AMD’s unreleased Ryzen 9 5900X3D had 128MB of cache
A rare engineering sample of AMD’s 12-core Ryzen 9 5900X3D has surfaced online, revealing 128MB of L3 cache in a processor the company never sold. The configuration paired extra cache on one chiplet with a standard second chiplet, offering a glimpse of the design choices behind AMD’s gaming CPUs.
Bottom line — AMD ultimately released the eight-core Ryzen 7 5800X3D, not this 12-core prototype.
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Screenshots shared by a Chiphell user show 128MB of L3 cache, split between 96MB on one chiplet and 32MB on the other, according to VideoCardz.
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The sample reportedly would not boot with a recent motherboard BIOS; an older BIOS using SMU firmware 56.70.0 worked, VideoCardz reports.
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Tom’s Hardware says AMD had also shown 12-core and 16-core Zen 3 prototypes with 192MB of L3 cache, achieved by adding 3D V-Cache to both chiplets.
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At Computex 2021, AMD demonstrated a 12-core prototype that it said delivered up to 15% better average gaming performance than a standard Ryzen 9 5900X at the same 4GHz frequency, Tom’s Hardware reports.
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Tom’s Hardware says AMD settled on a single-cache-chiplet design for the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, avoiding cross-chiplet latency that can hinder gaming.