I’m sure that many of you don’t pay much attention the half ton class of pickups like the 1500/150, or other SUVs that share the same engines, Many of them are using Exhaust Turbo pushing V-6, inline 6, and even inline 4 both gas, and diesel engines that have more ponies than previous big block V-8s. Many of the brands also sell non-turbo V-6s, but it gets lodged into people’s heads that they are gutless wonders. After all, a rev from a V-6 isn’t as manly sounding as a powerful V-8.

The question of the day, can one have a good gaming exprence with a CPU like an AMD Ryzen 5, or an Ultra 5 class CPU? I would have to answer yes even though I could only do some of my testing by simulation. AMD Ryzen 5 have six dual threaded Zen cores, while Intel Core Ultra 5 has six performance cores, and eight efficiency cores, ( 6P+8E ) like on the 245 class, or with the recent refresh of the 250K+ (6P+12E).

With Intel and AMD, I can shut down cores through the bios, well at least I think I can, but it can be a royal pain when it comes to Intel. AMD is a bit easier because not only can you put the bios into gaming made that shuts down the Chiplet/CCD that doesn’t have the extra L3 Cash. In theory while in windows, gamebarr will automatically park it with most games. I have only exprence couple of titles that just won’t shut it down, but it stutters even using a CPU with one eight core CCD.

When I originally started testing the R9 9900x3d a two chiplet that has 6 cores equaling 12 in total, I was the Just Bucky Build. When it just switched to only using the CCD that had the extra L3 cash, it had no problem pushing my RTX 5090. The other side was doing minor tasks and with a CPU like the Ryzen 5, it might take a bit longer to compile shaders. In many of the games that I tested, the compiling would use both CCDs till it was completed before switching one off. Because of the issue that I ran into when it comes to the CPU waterpump that cracked out, I moved the 9900x3d into my Buckzilla build, and I will probably keep it there and put the 9800X3d back into Just Bucky so I don’t have to hassle with that Windows and Asus motherboard crap.

I threw some heavy hitting benchmarks and gameplay which seemed not to cause much of a sweat with both the six cores with the extra L3 cash, or any of the other 8 cores or the ones that dropped down to only one chiplet without the extra cash. The R7 7735hs did struggle a little, but I’m wondering if it has anything to do with being an older Zen 3+ machine with a Radeon 7700s. Then again when it comes to that machine, some titles that were pretty new ran extremely well on it. I’m betting because of the ram/vram crisis, that some of these developers are thinking of the future and making titles more optimized for machines with lower memory. If a developer that made Crimson Desert could do it, and still made the game look, and play wonderfully, I’m sure that others could do the same. The other big question of the day is whether or not they are willing to do so.

My conclusion is this, yes you can have a good gaming exprence with a modern CPU that has only six cores, and without the extra L3 cash. The Zen 4/5 Ryzen Chips 7600x, 7700x, 7900x, 7950x 9600x, 9700x, 9900x, and 9950x won’t give you any problems. Just stay away from the R5 8400x, It’s a pile of crap.

I will talk about Crimson Desert in a different posting.