Evaluating CPU Limitations with the RTX 5090: Insights and Performance Analysis

all right so yes the RTX 5090 might be a $2,000 or more GPU that you probably can't buy and most people absolutely

should not buy but what this GPU does is it allows us to do some very interesting evaluations here because it is the most

powerful GPU on the planet right now it can help us answer a couple of burning questions about potential CPU

limitations now and how those CPU limitations could affect your upgrade plans into the future for example is the

5800 x3d a legendary processor still good enough for the next few GPU upgrade cycles does Intel's Arrow Lake using the

latest updates still get crushed by the 9800 x3d and so on anyways the focus here will be processor scaling on

higher-end CPUs that would normally be paired with the fastest GPU on the planet of course there's the 9800 x3d

and 285k but I also wanted to include amd's current flag ship the 950x finally there's top tier x3d gaming CPUs from

the last few years and also Intel's previous Top Dog the 14900 K and before we go any further I wanted to be

perfectly transparent here the entire testing process for these various platforms with the RTX 90 it didn't go

according to plan we encountered a bunch of stability problems both with nvidia's weirdly immature drivers and with some

very specific platform conflicts for example on the 14900 K system Hogwarts Legacy constantly crashed to the desktop

without any error message and we tried updating the game changing resolutions absolutely everything and it didn't help

with the 7800 x3d installed Warhammer 3 Total War had random visual artifacts like half of the maps turning blood red

and huge performance drop offs that happened 3/4 of the time when we opened any of our save games or the built-in

benchmarking tool and last but not least the 285k system will every every single time we open up Space Marine it's simply

bsod and we could not find a workaround and supposedly we're not the only people who encountered this now just to double

check our sanity what we did is we installed an RTX 4080 in every single one of these same systems and reloaded

these sort of issue prone games and not one of them had any problems whatsoever so in a lot of ways this is very much

platform conflicts with the RTX 5000 series I should also mention the way that we're going about this video is

very different from our classic CPU review process where we test at 720p low and 1080p High settings I wanted this

video to more properly reflect what people buying high-end gpus would expect and that's the absolute maximum settings

at 1440p and 4K for all the charts 1440p will be on the left and 4k on the right the first thing I want to talk about

here is simple GPU utilization because typically in most situations if a GPU isn't fully utilized that points towards

there being a bottleneck somewhere in your system a lot of the times the CPU is pointed out as the culprit but that

is not always the case so let's start with the 9800 x3d and at 1440p in most situations the GPU is maxed out though

there are some exceptions balers gate Space Marine 2 and Spider-Man are the biggest offenders while Hogwarts and

Starfield also get in on the action though to a lesser extent however moving to 4K shows a lot of those bottlenecks

are cleared up which increases the likelihood of them being CPU bottleneck at 1440p however the numbers from

Hogwarts and balers gate Point towards their potentially being some game engine limitations here too now if we overlay

the 950x onto this at 1440p there are a lot more situations where the GPU simply fails to reach its full output potential

as a matter of fact the overall percentage gets dragged under 90% since its dual CCD layout doesn't play nice

with some games it claws that disadvantage back at 4K but Space Marine 2 and balers gate still have some issues

the ironic thing is that at both 1440p and 4K the older 7800 x3d actually manages to get better overall

utilization numbers than the brand new 950x and technically that should also lead to marginally better performance

too but what I really wanted to focus on here is a 5800 x3d because at 1440p its average GPU usage number might not look

that good at just 79% but it's actually heavily influenced by The Usual Suspects like Spider-Man Space Marine Starfield

and balers gate though this time other CPU bound titles like CS2 and cyberpunk also get impacted moving on to 4K and

it's obvious the 5800 x3ds clock speed disadvantage is the main culprit in those situations at 1440p but most of

those issues are completely nullified when gaming at even higher resolutions it should be interesting to see how

these numbers actually translate into frame rates though overlaying the 285k onto this and it's obvious that Intel's

pains really haven't been solved particularly at 1440p where it seems to be bottlenecking the 5090 in a lot of

games it even has some issues at 4K I mean look at CS2 and Warhammer its numbers actually go downwards and that

signals a potential optimization issue as a matter of fact if we compare it to the 7800 x3d an exclude Space Marine

which crashed on the Intel system that 2-year-old CPU actually gets better numbers overall than Intel's newest

