Hello. I'll keep it simple
I am planning to do moderate gaming and moderate - heavy productivity workload especially with rendering, simultaneously streaming, and (video) editing. As such, I am eyeing the 7950x3d and have a few questions about it as all this talk about setting it up honestly seems daunting VS the simplicity of (from what I heard and understand) the one-and-done setup with the 7800x3d.
For the 7950x3d
- Do I *NEED* process lasso for it?
- Would just buying the CPU, installing it, and setting windows to high-performance work?
- If I just follow these steps by AMD themselves https://community.amd.com/t5/gaming/how-to-set-up-your-system-with-a-new-amd-ryzen-9-7950x3d-or/ba-p/589464, would that suffice?
- Just confirming this as I am honestly confused with the amount of information around. So if I game on my first monitor using the 8 cores of the 1st CCD, I can run a productivity process as well with the other cores as needed and it would NOT be parked? This is mostly what I'll be doing
- For setting my expectations as well, for current 7950x3d users, what has been your overall experience with this CPU? Has it been a slog to setup? What issues did you guys face? What should I prepare myself to face if ever?
For the 7800x3d
- Would the 7800x3d be enough for both gaming and productivity? Especially with my question 4 for the 7950x3d
If it helps with answering the questions, I have the 7900XTX with 32gb of 6000mhz cl30 Ram
Thank you!
I personally use CapframeX for affinity as process lasso causes some games to crash (like BG3).
High performance mode disables core parking, which breaks the software. You need to use balanced.
The built in AMD solution is only really sufficient if you don't want to use intensive software while gaming, and it won't work for all games even then.
If you want to be using the extra 8 cores for productivity while gaming, you'll need to use affinity instead of gamebar. Parked cores run no code, and running multithreaded workloads while gaming will immediately trigger the "disable parking if load is high" rule and allow the game to leave the VCache die which hurts performance. If your workload is gaming plus MT in the background, you will need to use affinity controls 100% of the time.
It's an amazing CPU, I really love it. It is flawed though, the gamebar solution is incredibly half-arsed from AMD. I don't think they could've gone for a lower effort, more fragile method than just "when gamebar says a game is open, turn off half the cores". I'm fine with manually doing affinity because I honestly enjoy the tinkering, it's fun to benchmark whether games (and indeed other applications) prefer clocks or cache. When using affinity, it's the best CPU in the world for mixed gaming/productivity.
For your workloads, the 7950X3D makes more sense. It's a monstrous CPU for MT, and if you get benefit from more MT I wouldn't settle for the 7800X3D.
One other thing, I'd recommend getting 64GB now if you can afford it. 4 dimm support is atrocious, so if you ever need to upgrade ram you'll want to instead take out the 32GB and put in 2x32GB. The price jump to 64GB is relatively pretty small.
Ace tier comment. I second this. This is why I get 7800X3D instead. What a shame AMD.
Hello! Thank you so much for the very detailed and concise answers! I do have a 2 questions to about some of your answers for clarification and more insight
Would you say CapframeX is better than Process Lasso or are both the same? Particularly in ease of use and availability i.e. do I need to pay for a subscription (as I've heard I need to pay for Process Lasso but I'm unsure yet about that)
I really appreciate your answer for question 4 as this is my exact specific use! I am leaning more towards productivity than gaming, honestly. So I'd like to ask for clarification if this "affinty controls" pertain to CapframX/ Process Lasso, correct? If so, how big (or small) of a hassle is it to you personally?
I appreciate the honesty for question 6! Personally I just find it daunting (even anxiety-inducing) to go through the tinkering at first but all these comments are actually reassuring so I really am grateful for your comment! I am leaning towards using affinity controls now. About the RAM, yes, I am actually considering that. Thank you so much for the suggestion!
By "affinity controls" I just meant some way of assigning core affinity (cores that the process is allowed to run on) to processes. The most popular way to do this is process lasso, but you can even do it with the inbuilt Windows Task Manager so I used a generic term so it was clear the requirement wasn't a specific piece of software.
Process Lasso is good, but it is also very bloated. It has a lot of unnecessary functions that you won't need to use, and it also automatically changes a bunch of power settings to "optimise your PC".
For example, by default it will disable core parking whenever steam launches a game because on other platforms that is a potential performance boost. But with these CPUs it means you have to either change that setting or always use affinity, because it will break the gamebar parking.
If you don't pay for process lasso it will start nagging you every time it opens with a popup that can't be dismissed for 30 seconds, so it's really only viable if you're willing to shell out the cash for it (or find it through alternate means).
The biggest upside for process lasso is that it is persistent, if you set a rule for a process it will stay that way every time you start it. It is annoying to set the rule for the first time, you have to search up the process and then manually tick the cores you want to bind it to, but it sticks. Process Lasso also would let you bind your background productivity processes to the non-vcache cores to free up the vcache cores more.
By comparison, CapframeX's affinity control is simple but needs to be set every time you run the game. It's just a simple button bind, I press "Numpad *" to cycle between all cores/cache cores/frequency cores for the currently active process.
It's important to remember that even if you forget to set affinity and gamebar isn't working, the 7950X (which you basically have in that situation) is still a good gaming CPU. It's not quite as fast in games as 13th Gen Intel or Zen4X3D, but it's still the next best thing.