a very thin layer of Arctic Silver MX-4 across the entire CPU heatspreader, but I used Noctua NT-H1 this time, and Noctua specifically warns against this.  They recommended 5 small dots, letting the viscosity of the compound do its thing.  When I powered the computer on for the first time, the hardware monitor in BIOS showed 38°C after 10 minutes at idle, which is just fine.

Hows the VR performance?

I have a 5600x now and with prices like they are wondering if I should make a minor upgrade.

I haven't gotten that far yet.  I just installed my prescription lens inserts into my G2, and haven't fired it up yet.

But everything I read on the MSFS forum says the 5800X3D is the best upgrade you can make for VR (assuming you are sticking with the AM4 socket, and have a capable GPU and RAM.)
I'm excited to see it for myself.

cool, let us know. Yeah I would LOVE to upgrade to AM5, but man between the new MB, CPU and RAM it is NOT minor. Though, I could put off the minor upgrade and do the major one next year.

Odd temps are up. Mine were about thr same.

Do a -30 on all cores and the temps will tank. Cinebench scores were 500 above my 5800x after that with temps about 8c lower.

Glad it went well,  I am still very happy with my results as well.

I plan to experiment with PBO.  But then I think, "Why?"

62°C max is a perfectly fine temp.  The cores are already boosting to 4500Mhz, my flights are very smooth.  FPS is plenty good.
(Speaking in 2D, of course.  I may find I want to play with undervolting when I start using VR - just to wring every bit of performance out of the CPU.)

There is no overlooking on x3D. I'm talking about an undervolt basically.

Yes.

I applied Kombo Strike 3 this morning, and saw a voltage drop, and a temp drop.

Boost clocks remained the same (4450 MHz on a 3400 MHz base clock.)
Core voltage went from 1.24 to 1.11.
Temps went from 62° to 56°.

No stability problems yet.

@eracer
@spud

I've been away from the game of BIOS tweaking for too long to keep up with what you guys are discussing.

Can you give me some good tips on what to tweak in my BIOS for optimal performance?

I just built a new system with an MSI Mag x570s Tomahawk Max, Radeon 6950xt, and 32 gig gskill 3600 C16 RAM.

Thanks!

MSI boards have Kombo Strike, I would try that over anything else if you are on the x3D version. Other than that, make sure DOCP/XMP is enabled and set properly for your memory.

Like Spud said, enable Kombo Strike.  I'm not sure which BIOS revision it was introduced, but it's part of the latest.
It has three levels: 1, 2, 3.  I would try 3 and check for stability.  If you see signs, go down to 2.

They don't say exactly what it does, since AMD has locked out core frequency multiplier on the 5800 X3D.  You can't OC it by increasing the core frequency.
Supposedly it undervolts the chip, allowing it to run cooler and natively boost longer before thermal throttling.

- My RAM supports XMP-2, so I make sure that's enabled in BIOS.  XMP-2 uses all the frequency/timing settings stored on the RAM.  If RAM doesn't support XMP-2, then use XMP-1.
- Look for FCLK.  Manually set it to 1/2 the RAM frequency.  With XMP-2 my RAM clocks at 3600 MHz, so I set FCLK to 1800 MHz.  This ensures a 1:1 Infinity Fabric Ratio (CPU --- RAM direct data transfer.)
- I don't try to OC my RAM any more - I'm not that savvy.

- I enable "Above 4GB GPU memory."  In my BIOS it's labeled with "Crypto something something."  Don't worry about what it means, just turn it on.

- All my case fans (as well as my coolant pump) use PWM, so I make sure in 'Hardware Monitor' that my fan settings have PWM set, and 'Smart Mode' set, so I can customize my fan profiles for a balance of cooling and noise.

- The current MSI BIOS revision enables RBAR by default now.  You used to have to manually enable it.  Your graphics card needs to support it and it needs to be enabled in the driver software.  I don't know about AMD GPU's.  I use a utility called GPU-ID that gives you a lot of info about your card, including whether RBAR is enabled.  RBAR is a good thing.

That's really all I do.

Thanks!

Happy to help.