Hello and welcome to the Skyville channel and today let's talk about what I think are the best CPU upgrades you should look at getting for the AMD socket. So, if you clicked on this video, I'm willing to bet you're someone who has a mid-tier to low-end AMD CPU, whether it's on the AM4 or AM5 socket, and you're finally ready to make that jump for a CPU upgrade to hopefully improve your gaming PC's performance. Or you could be someone who just can't get your hands on a graphics card upgrade for the life of you because they're all overpriced or they're all out of stock and you're just like, I got to upgrade something, so why not the CPU? Well, the goal by the end of this video is to convince you not to upgrade your CPU for gaming. I know it sounds a little bit counterintuitive, but let me explain why. Odds are if you are watching this video on a 1440p or 4K monitor, you are not going to see any improvement in gaming performance if you go from your current CPU to a faster one. Because at those higher resolutions, you are going to be more GPUbound than CPUbound. Meaning, you're going to be more restricted by your graphics card's overall performance for average frame rate than your processor. So then, why even bother upgrading your CPU at all? And what's the point of making this video in the first place? Well, like I said at the start of the video, a lot of you probably can't get your hands on a graphics card or you're looking at getting a new one in the future to replace your current one. And if that's the case, you probably need a faster CPU to make full advantage of that new flagship graphics card. Whether it's the new Radeon RX970 XT or an RTX 5080 or if you're somehow lucky, an RTX5090, your little old Ryzen 5 3600 from 2019 is obviously not going to be able to handle an RTX 5090 out of the box. So, if you're going to upgrade your CPU with that intention in mind, you've got to do it right. Because there's a lot of wrong ways you can do this. not necessarily wrong, just ways where you're basically throwing money away into a furnace and you're not actually going to see any real improvement in gaming performance by technically upgrading your CPU. So, that's going to be the main objective of this video is to get you the right CPU upgrade to not just see improvements in frame rates with a higherend graphics card and not just esport titles, but even in AAA games like Assassin's Creed Shadows, which I have something to say about. All right, so here I am playing Assassin's Creed Shadows and uh oh man, I gotta do this and talk at the same time. But one cool thing I noticed when I bought this game from walmart.com is that this came with a special edition version of the game that came with this really cool character pack that again is exclusive to this Walmart only edition version of Assassin's Creed Shadows. Okay, I don't even know who's a friend or foe, but I'm just going to keep going. So, that got me thinking, what other cool special editions of games can I find on walmart.com? Well, for Monster Hunter Wilds, which just came out, oh man, there's this cool steelbook edition version of the game available for PlayStation and Xbox, which I found pretty cool. It makes an already great game, almost like a treasure piece to add to your game library. And then for my Nintendo Switch gamers, there is Xenolade Chronicles X Definitive Edition that just came out as well for Nintendo Switch that is also available on walmart.com. So, what I learned is that Walmart is trying to make a genuine effort in not just expanding their game library, but making cool special edition versions of the game exclusive to their storefront for all devices, including PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch. So, if you want to check out any of the games I just talked about, including that special edition of Assassin's Creed Shadows, I'll have those all linked in the description down below. And thank you to Walmart for sponsoring this video. All right, so I'll get right into my recommended upgrades for all of you who are either on the AM4 socket or the AM5 socket. So, anyone who has an AMD Ryzen 10000 CPU all the way up to an AMD Ryzen 7000 CPU. I'll be doing my best to cover all the different options and motherboards out there to find the right CPU upgrade for you. But there's two things I have to say. First, once again, I want to reiterate that upgrading your CPU is not necessarily going to translate to better gaming performance. Like I said, a lot of the PC games you run into are going to be GPUbound, not CPUbound. And I should say