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there are a ton of CPUs available right

now and we're looking at the best CPUs

for 2023 and this year is particularly

confusing in some ways it's a good

problem because that means there are a

lot of options the difference the past

couple of years versus the many years

prior is that last generation Parts

remain abundant right now alongside new

components this creates kind of an odd

Schism down the stack where there's

clear good options but from a last

generation so you're either buying into

an end of life platform or hopefully you

already own it and you're just kind of

doing a drop and upgrade and then the

new stuff so we're going to be walking

you through the best CPUs we're looking

at best overall we'll be going over best

gaming which is a very simple category

talking about the best balance or best

budget options HDT options and a

category we particularly like which is

most power efficient and we have to

choose two CPUs because one of them is

unattainably expensive before that this

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description below so welcome back to our

best of Roundup series we do these at

the end of every year and there's a lot

to catch up on to set the expectation

for this particular video and all the

other best ofs you'll see coming up this

is intended to get people up to speed as

quickly as possible we have run

thousands of tests over the past year

actually if you count the individual

test passes we're in the many tens of

thousands at this point uh We've looked

at dozens of parts and it's hard for us

to keep track of we have to constantly

reference the data and so the purpose of

these videos is one to refresh ourselves

on the data but also get everybody who's

been out of the market for a couple

years back up the speed quickly or even

if you followed it closely just a

reminder because a lot of people will

build their system check out for a few

years come back in and it's what

happened so that's what this is intended

to help with is to Res situate you if

you want the individual in-depth reviews

for any of the components we're talking

about today you can find those Linked In

the description below or search the

channel for them uh we will be including

some charts to reinforce a couple of key

points that we think are important even

if you're maybe not as much of an

Enthusiast user but if you want all of

the charts you can go back and check

through the individual reviews we'll

also have links to the processors on

Amazon or new EG and the point here is

to give a fly over and help you come to

some conclusions quickly so let's get

started with our first category the

first award category is for the best

overall CPU of 2023 this one goes

handily to the AMD ryzen 7 7800x 3D CPU

which has had price reductions down to

around

$360 this CPU is a double winner because

it also takes our best gaming CPU

category later because of that for best

overall we'll focus mostly on the

non-gaming aspects of the 78 x3d the

7800 x3d is priced right around where

high-end gaming CPUs lawn held pricing

in the pre I9 and R9 days and therefore

bringing chart leading frame rate back

to a more normal price point for a

high-end machine they're also single CCD

Solutions with only one size of core

kind of simplifying things this makes

scheduling easier and it does streamline

the setup as opposed to something like a

dual CCD 750 x3d or Intel's case a peor

ecore design although those have matured

over the years the 7800 x3d isn't a

leader in production benchmarks like in

blender but it's more than acceptable

while still leading in gaming there's a

balanced category for CPUs that sit in

the middle a little bit better later but

this one still does well in some of

these categories like Photoshop for

example so the x3d CPUs can punch up

depending on the workload another

non-gaming contributing factor is the

efficiency the 7800 x2d is an extremely

efficient part and ranked right behind

the new thread rer parts that blew the

doors open in this category because of

the efficiency it's also relatively easy

to tame thermally the power consumption

in total is relatively low compared to

sort of modern high-end CPUs you don't

need a 360 mil CLC to cool the 7800 x2d

reducing cost barrier to entry and

opening up cooler options the 7800 x3d

also particularly stands out for anyone

trying to max out frame rate in gaming

with a 7800 XTX or an RTX 490 where you

really want to minimize the bottlenecks

as much as possible we'll come back to

that in the gaming category though the

next category is for the most balanced

CPU this one goes to the i5k skew CPUs

the 13600 K or 14600 k depending on

whichever is cheaper because they're

basically the same or you can buy the KF

to save a little more money and get rid

of the igp the most balanced category is

specifically awaiting of all tests we

run for GN reviews but also considering

the price this means we're factoring in

the $270 price of a 13600 K right now as

we write this as an example which also

makes it extremely competitive from that

price and value standpoint we're also

looking closely at that non-gaming

performance so even though the name is a

generation old on the 13600 K the CPU

isn't it's perfectly good as a new chip

and it's balanced between price gaming

performance and production performance

as an example we found the 14600 K

scored 747 points in our aggregate Adobe

Premier benchmarks putting it ahead of

the 7800x 3D and about tied with the

7700x the CPU was likewise particularly

competitive in our blender rendering

Benchmark where the pair completed in

less time than the 7700 X and 7800x 3D

the 137 and 147 also do well here uh but

the pricing kind of puts them out of the

best balanced category also they're a

little more power hungry the gaming

performance is also strong for the price

with our pre patched Starfield numbers

which were all run with the same version

of the game we had them at 111 to 112

FPS for the I5 it's behind the 78 x3d

but with higher production workload

performance in many but not all cases

and a lower price it is balanced there

are other examples bers Gate 3

Performance is pretty good on the i5s it

puts them alongside the powerful 5800

x3d the 58 x3d got a different award but

it doesn't get our balanced one

primarily due to that weaker production

performance while these I5 CPUs are not

the most exciting or the best in any

single category they do fulfill an

overall well-rounded performance and

