Hello. I’ll keep it simple
I am planning to do moderate gaming and moderate - heavy productivity workload especially with rendering, simultaneously streaming, and (video) editing. As such, I am eyeing the 7950x3d and have a few questions about it as all this talk about setting it up honestly seems daunting VS the simplicity of (from what I heard and understand) the one-and-done setup with the 7800x3d.
For the 7950x3d
- Do I *NEED* process lasso for it?
- Would just buying the CPU, installing it, and setting windows to high-performance work?
- If I just follow these steps by AMD themselves https://community.amd.com/t5/gaming/how-to-set-up-your-system-with-a-new-amd-ryzen-9-7950x3d-or/ba-p/589464, would that suffice?
- Just confirming this as I am honestly confused with the amount of information around. So if I game on my first monitor using the 8 cores of the 1st CCD, I can run a productivity process as well with the other cores as needed and it would NOT be parked? This is mostly what I’ll be doing
- For setting my expectations as well, for current 7950x3d users, what has been your overall experience with this CPU? Has it been a slog to setup? What issues did you guys face? What should I prepare myself to face if ever?
For the 7800x3d - Would the 7800x3d be enough for both gaming and productivity? Especially with my question 4 for the 7950x3d
If it helps with answering the questions, I have the 7900XTX with 32gb of 6000mhz cl30 Ram
Thank you!
Hello! Thank you so much for the very detailed and concise answers! I do have a 2 questions to about some of your answers for clarification and more insight
Would you say CapframeX is better than Process Lasso or are both the same? Particularly in ease of use and availability i.e. do I need to pay for a subscription (as I’ve heard I need to pay for Process Lasso but I’m unsure yet about that)
I really appreciate your answer for question 4 as this is my exact specific use! I am leaning more towards productivity than gaming, honestly. So I’d like to ask for clarification if this “affinty controls” pertain to CapframX/ Process Lasso, correct? If so, how big (or small) of a hassle is it to you personally?
I appreciate the honesty for question 6! Personally I just find it daunting (even anxiety-inducing) to go through the tinkering at first but all these comments are actually reassuring so I really am grateful for your comment! I am leaning towards using affinity controls now. About the RAM, yes, I am actually considering that. Thank you so much for the suggestion!
By “affinity controls” I just meant some way of assigning core affinity (cores that the process is allowed to run on) to processes. The most popular way to do this is process lasso, but you can even do it with the inbuilt Windows Task Manager so I used a generic term so it was clear the requirement wasn’t a specific piece of software.
Process Lasso is good, but it is also very bloated. It has a lot of unnecessary functions that you won’t need to use, and it also automatically changes a bunch of power settings to “optimise your PC”.
For example, by default it will disable core parking whenever steam launches a game because on other platforms that is a potential performance boost. But with these CPUs it means you have to either change that setting or always use affinity, because it will break the gamebar parking.
If you don’t pay for process lasso it will start nagging you every time it opens with a popup that can’t be dismissed for 30 seconds, so it’s really only viable if you’re willing to shell out the cash for it (or find it through alternate means).
The biggest upside for process lasso is that it is persistent, if you set a rule for a process it will stay that way every time you start it. It is annoying to set the rule for the first time, you have to search up the process and then manually tick the cores you want to bind it to, but it sticks. Process Lasso also would let you bind your background productivity processes to the non-vcache cores to free up the vcache cores more.
By comparison, CapframeX’s affinity control is simple but needs to be set every time you run the game. It’s just a simple button bind, I press “Numpad *” to cycle between all cores/cache cores/frequency cores for the currently active process.
It’s important to remember that even if you forget to set affinity and gamebar isn’t working, the 7950X (which you basically have in that situation) is still a good gaming CPU. It’s not quite as fast in games as 13th Gen Intel or Zen4X3D, but it’s still the next best thing.