The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X will be the most interesting processor in AMD's new Zen 3 lineup for most average gamers, with 8 cores and 16 threads being found in products like the Xbox Series X and Playstation 5 for the next few years for a decent gaming experience.

This is at least theoretical. But there are potential problems with pricing right from the start. In case you missed it, AMD has raised the price of this series of chips by $50/50 pounds over the previous one, bringing the 5800X to $450/$450. That's a pretty big price increase, especially considering that Intel's equivalent chip is the Core i7 10700K, which you can generally get for $375.

The Ryzen 7 5800X has its work cut out for it. [It sits above the 6-core, 12-thread Ryzen 5 5600X and below the 12-core, 24-thread Ryzen 9 5900X and 16-core, 32-thread Ryzen 9 5950X. While there may only be four chips at launch, it will undoubtedly be enhanced by the non-X variants, making room for a more affordable price point and potentially a follow-up to the 5700X. While we have seen nothing so far about that chip, one can't help but hope that there will be a slightly slower spin on the 5800X that is more affordable and more cost-effective.

Our review of the Ryzen 9 5900X covered what's new and great about the Zen 3 architecture; suffice it to say that Zen 3 is one of the most impressive CPU architecture upgrades in recent memory. [As for the Ryzen 7 5800X, it has an 8-core, 16-thread chip capable of 4.7 GHz turbo at a base clock of 3.8 GHz. This is a single CCX configuration, with all 8 cores having access to 32MB of L3 cache, so there is no possibility of chiplet-to-chiplet slowdowns that tend to occur with CPUs with a high number of cores.

As with the 5900X, Precision Boost 2 had a tremendous impact on the 5800X's frequency, and we saw single-core performance exceed the estimated turbo to 4.8 GHz during testing. Multithreaded frequencies really depend on what you are doing and can vary widely depending on the application, but we saw 4.5 to 4.6 GHz on all cores in many tests. [As in previous generations, the 5800X supports PCIe 4.0. This is really only relevant with respect to storage at the moment, although it could become more useful when we start using technologies like DirectStorage to improve game load times. There is also the possibility of running Infinity Fabric at 2,000 MHz and using 4,000 MHz memory sets, but this is not fully supported at launch.

There is much to like about the Ryzen 7 5800X's performance. Serious applications that are thread count conscious will benefit from the increased thread count and IPC.

In Cinebench R20, for example, it beats AMD's previous generation chips and Intel's latest 10th generation Core i7 10700K. If you intend to do any rendering, this is simply the better choice. This is also true for video encoding, where the 5800X delivers 54 fps compared to the 10700K's 43 fps.

Gaming performance is also very healthy, with AMD delivering impressive boosts over previous generation chips and even taking the fight to Intel; AMD fared best in F1 2019, with the 5800X recording a 7fps advantage over the 10700K at 1080p. The two are close on "Total War: Three Kingdoms," but only slightly behind on "Metro Exodus.

The big takeaway, however, is that there is now really nothing between the two platforms. If you want the best gaming performance, there is no longer an automatic preference for the Intel team. As resolution increases, the difference between the two can be as little as a few frames.

As for overclocking, we were able to get a reasonable boost from this chip by overclocking all cores to 4.7GHz at 1.3V.

Overall, the performance of AMD's latest mainstream chips is very healthy, and the fact that AMD is now on par with Intel in the gaming arena means that AMD, like Intel, is a viable option for us gamers. loads, so this is a good choice for those who are interested in more than just gaming, but don't need to bring out the big guns like the 5900X and 5950X.

We highlighted the problems at the beginning, but there is no escaping the fact that despite the performance on offer, Intel's Core i7 10700K delivers almost identical gaming performance and is less expensive. If you are only interested in gaming, it is hard (not impossible, but hard) to justify $75 for PCIe 4.0 alone; if AMD had kept the pricing the same as the previous generation, it would have been an easier decision. As it stands, AMD is giving Intel something of a lifeline.

If you are in the market for a new build and are looking to the future, the Ryzen 7 5800X is a phenomenal chip. It rivals Intel in gaming and leads in more serious workloads, and the PCIe 4.0 support means it will last longer as a platform and give you access to faster storage right now. Excellent. I just wish it were cheaper.