this, those CPUbound PC games are esports games like Fortnite, Valerank, Counterstrike 2, Marvel Rivals, Overwatch 2, Apex Legends, those sorts of PC games because those games are not graphically demanding to run whatsoever. So, they actually rely a little bit more on the CPU for overall frame rate than the graphics card. But even then, you're not going to see a huge world of a difference. So, like I said at the start of this video, it's really only going to make sense upgrading your CPU for gaming if you're also going to be upgrading your graphics card along with it or if you have plans to later in the future. And then the second thing I have to say, and this is going to be about core count, but so many PC newbies get this wrong. A lot of you guys are looking at that 12 core Ryzen CPU or that 16 core Ryzen CPU as an upgrade for your gaming PC. And those are two of the least cost effective ways you can go for upgrading your CPU for gaming, especially those 12 core CPUs. Those 12 core CPUs like the Ryzen 9 5N00X, the Ryzen 9 7900X or even 9900X all have six core CCDs. Whereas those 8 core CPUs like the Ryzen 7 5800X, Ryzen 7 7700X or Ryzen 7 9700X come with full 8 core CCDs. And 10 out of 10 times the CPU with an 8 core CCD will outperform the CPU with a six core CCD. Seriously, look up benchmarks. Ryzen 7 CPUs will walk over any of those 12 core CPUs any day of the week for gaming performance. And this matters if you're looking to upgrade your CPU on the bounds of getting the most gaming performance out of it because you want a CPU with a full 8 core CCD. So, we're pretty much only going to be looking at 8 core 16threaded CPUs throughout this entire video. I'm not even going to entertain the idea of 16 core 32thread CPUs because quite frankly, these don't add any additional gaming performance over an 8 core CPU. And even then, these produce so much heat and consume so much wattage, I'm willing to bet you're probably also going to need to replace your motherboard if you wanted to throw one of these into your existing gaming PC, unless you wanted to undervolt it, which would be a whole another endeavor in itself. So, it just makes a lot more sense. Just get an 8 core CPU as the ideal upgrade for a gaming PC. And seriously, trust me, if you game and you have Spotify in the background, you have OBS streaming to Twitch in the background, you may even have some special custom overlays on top of your game while you're streaming, while you're with your buddies in Discord. You don't need a 12 or 16 core CPU for any of that. 8 cores, 16 threads. Again, 16 threads is plenty and in some ways more than enough for that additional stuff on top of gaming. The only people who should consider that 12 core CPU for a Ryzen CPU upgrade aren't gamers. Your professionals who do CPU rendering applications that use the processor instead of the graphics card, and you can't afford the 16 core CPU. Those are the only people who want those 12 core CPUs. So, with that out of the way, and I don't want to hear it, there will be no 12 or 16 core CPU upgrades in this video for gaming. They're pointless. Now, let's get started with the video, which all I'll ask is if you can like it real quick. That'd be cool. Actually, if we get enough likes on this video, I might do this video, but for the Intel sockets. So, like LG 1700 and LG 1851. Although, LG 1851 just came out. So, regardless, I can still cover it. Just depends on how good this video is. All right, so enough is enough. Let's talk about the AM4 socket. So, if you have an old Ryzen 5 3600, Ryzen 5 2600X, or even an old Ryzen 5600X, really, if you're looking for an improvement in gaming performance from the CPU with anticipation for a future graphics card upgrade, you got to go with an X3D CPU. And the one I'd look at is either a Ryzen 7 5700 X3D or Ryzen 7 5800 X3D. But there's going to be a cut off here because a lot of you who are on the AM4 socket already could already have a Ryzen 5000 CPU. So like a Ryzen 5 5600 or Ryzen 7 5700X that doesn't have that 3DB cache. Although it may be tempting to go from a CPU that has 32 megabytes of L3 cache in the case of like the 5600 to a CPU with 96 megabytes of L3 cache in the case of the 5700 X3D. Don't do it. Don't do it. If you already have a Ryzen 5000 CPU, don't upgrade to the 5700 X3D. Nine out of 10 times you're not going to notice that CPU upgrade difference with that extra L3 cache, even at 1080p, unless like you religiously play esports games at low graphics settings where you want the highest frame rates possible, which is not many of you who