How AMD’s Ryzen 7950X3D V-Cache Works on Windows

In layman’s terms, the three Ryzen 7000 chips AMD is selling with X3D Edition V-Cache (the Ryzen 7950X3D, 7900X3D, and Ryzen 7 7800X3D) get an extra boost of 64 megabytes of L3 cache on half of its processor cores.

In processor-intensive tasks such as large games or media applications, these cores become dedicated to performance, removing cores without other caches for background tasks. It is similar to Intel’s Performance and Efficiency cores but is handled more directly.

In actual use, things get a bit more complicated. Cores without the technically enhanced V-cache run at a slightly higher clock than other cores due to some basic hardware controls. In most cases, Windows-based systems should automatically run games and other intensive applications on V-Cache cores. But in cases where it doesn’t, you can force apps like Cinebench to use the V-Cache core with the Windows Game Bar “Remember this is a game” setting.

What kind of growth can you expect when using those V-cache cores versus standard cores? According to some basic benchmarks, the single-core results match non-X3D versions of similar chips when running without a cache. When the Cinemark benchmark is forced to use the V-cache cores via the Game bar, it actually runs a bit worse – that’s because those cores are clocked a bit less. but reliable like in real game benchmarks shadow of the tomb raider In tests, the game shows a shocking 20 percent better framerate when running on a core with V-cache.

Usually, the Game Bar setting is sufficient to manage which apps should use the V-Cache core and which should not. But if you want more fine-grained control, you can pop into your motherboard’s BIOS and change the CPPC Dynamic Preferred Core setting from Frequency to Auto (force run on non-cache cores) or Cache (to run on V-cache cores). forced) can flip. This setting varies from manufacturer to manufacturer but is usually found under the SMU options.

Unfortunately, the option to test individual games on standard cores versus V-cache cores isn’t readily visible in AMD’s Ryzen Master program. But with a little tweaking, you can see which games benefit from the extra cache, and which (if any) don’t. For a more in-depth look at the latest high-end PC hardware, be sure to subscribe to PCWorld on YouTube, and check out our Ryzen 9 7950X3D review for our full analysis of AMD’s brutal new gaming flagship.

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