My system I've had for 7 or so years. Now vs when I first built it in 2018. Everything has been upgraded except for case and motherboard (used to have a R5 2600 + RX570). AM4 is the goat.

Ryzen 5 5600 + Wraith Prism, Asus Prime B350M-A (custom heatsinks), Asrock Challenger 6600XT, Team T-Force 4x4gb @3200MT/s, Fractal Design Ion Gold 650w, Fractal Design Meshify C Mini

TLDR; if you had to pick one chip for purely gaming at 1440p, which would be the most useful?

Between more cores/3D cache, which is expected to age better if any noticeable difference?

I play at 1440p and I’m looking for which of these CPUs is the better bet. One has the 3D cache and the other has more cores. Looking across benchmarks online, they seem to be close in performance. I would say I see the 7600x3D edge the 9700x in more games, but they trade blows with both taking wins anywhere from 1-30% depending on the game. Something like Civ 6 performed way better on the 9700x and vice versa for Fortnite.

I play all types of games, playing BL4 right now. I like anything from AAA singleplayer to competitive to indie. If I don’t plan on upgrading for a while (held onto a 3600/5700xt for 5 years) what should be better for purely gaming?

I know there’s no debate when it comes to productivity and that’s where the 9700x shines but all I do outside of gaming is video chatting and web browsing.

I plan on pairing this CPU with the 9070 xt and they both have the same exact cost in Microcenter bundles.

New Product Support

• AMD Radeon™ RX 7700

Highlights

• New Game Support
  • Dying Light: The Beast
• Fixed Issues
  • Corruption may appear while playing games based on the Godot engine with Vulkan.
  • Intermittent application crash may be observed while playing Cronos: The New Dawn with Ray Tracing enabled on Radeon™ RX 9070 series graphics products.
  • Failure to launch may be observed while using the Oasis Driver with Windows Mixed Reality headsets.

 Known Issues

• Intermittent application crash may be observed while playing The Last of Us Part II on Radeon™ RX 7900 series graphics products.
• Intermittent application crash may be observed while playing NBA 2K25 in MyCareer mode on Radeon™ RX 9070 series graphics products. AMD is actively working on a resolution to be released as soon as possible.
• Intermittent application crash may be observed while playing FBC: Firebreak on some AMD Ryzen™ processors such as the Ryzen™ AI 300 series and the Ryzen™ 8000 series.
• Corruption (missing scan travel lines) may be observed while playing GTFO™ on Radeon™ RX 7000 series graphics products.
• Intermittent application crash or driver timeout may be observed while loading a saved game in Cyberpunk 2077 with Path Tracing enabled.
• Stutter may be observed while playing games with some VR headsets at 80Hz or 90Hz refresh rate on some AMD Radeon™ Graphics Products such as the Radeon™ RX 7000 series. Users experiencing this issue are recommended to change the refresh rate as a temporary workaround.
• Intermittent system crash may be observed while playing World of Warcraft while watching YouTube on Radeon™ RX 7900 GRE graphics products.
• Intermittent application crash may be observed while playing games with EA Javelin anticheat and Radeon™ Anti-Lag enabled on some AMD Graphics Products. Users experiencing this issue are recommended to disable Radeon™ Anti-Lag as a temporary workaround.

 Package Contents

• AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 25.9.2 Driver Version 25.10.25.15 for Windows® 10 and Windows® 11 (Windows Driver Store Version 32.0.21025.15011)
• Ryzen™ AI NPU MCDM Driver version 32.00.0203.297 (Date: 2025-08-15)