THE RETURN OF V-CACHE
Ryzen set to reclaim gaming CPU crown
THE LAUNCH of AMD’s Zen 4 Ryzens had one thing missing: there were no 3D V-Cache chips with that wad of L3 cache laid over the cores. The previous generation’s eight-core Ryzen 7 5800X3D had 96MB of L3, making it a gaming demon. AMD said it would return to the formula, but now rumor has it that we’ll see three new V-Cache Zen 4 chips this year, with either 16, 12, or 8-cores. The larger two chips have 192MB of L3, while the smallest has 96MB. Eight cores are ample for gaming, which is one reason AMD stuck to that on its original V-Cache chip. Content creation is another matter, though. The Zen 3 V-Cache chip was not overclockable, and ran slower (200MHz) than the stock Ryzen 7 5800X, mainly so it didn’t run too hot. These new versions are expected to run closer to stock speeds and to be more open to tweaking. They should put AMD back on top with the fastest gaming chips in town.