Gaming Performance
We are going to focus on the 4K, 1440p, and 1080p gameplay performance. The common GPU used for every CPU is an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition video card. Each graph has all three resolutions on each CPU included, but the order and sorting do not change in each graph. You can look at the framerate between CPUs at each resolution.
Starfield
Let’s start with Starfield, seeing as it is a very recent game, and also as many have found CPU-driven or dependent depending on where you are in the game. We are testing on New Atlantis, and have devised a long manual run-through walking across the entire city mostly. It tests a lot of areas of dense populace, as well as areas with trees and water inside the city. We are testing the game at the highest in-game settings but with FSR/upscaling disabled, therefore no dynamic resolution. We have VRS enabled, and everything else enabled, and we set the resolution by the desktop resolution for the game. We are using patched game version 1.7.36.
Let’s just get 4K out of the way, there was no difference between the CPUs here, even in this game. At 1440p though, things start to get interesting. We actually find that the Ryzen 9 7950X lags the most behind at 95FPS. The Ryzen 9 7950X3D is a bit faster by 4%. However, the real winners here are the Intel CPUs at 1440p. They can push 100FPS at 1440p. However, the new i9-14900K really has no advantage over the 13900K in this game. Even at 1080p, the i9-14900K has a similar performance to the 13900K. There was a few FPS difference with the 7800MT/s RAM compared to the 13900K, it could be due to CAS latency differences, or it could just be a fluke of manual run-throughs and a dynamic game.
On the other hand, what is not a fluke is how much faster the Intel CPUs are compared to the Ryzen 9 7950X and Ryzen 9 7950X3D at 1080p. The i9-14900K at its fastest is 20% faster than the Ryzen 9 7950X and 10% faster than the Ryzen 9 7950X3D at 1080p! The 7950X3D improves upon the 7950X by 9% here, so yay for the X3D part in this game at 1080p. However, the Intel CPUs just blow it away.
Counter Strike 2
The next one we are going to hit up is Counter Strike 2, because of course we are! To perform our test we are doing a manual run-through in Mirage, on Warmup, so there are no characters or character interactions here, it is purely a clean map run just to get the maximum performance and see if there is any difference between the CPUs in this new game. We are running the game on the “Very High” graphics preset, and VSYNC is OFF. In addition, we are utilizing the “fps_max 0” command to unlock the 400FPS game cap for full performance.
Oof, like Starfield, the Intel CPUs put a pretty big beating on the AMD CPUs in this game. Even at 4K, we are seeing differences worth noting. First, to the question about faster RAM affecting performance on Intel Core i9-14900K, well in this game the answer is again no, just like Starfield, it isn’t making a difference.
Let’s first look at the 14900K as it compares to the 13900K. At 4K, there is no difference. However, there is certainly a difference at 1440p and 1080p. At 1440p the 14900K is 3% faster, and at 1080p the 14900K is also 3% faster. But what is really shocking is just how much faster the 14900K is over the Ryzen 9 7950X and Ryzen 9 7950X3D. At 1440p the 14900K is 18-19% faster than the Ryzen 9 7950X3D and Ryzen 9 7950X, which is pretty significant. At 1080p the 14900K is 7% faster than the Ryzen 9 7950X and 10% faster than the 7950X3D.
In regard to the lower numbers on the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, this may be a case where the game is not parking or utilizing the correct CCD with the 3D-VCache. We are not certain, but in this case, it could be the culprit that the game is not running on the right part. However, this is a default and realistic use case that an end-user would encounter, and thus a real-world result. We didn’t do anything different or unique for any CPU here, treating them fairly. We also did update the XBOX App software, for game detection, as well as Chipset drivers, so everything is in place as it should be for proper 7950X3D operation as is intended.
Cyberpunk 2077
Next up is the venerable Cyberpunk 2077. We have updated the game to version 2.01, so Cyberpunk v2.0 is fully being tested here. We are running the game at the “Ultra” graphics preset, and running the benchmark.
We actually do see a slight performance difference at 4K here, with the 7950X and 13900K lagging a bit behind. The 7950X3D and 14900K CPUs pick up the slack at 4K for 2% better performance at 4K. However, once we get to 1440p things get interesting. The 14900K is 2% faster than the 13900K but 3% faster than the Ryzen 9 7950X3D and 5% faster than the 7950X. At 1080p though the differences are actually much greater. The i9-14900K is 1% faster than the 13900K, but 7% faster than the 7950X3D and 15% faster than the 7950X! We do see the 7950X3D improve upon the 7950X by 7%, but that is not enough to make it faster than the 14900K. The 14900K does take a 7% lead over the 7950X3D. We also see no difference in RAM speeds.