One of the most powerful processors for gaming, the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, appears to be even more powerful. Typically, a 16-core chip has 128 MB of L3 cache, but one user posted a video and screenshot of the processor with 192 MB of fast memory on the chip.
According to the Windows Task Manager image and CPU-Z data, the claimed L3 cache volume is indeed 192 MB, all other characteristics seem ordinary. However, some values in the screenshot suggest a possible Windows error. Some commentators believe this is a CPUID bug that mistakenly reports 192 MB in the L3 cache. Others speculate that the owner got lucky and received an engineering prototype. Unfortunately, the user did not post any tests that would confirm the L3 cache volume.
Although the possibility of an error cannot be ruled out, at Tom's Hardware it is believed that the Ryzen 9 7950X3D may be an early engineering sample. There is a technological possibility to add 64 MB of 7nm SRAM cache memory to the chiplet to obtain 192 MB of L3 cache.
Before AMD released the Ryzen 9 7950X3D in 2023, Gamers Nexus visited the company's campus in Austin, Texas. During this visit, the team discussed various configurations tested with AMD. Among them were samples with multiple crystal options that could be chips with 192 MB of cache. The chip manufacturer demonstrated to Gamers Nexus an unreleased Ryzen 9 5950X3D with 192 MB of L3 cache memory, so at least such processors exist.
Ultimately, AMD may have simply decided not to produce the Ryzen 9 7950X3D in this configuration. It has been found that having multiple cache pools leads to increased latency in most games and reduces performance rather than increasing it. Engineering samples are usually destroyed, but they still sometimes end up in the hands of enthusiasts.
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