are watching this video. If you're one of those people, you're going to have to look at buying something on the AM5 socket. But like I said, if you're on an older Ryzen 3000, Ryzen 2000, Ryzen 1000 CPU like any of these, except for this one, the 5700 XD is going to be the best CPU upgrade for you. It's going to be a great all-around CPU that I think can be plugandplay into a lot of motherboards, even if you have an older B350 or B450 motherboard or even A520 motherboard if you want to stretch it there because the 5700 X3D doesn't consume a ton of power and it doesn't produce a lot of heat as a result. Now, the 5800 XRD is a bit more extreme if you wanted to consider that that you need probably a beefier B450, B550, X670, X570 motherboard for, sorry, X570, X470, X370. But regardless, go for an X3D CPU if you have an older Ryzen CPU on the AM4 socket. But if you're already on Ryzen 5000, don't bother upgrading your CPU to the 5700 X3D or 5800 X3D. go to AM5, which we'll go ahead and talk about next. A lot of you who are on the AM5 socket probably have a Ryzen 5 7500F, 7600, or even maybe something like an 8400F or 8700F. Those are lower-end CPUs on the AM5 socket, which would be the only ones I look at possibly upgrading from because anything else beyond that, like a 7600X, 7700X, 9700X, and so on and so forth, if it has an X in front of it, don't bother upgrading. you're not going to see that much of an uplift in gaming performance even at 1080p with the best graphics card unless again you play like Apex Legends or Counterstrike 2 at like 500 FPS. Reason being those X series CPUs on the AM5 socket already run at really high clock speeds out of the box whereas nonX CPUs like the 7500F 7400F and 7600 don't run at as high of clock speeds out of the box. Now, of course, you could overclock those, but that requires overclocking if you want to do it. But if you have any of these lower-end CPUs, quite frankly, the only CPU I'm going to recommend upgrading from any of those lower-end chips is going to have to be none other than the 9800 X3D. I actually wouldn't even bother with the 7800 X3D. I would not bother with this CPU because for only about $130 more, this CPU is actually going to be noticeable in your frame rate. I'm not the biggest fan of upgrading from a Ryzen CPU within the same generation to a higherend one. You really got to go to a whole new architecture from Zen 4 to Zen 5 to really see the benefits. But again, you aren't really going to see those benefits at all if you don't have a faster graphics card in the first place. And the 9800 X3D is going to handle anything. So, if you already have a mid-tier graphics card like an RX7800 XT, RTX 4070, and going down from that, you're not going to see that much uplift in performance from this versus like a 7600 or 7500F. Even at 1440p, you're only really going to notice this CPU in action when you finally get that higherend RTX 5080, 5090, or next generation Nvidia, next generation Radeon, or maybe even next generation Intel graphics card. So, this really is just going to be a placeholder CPU only for those users who have a lower-end Ryzen CPU on the AM5 socket. But I want to re-emphasize if you have an X series CPU already like a 7600X, 7700 X, 9700 X, 9600X, anything but an X, don't waste $480 on this. It's not really going to be worth it. And that really is where the video ends cuz again, the point of why I wanted to make this is to really show you that there's only like two worthwhile CPUs upgrading to if you're on an AM4 or AM5 gaming PC. That's going to be one of these CPUs with X3dB cache because again upgrading your CPU is not going to translate to that much more gaming performance. It just doesn't work the way you think it does. It's not really like that. Unless, again, I said at the very start of the video, you play in specific gaming scenarios that are more CPUbound than GPUbound, then you're not going to see a whole lot of improvement with a CPU upgrade. So again, the goal of this video is if you were to look into a CPU upgrade, you're going to want to get the right one for when you finally get that Warfall graphics card upgrade that can utilize the full performance of one of these higherend CPUs. So there you have it. That is it for this video. I don't know how long it's going to be. We'll see in the editing bay, but if you enjoyed it, give it a like. And if you enjoy these helpful guide and tutorial recommendation style videos, I recommend subscribing. So with all that said, thank you so much for watching. And this is the Skyville channel. Signing out.