Flagship sometimes by pretty wide margin and it gets even worse for Intel the 14900 K has just as many games below the

90% Mark as there were above it at 1440p Naturally the situation improves a whole lot at 4K but check this out if we add

the 5800 x3d numbers to this these two processors are neck and neck and what that initially points to is that amd's

older x3d chips even the ones on the am4 platform could still have tons of potential left in them for years to come

now what I wanted to see is how does that utilization translate into actual real world World gaming performance

let's start with Alan Wake and I should mention that to distinguish things a bit better the newest CPUs in these charts

will be in brighter colors while the older ones will be a bit darker their positioning however it's not going to

change so it's easier to follow along anyways here the 9800 x3d is clearly ahead of other ryzen CPUs at 1440p while

the 285k post some impressive results too that are a bit better than the 14900 K the 5800 x3d meanwhile actually posts

very good averages but it's 1% lows those tend to suffer and that carries over to 4K though at that resolution the

only CPU that really stands out is the 9800 x3d again Blackmouth Wukong is an extremely GPU heavy game which is why it

Maxs out utilization on every CPU at both resolutions as a result there's a literal Log Jam with all the processors

getting about the same frame rates the only exception to that is a 285k at 1440p which sees its 1% lows drop by a

bit meanwhile balers gate is an absolute nightmare situation for most processors with the 9800 x3d and 7800 x3d being the

only ones with consistent results those Intel processors they get hammered at both resolutions to the point where the

5800 x3d is again able to match the 285k averages though its 1% lows are the worst here overall this game is just all

over the place and it doesn't favor higher thread counts either based on the 950x results there's two things that CS2

absolutely loves higher clock speeds and plenty of cash so the x3d models get amazing results at both resolutions with

the 9800 x3ds 1% lows at 1440p being almost unbelievably High the 5800 x3d meanwhile is essentially tied with the

7800 x3d while the 285k ends up getting inconsistent frame rates at both resolutions so there's obviously

something going wrong behind the scenes here because Intel processors used to dominate in this game now normally you

think a title as graphically demanding as cyberpunk would be GPU limited and at 4K it absolutely is but at 1440p there's

some clear distinctions between these processors with the 285k putting down some good numbers essentially matching

the 9800 x3d and 7800 x3d and the 5800 x3d well it might be an underdog but it frame rates compete pretty well with the

14900 K Doom is another game with a 285 K's inconsistency really shows its face again it's the best processor at 1440p

but the worst at 4K I should also mention this is one of the first times where the 950x ends up competing

directly with the 9800 x3d but other than some 1% frame rate falloffs at 1440p all the ryzen processors do pretty

good here we're also coming to the point in this video where Intel's inconsistency starts leading to some

outright stability problems for the 285k and that's too bad since if the 14900 K's numbers are anything to go by it

could have done very very well switching to the AMD side it's obvious that our original review of the 9800 x3d didn't

show its true potential even at High resolutions and the absolute maximum detail settings it's still able to

deliver a much better gaming experience than any of the other ryzen processors and speaking of those at least in this

game the 5800 x3d is starting to show its age especially at 4K where the am5 processors get significantly better

performance Hogwarts while that flips the Intel situation onto its head with the 14900 K now crashing the game with

the RTX 590 installed but taking that out of the equation what we have here is a largely GPU bounc situation so the

9800 x3d 7800 x3d and 9950 X get pretty much identical results the only processor that's a bit behind especially

in 1% lows is that 5800 x3d and what continues to amaze me is how the RTX 590 allows some processors to really Flex

their muscles with an RTX 490 some of these games had identical performance for most CPUs but now there's some clear

winners I mean we still get into GPU limited scenarios at 4K but at 4 1840p the 9800 x3d is the clearly Superior

option when you look at its 1% lows and yet there are always going to be situations that run into that GPU wall

even with the most powerful graphics card on the planet right now and outside some variants in 1% lows that pretty

much levels the playing field for every processor here Rainbow 6 is another one of those games that has a pretty heavy

