The Spring Festival is coming. For those who like to play games, the holiday is an excellent opportunity to enjoy the fun of games. Of course, the premise of playing cool games is that you need a powerful computer. You might as well install a game computer for yourself years ago. In terms of CPU selection, the Sharp Dragon 7 7800X3D and i9-14900K are currently recognized as flagship game products. How should we choose? We can get the answer by testing the current popular games.
Specification comparison: the Sharp Dragon 7 7800X3D is more in line with the needs of the game
High performance CPUs are indeed the basis for supporting various applications, but different applications have different requirements for CPU performance. For example, professional applications like CPU's multithreading performance, but for games, their requirements on the number of cores are relatively limited. Generally, 8 cores are enough, and more attention is paid to the single core performance, which is closely related to the frequency and three-level cache capacity. Therefore, there are two processor design schemes to improve the game frame rate, namely "large cache" and "high frequency", The representative products are the Sharp Dragon 7 7800X3D and i9-14900K. When you look at the parameter table, you may think that the paper specification of the i9-14900K is more beautiful and the game performance will have advantages. In fact, the Sharp Dragon 7 7800X3D is more suitable for the game.
The Sharp Dragon 7 7800X3D uses the design of 8 full cores. When playing the game, all the cores will output their full power. The i9-14900K is a configuration of 8 large cores plus 16 small cores. There will be 8 large cores running games in the game, and 16 small cores will not be able to use the power, not to mention the unreasonable distribution of large and small cores in some applications.
Although the maximum frequency of i9-14900K core reaches 6.0GHz, the high frequency is more limited by the manufacturing process. Increasing the frequency will only significantly increase the power consumption and cooling pressure of the processor, which can be said to be a double-edged sword. The Sharp Dragon 7 7800X3D is equipped with a total of 96MB of super large three-level cache, including 64MB 3D V-Cache cache, which can not only significantly improve the game frame rate, but also better control the power consumption and heat.
In a word, the super cache+full core solution of the Sharp Dragon 7 7800X3D is more suitable for game applications, and the overall energy efficiency ratio will be better. The small core of the i9-14900K will not improve the game performance, but will also increase power consumption and heat at ultra-high frequencies, not to mention the task allocation problem under the large and small core architecture.
Finally, in terms of installation cost, the price of 2599 yuan is quite affordable for a top game CPU product like the Sharp Dragon 7 7800X3D. In addition, it has lower requirements for motherboards and radiators, which makes the price of the whole machine a huge advantage. Next, let's take a look at the actual combat comparison of recent popular games.
Thanks to the big cache, the performance of the Sharp Dragon 7 7800X3D game is better
From the measured results of the game, the overall performance of the highly cached Sharp Dragon 7 7800X3D is better than that of the high frequency i9-14900K. Among the 16 games, 10 of the Sharp Dragon 7 7800X3D are leading, and two are even, with a comprehensive leading margin of about 7.03%.
To be specific, the Sharp Dragon 7 7800X3D has a great advantage in Horizon: Dawn of Zero and Wilderness Escort: Redemption 2, reaching about 26% and 23% respectively, almost equivalent to upgrading a video card. The advantage in Watchdog: The Legion, Gate of Bode 3, Island Horror 6, DOTA2 also exceeded 10%. Of course, in some games with higher frequency, the i9-14900K has recovered some disadvantages by virtue of higher frequency: it has a weak lead in such games as Starry Sky, Cyberpunk 2077, Extreme Racing: Horizon 5.
In general, thanks to the super large 96MB three-level cache, the Sharp Dragon 7 7800X3D has shown better performance and adaptability in actual game testing, and has obvious advantages in comprehensive game strength.
The power consumption of the Sharp Dragon 7 7800X3D game is less than 70W
The i9-14900K uses Intel 7 (10nm) technology, which is not advanced at present. In addition, the power consumption of the i9-14900K is significantly increased due to violent frequency increase, and the small cores are useless and waste power. This makes the power consumption of the i9-14900K much higher than that of the Reelon 7 7800X3D.
Even if you play games with 8 big cores, the power consumption of the Sharp Dragon 7 7800X3D is less than 60 W, while that of the i9-14900K is more than 160 W, hundreds of W higher. As a competitor at the same energy level, such a large performance gap is really surprising. This also sets off the advanced manufacturing process of the Sharp Dragon 7 7800X3D 5nm and the energy efficiency ratio of the high cache solution.
The higher power consumption of the i9-14900K not only means that you need to spend more electricity in use, but also will cause greater pressure on power supply and cooling. You will have to buy more advanced flagship radiators, luxury motherboards, and high-power power supplies, and the installation cost will soar. On the contrary, if you choose the Sharp Dragon 7 7800X3D, you don't need to worry about power supply and heat dissipation. A hundred yuan air-cooled radiator plus a hundred yuan mainstream A620 motherboard can solve the problem. That is to say, if you choose entry-level hardware, you can also ensure that the performance of the Sharp Dragon 7 7800X3D is fully released.
Cost of installation: almost save one high-end video card
Finally, let's compare the installation cost. Since the current price of the Sharp Dragon 7 7800X3D is only 2599 yuan, there is a price difference of 2400 yuan between the two in terms of CPU alone. Considering that the performance of the Sharp Dragon 7 7800X3D is still ahead of its competitors, its performance per yuan is about 205.87% of that of the i9 14900K, so the price performance ratio is a complete victory.
Due to the huge power consumption (full load output easily exceeds 300W) and heating of the i9-14900K, the motherboard, radiator and power supply have to be strengthened during installation. The price of the luxurious Z790 motherboard is at least 2000 yuan. Plus, it has better heat dissipation and power supply.
As can be seen from the actual installation, the total cost of this Reel 7 7800X3D configuration is up to more than 3800 yuan, which almost saves the budget of a high-end video card. If you want to pursue the ultimate cost performance, you can also choose the A620 to match with the Sharp Dragon 7 7800X3D. The difference in the installation cost must be more than 4000 yuan, further opening the gap.
Conclusion: The new year's game computer, the Sharp Dragon 7 7800X3D, is the best choice
Through the comparison of specifications, actual performance, installation cost and other aspects, I believe you have an answer to what CPU should be selected for high-end game consoles.
Although the parameters of the Sharp Dragon 7 7800X3D are not as luxurious as the competing products, the design of full core+super large three-level cache is obviously more suitable for game applications. In the actual game, its average frame rate is 7% ahead of i9-14900K, and thanks to the 5nm process and the efficient Zen4 architecture, it has obvious advantages in energy efficiency ratio.
As for the cost performance of the installation, because the requirements of the Sharp Dragon 7 7800X3D on the power supply of the motherboard, the performance of the radiator and the power supply are lower, its installation cost is at least 4000 yuan lower than that of the i9-14900K, and it also has better performance.
Therefore, a set of high-performance game computers should be built in the New Year. No matter from any aspect, the performance of the Sharp Dragon 7 7800X3D is better, and it is worth choosing.
