AMD turbocharged gaming performance when the first cache-rich Ryzen 7 5800X3D desktop CPU arrived on the scene in April 2022. Subsequent models have duly taken shape for the latest Ryzen 7000 Series chips, and they’ve been a boon for extracting maximum framerate at lower resolutions. Bringing the same fps mojo to laptops for the first time, AMD today announces Ryzen 9 7945HX3D – a 16-core and 32-thread mobile champion armed with, wait for it, 144MB of cache.
This here beastie is, in fact, a power-optimised version of desktop Ryzen 9 7950X3D. Using that 120W TDP chip as the blueprint, AMD keeps all the vital performance ingredients intact, but lowers TDP to 55W+, consistent with other HX Series models. Multi-core and peak frequency aren’t quite as bold as the desktop variation, you understand, yet that’s a small price to pay for handsome gaming performance.
Quite how AMD manages to shoehorn in so much cache into the Zen 4 design is detailed right over here; suffice to say that desktop chips enjoy a discernible gaming performance advantage over non-X3D brethren.
Compared to today’s chief mobile protagonist, Ryzen 9 7945HX, AMD’s Ryzen 9 7945HX3D delivers credible framerate improvements when testing at FHD high-quality settings on a GeForce RTX 4090 Mobile GPU, right the way up to 153 per cent in Riftbreaker, according to AMD’s internal testing. Hard to beat good, old cache at keeping all the application goodies on-chip, and there’s an extra 64MB L3 resident on this special-edition chip.
What’s more, AMD believes the most benefit is teased out when wattage is constrained. Illustrating this point, the above graphic compares the X3D chip to the standard model. When both are set to 40W, 3D V-Cache offers an extra 23 per cent framerate in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Cranking up both chips’ power to 70W reduces the differential, and the explanation is that at lower TDPs more cache makes a larger difference. Stands to reason, actually, as less power forces core frequencies down and hampers non-X3D to a greater degree.
Cache-rich Ryzen 9 7945HX3D will debut inside an Asus ROG Scar 17 X3D laptop that’s set to be on-shelf August 22, 2023. Appreciating a standard model is already available featuring the non-X3D processor, the transition ought to be easy enough.
