AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800X is a better value gaming CPU than the legendary 5800X3D

AMD’s Ryzen 5000 series was the pinnacle of the long-running AM4 platform, a family of CPUs that offered a significant increase in performance over Ryzen 1000 processors on the same socket. While the exceptional 5800X3D takes the title of the fastest gaming CPU of this generation, the standard 5800X is another capable performer – and this octa-core, 16-thread CPU is much cheaper this Black Friday, costing £181/207 Only dollars.

That’s not bad for a CPU that costs twice as much at the start of 2022 – especially when it also costs 60% as much as the Ryzen 7 5800X3D while delivering 75% to 95% of the performance, depending on the game.

Our RPS review of the 5800X makes for good reading nearly four years later, with former hardware editor Katherine finding that gaming performance exceeds the flagship 10900K of the time, though it’s not noticeably faster than the 5600X. These days, the 10900K (and its successor, the 11900K) still costs more than £300, while the 5800X has reached new highs in terms of value for money.

The 5800X is a more general processor than the 5600X or 5800X3D, too, with a design that delivers full performance in gaming and content creation workloads alike, with 16 threads generally proving sufficient for things like rendering 3D scenes or transcoding video. This makes the 5800X a good choice for content creators or programmers who can accommodate the largest number of available cores and threads, while still delivering excellent gaming performance.

Overall, it’s a great deal and worth considering if you’re upgrading to an older Ryzen system.