GPU cap with the 5800 x3d being the only CPU that has notably lower frame rates at 1440p and 4K and that's being this

store in a lot of titles the oldest xpd chip holds strong in averages but frame rate delivery does tend to get impacted

versus newer Solutions and you might remember Spider-Man as being one of the worst offenders when it came to low GPU

utilization across every single processor here the end result is the 9800 x3d outperforming everything by a

wide margin the 950x completely underperforming and the Intel chips putting in some pretty competitive

numbers meanwhile using the 5800 x3d with an RTX 59 will leave quite a bit of performance on the table even at 4K

Starfield meanwhile well that's a game where we finally see some glimmers of Hope for Intel with both of their

processors being well positioned versus the AMD Alternatives but this also ends up looking terrible for the 285k since

it can't seem to win against the 14900 K and while there's a distinct GPU bottleneck at 4K 144p shows that the am5

based x3d chips are able to clearly distance themselves from the 5800 x3d with those 1% lows being the biggest

differentiating factor and the final stop here is Warhammer 3 and we're back to being GPU bound even into the 99th

percentile frame rates there is one exception though the I9 285k just falls apart at 4K becoming a stuttering mess

that points towards a clear lack of platform specific optimizations here and after seeing these results I sort of

like want to drag you back to our 9800 x3d review because back then I hypothesized that the RTX 490 was

probably holding that CPU back and back then we saw about a 4% uplift in performance at 1080p High between the

9800 x3d and 7800 x3d well now with higher detail settings and higher resolutions plus the RTX 90 what is

going to change well that same 4% boost is here too but this time it's at 4K while the Gap grows even more at 1440p

to 6% with a huge 18% jump in 1% lows also if we go down like a hypothetical rout here the RTX 90 potentially has the

performance of The Next Generation say RTX 670 TI and this puts people with that amazing 5800 x3d in an interesting

position while it leaves some performance on the table at 1440p this is still a remarkably capable processor

that comes close to the 9950 X in gaming so if you don't want to buy a GPU that costs more than $22,000 and is basically

unobtanium right now and nothing drastically improves with the performance trajectory of future gpus

the 5800 x3d should absolutely last you for a few more years at the very least these numbers also highlight another

potential red flag and it's actually for amd's upcoming processors that 9950 x3d is we all know coming down the pipeline

and based on the 9950 X's results here well AMD has a few problems because windows and their own optimizations are

not allowing that single CCD to play an exclusive part in gaming performance and whenever tasks are shifted to the second

CCD which happens in a bunch of games you see a performance falloff and I'm willing to bet regardless of how much 3D

V cach is on that chip you cannot compensate for that one issue as for Intel we need to change this chart just

a little bit to remove Space Marine and Hogwarts since there crashes deflated the overall results well it actually

seems like after months of fiddling with their platform the 285k squeezes out a very narrow win over the 14900 k at both

resolutions I mean 1% lows still lag pretty far behind amd's Alternatives but at least that's a small win right and

one thing you didn't see up until now is RT performance well since there's so much Focus placed on the GPU in those

scenarios most games end up with a close five-way tie with the only outlier being the 5800 X 3D and while things are still

close there are some intrinsic differences I wanted to talk about again without Hogwarts taking into the

equation to level out the playing field the Intel CPUs actually do quite well at both resolutions but the 9800 x3d really

does show that it's got a lot left in the tank at 1440p it's almost 10% ahead of the next fastest AMD CPU and still

comfortably leads Intel's fastest option so where does this all leave us and I'll be very straightforward here I was

absolutely shocked at some of the results that we are seeing because typically in these scenarios 1440p 4K

with the highest possible settings well we run into GPU limitations far before we see any type of CPU bottlenecking but

in this situation we're actually seeing certain processors especially the 9800 x3d stretching their legs even further

than we ever imagined so I guess that's it I hope that you enjoyed this little video where we Dove a little bit deeper

into a subject that a lot of you guys have been asking for if you have any other ideas that you want to put onto

the table this is the place to do it the comment thread down below I read almost every single comment so anyways until

the next video I'm Mike with har Canucks and have a great day guys take care