AMD in its Computex 2026 presentation, celebrated 10 years of the Socket AM4 platform that kickstarted the company's long march to competitiveness with Intel in the desktop PC processor market, and its eventual domination. Socket AM4 supports the original "Zen" and "Zen+," across the Ryzen 1000 and ...
There’s nothing outdated about it. It outruns most AM5 CPUs where you actually need the speed, it supports plenty of IO, it supports AVX2 and all sorts of platform features.
And it’s not that expensive if you can re-use RAM. Especially not expensive if you can re-use the mobo.
Full disclosure: I have a 7800X3D now. But I wouldn’t notice the difference if I had an 5800X3D 97% of the time; there’s literally one my sibling has that does all the same things, running a 7900 XTX GPU no problem.
I would certainly prefer a 5800X3D to a 7600 or even a 7700.
I don’t really see a point on upgrading it till AM6 either.
There are certain things RAM bandwidth disproportionally helps with, but these are pretty niche.
Nothing other than the date? And the platform?
Nope.
What exactly are you running (or hope to run) that you think a 5800X3D is too outdated for?
DDR5
That is not an application.
What do you need DDR5 for? Like what program, specifically?
It’s nothing to do with what I “need”. I don’t “need” anything more than my laptop. I can play Baldurs Gate 3 on a Steam Deck but it looks and runs like balls. The later hardware I can get, the better it will run. Its about maximizing value and longevity.
Then a 5800X3D is maybe what you need.
AMD’s 3D cache is demonstrated to compensate for slower RAM. Tightened timings or lower bandwidth have proportionally less of an impact than non X3D CPUs because, in games, they are accessing RAM less, as more of it fits in cache. You can look up benchmarks proving this if you don’t believe me, or how the 5800X3D smacks 7000 series AM5 CPUs around in CPU-heavy simulation games.
It’s better than low-end AM5.
That, and the actual latency of high end DDR4 isn’t that different from DDR5.
Now. If you are encoding AV1? If you are trying to run llama.cpp hybrid inference? Yeah, raw RAM bandwidth starts to get important. But that niche does not include most games; games freaking love X3D cache.
…Though, honestly? On a Steam deck, or your desktop, RAM capacity and the 2060 are the big bottlenecks.
I used to game on a very similar system (laptop 4900HS CPU, 16GB DDR4, 2060 GPU), and my biggest problems in new games were:
GPU power
6GB RAM/16GB VRAM being too small, especially with background programs.
The only times my CPU felt insufficient was in games that wanted raw simulation performance, like modded Rimworld, Stellaris, Parkitect and such. But it was plenty for huge RPGs.
There was never a time I lamented “ugh, I wish I had DDR5.” It’s just low on the totem pole, especially now.
You’re still not getting it. I won’t lament anything. I still want to maximize my dollar. And that doesn’t mean investing hundreds of dollars in a last-gen platform. Even if its “almost as good” now, what will it be in the future?
Duuuude running an AM4 DDR4 system IS the most value for your money right now. They just announced the retirement of AM5 in three years. Its most efficient to buckle in with the best parts of the last couple year till we wait for the next series of hardware
DDR5 AM5 The 50 series RTX cards
All not fucking worth it for compute/price
Im not poor poor but I’m not rich and I always shop saavy
I maintain my AM4 socket 5700x3d RTX 4070s system is the most you can max out your system for gaming without dropping money you don’t need to drop.
If you want to be efficient with your dollar you will always be picking up the parts that came out last year.
It’ll still be very fast?
Time isn’t going to make it any worse. Games will still love X3D cache. Games won’t be hamstrung by DDR4, just like they aren’t now. But I think I understand you better: you don’t want to buy anything, and hold out for AM6.
…But that’s a loong wait.
If it’s in the budget, you shouldn’t skip out on an AM4 refresh you can enjoy in the intervening years. It’s not going to be obsolete 3-4 years from now, but its affordable enough that upgrading to AM6 from it would still make sense.
Future proofing isn’t generally worth it, IMHO. I doubt the difference in performance between a top end am4 CPU and a top end am5 system will be great enough that one can play a game well and the other can’t.
And high-end CPU power is generally only really taken advantage of by a small number of games, or at lower resolutions where the game can become CPU bound and push high framerates for high refresh rate monitors.
If you use a 1440p or 4k monitor, then an old CPU is usually more than adequate and won’t be the limiting factor; it’s the GPU that’ll be the bottleneck.
I find it’s better to wait until there’s a significant enough jump in performance to where the upgrade will provide a truly meaningful benefit, and there are games on the market that truly require that extra performance.
Are you often encountering games that your currenct CPU is not able to handle?