AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX3D Adds Yet Even More Performance To Gaming Laptops
Updated: Dec 18, 2023
When AMD first announced and released the Ryzen 7 5800X3D back then, it caused quite a stir. 3D V-Cache was the one single thing that helped propelled the Ryzen 7 5800X3D to be one of the best gaming CPUs and it still very much is awesome even today.
Since then, 3D V-Cache is now also present in the current Ryzen 7000 Series for the desktop segment but we now finally have it in the laptop segment and woah, do we like it very much indeed.
The Gaming Beast
It's only been a couple of days but we've certainly have been pleasantly surprised with the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 X3D (G733) which boasts the AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX3D (60W) and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU (175W) alongside 32GB of 4,800MT/s DDR5 RAM and a 1TB PCIe Gen4 SSD.
Those are certainly some impressive specifications and it's all housed in a behemoth of a chassis with a plethora of ports and a really nice and vibrant QHD 240Hz IPS display. Now we can certainly talk a litlte bit about the Scar 17 and what it offers but we believe everyone would be far more interested in how the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D performs.
We daresay it might just be the best gaming CPU for laptops, yet.
128MB of Cache
To start off, the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D is pretty similar to the Ryzen 9 7945HX.
The X3D chip features 16 Cores & 32 Threads with 2x CCDs and a base frequency of 2.3GHz alongside a boost frequency of 5.4GHz. It'll also come with the Radeon 610M integrated graphics which should help with efficiency and battery life whenever you're not mowing down enemies. The main difference here which sets the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D apart from the rest, is the additional 64MB of 3D stacked V-Cache on one of the CCDs. This means there's a massive 96MB on one CCD while the other remains unchanged with 32MB.
In addition, AMD has tricks up their sleeves to unleash the full potential of the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D. The PPM Provisioning File Driver and the 3D V-Cache Performance Optimizer Driver are designed to work in conjunction with Microsoft's Game Mode, allowing the system to immediately detect when a game is running and when it isn't.
Both drivers will enable both CCDs and thus provide full support for all 16 Cores & 32 Threads. Though admittedly, the full performance that 3D V-Cache can provide might not yet see the light of day with little to no games really utilizing much more than 8 Cores & 16 Threads. Even so, AMD has already claimed more than 15% faster performance in comparison to the non-X3D Ryzen 9 7945HX when gaming at 1080P at High settings.
While substantial CPU performance does directly correlate to higher performance in 1080P, we reckon that more and more gamers are slowly shifting towards 1440P and it is also the resolution which really utilizes the best mix of CPU and GPU performance. With that in mind, and with the Scar 17 X3D on hand, that's what we tried.
The 3D V-Cache Gaming Performance
So we fired up quite a few game titles, with particular focus on AAA games such as Modern Warfare II and Cyberpunk 2077 to really test the limits and experience the game prowess that a highly capable gaming laptop will be able to offer. Thanks to the RTX 4090 Laptop GPU, we can be rest assured that we won't be seeing any bottleneck from the GPU side of things. With that said, let's roll the graphs!
Now just for the fun of it, we did also run Cinebench R23 to see how it performs.
The 3DX chip scores right around 30,000 on the multi-core and gets just about 1,850 on single-core. It goes without saying that if you're planning to do more professional work such as graphics, video editing and much more, the standard Ryzen 9 7945HX will fare much better.
Temperatures are well taken care of when it comes to this specific gaming laptop, the Scar 17 X3D. Not only did ROG really nail down the cooling solution for this beast, it does so with very reasonable fan noise even during extended creative and gaming loads. We're talking just about 89C while pushing 4GHz on all 16 cores while using up to 80W of power.
But of course, this only applies to this particular laptop. When the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D becomes available with other brands and more, performance will differ depending on a multitude of reasons such as cooling design, chassis, tuning and more.
We're All For 3D V-Cache
All in all, we're really confident in the gaming prowess that the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D has to offer. However, we're very much looking forward to the availability of the chip in less powerful systems such as those equipped with the RTX 4060 Laptop GPU or RTX 4070 Laptop GPU instead. The reason for that is simple. Lower resolutions benefit the most from a better CPU and this is possibly where the 3D V-Cache can really bring the best value in the gaming laptop market segment.
We're certainly looking forward to see more X3D chips in gaming laptops in the near future.