value profile next up is the award for

best gaming CPU this one goes to the AMD

ryzen 7 7800 x3d the category is as

basic as it can be B it considers only

the absolute highest performing CPU in

games we've tested that means we're

looking at CPUs for FPS snobs while

there are other options that'll get you

80% of the performance those aren't

considered here that makes this one

heavily numbers based first some basics

for anyone who's been out of the market

for a little while the R7 7800 x3d is a

socket am5 CPU that uses AMD stackable

cash or vcash which we've found to have

a large impact on gaming performance

it's an 8 core 16 thread part with 96

megab of L3 cach and it's currently

around $360 at the time of filming with

occasional small discounts on new EG and

Amazon it's down from $450 for its

launch MSRP because this is a purely

numbers-based category let's look at

some recent gaming Benchmark charts in

the new cyberpunk Phantom Liberty

expansion that probably a lot of you

will be playing during the holidays the

7800 XD led the chart it was about tied

with the 7950 xrd although it carried

better. 1% lows we've run the 7950 XD

through this game several times now and

we found that it always encounters at

least a couple sluggish frame times run

to run despite an overall good average

which is what contributes to that we

think this mostly has to do with

scheduling either way though the 7800

x2d is meaningfully ahead of everything

here and it's not even the most

expensive sort gaming Focus CPU on the

chart the 5800 x3d would get you most of

the way there as an upgrade especially

if you have am4 but Intel's 14900 K and

this one leaves a relatively large gap

to the 7800 x3d especially when you do

consider the price in Stellaris turntime

simulation the 7800 x3d was roughly tied

with the rest of the chart leaders this

one's measured in the time to complete

the test it's up there with the 14700 K

14900 K and 7950 x3d all of which are

roughly within error of each other

balers Gate 3 had the 7950 xpd ahead on

a technicality at 1080p but it was

ultimately within margin of error you'll

actually see in the next chart how close

they are the 7800 x2d and 7950 x2d both

establish a relatively wide gap between

themselves and the next CPU which is the

4900 K now relatively here is the

important word it's not meaningful you

won't notice this Gap especially or

particularly in this game but if you

glance at the rest of the chart you'll

notice a much more gradual sort of fall

off of the blue bar down the chart if

you look at 144p you'll see that the 78

x3d is still at the top it retains all

of its performance it's the same as the

7950 x3d and that's in spite of an

increase in GPU load finally we'll show

Starfield as a counter example this was

before the most recent patches so new

numbers will be a little higher but all

of these were run on the same game

version so our tests here are directly

comparable to each other though a game

update will maybe boost the Baseline

Intel kept a lead here the 14900 K was

ahead of the 7800 X 3D by 15% it's not

always the best but the 78 x3d is the

best often enough that it's our go-to

for a high-end gaming machine so uh

overall this one gets our best gaming

CPU award although the extra cash

doesn't benefit this CPU and most of our

production uction workloads the core

count allows it to remain a good overall

option if you're editing videos or

running a lot of file compression and

decompression workloads the CPU does

fine especially if you're mostly gaming

this will most likely bottleneck you on

a GPU if you don't go highend enough so

to fully leverage the CPU consider a

higher-end GPU we'd be looking in the

RTX 470 TI or RX 7900 XT and up

categories especially although you could

obviously pair it with anything we

recently Revisited the rx700 XT on the

channel and the website as well has an

article on G x.net if you want to see

how that GPU does today versus some

Alternatives and you can learn more

about the 78 x3d in our Standalone

review at the link below next up is for

the best upgrade we added this category

last year we're defining this as the

best CPU that can drop into a board of a

past generation either Intel or AMD but

it's probably no surprise that the

winner is the R7 5800 X 3D and we hope

that this encourages both AMD and Intel

to continue offering good upgrade

options in the future it's falling out

of of practice in the last decade or so

but it's great for consumers and often

highly cost effective for a stricter

budget our recent rise in 200000 R visit

showed just how much room there still is

to bring am4 forward especially in

gaming the best part is that a lot of

the boards from the prior rizing

Generations can support the xvd CPU

already although you should check the

CPU support list for your board and

update BIOS before pulling your old CPU

many of the boards that support the R7

2700 the R5 3600 obviously the 5000

series CPUs will run the 5800 XP without

issues and the fact that it's relatively

low power for the performance means that

even things like uh a moderate vrm will

be able to keep up as long as it's not

too bad even some of the older r7700 era

boards on x370 era chipsets can work

although it's a little more spotty for

the bio support if we look at a couple

gaming charts from our 2700x revisit you

can see how you'll get a performance

bump from those older CPUs that feels

like a totally new PC build especially

if you're coupling it with a drop in GPU

upgrade so you can save on the ram the

motherboard the case maybe you can keep

the power supply depends on how big you

go on the GPU but there's a lot of

cost-saving options here the 5800 x2d is

also relatively low power consumption

for its performance in an allcore

workload which is heavier than gaming we

had it at around 108 Watts that makes it

easy to cool for a good $3 to $50 dual

Tower air cooler something like the

Peerless assassin you can check our CB

cooler reviews for all that it's almost

good enough for a modern build to but

the board cost starts affecting value

for a new system and buying into ddr4 at

this point just feels kind of bad

because you are dead ending yourself if

you go that route but options on eBay

may open things up and if you already

have a bunch of ddr4 you go grab a $90

used board or something we wouldn't

necessarily recommend that route because

this really makes the most sense as a

drop in upgrade for an existing build it

has a ton of cost savings high

performance upgrade and if you can

allocate some of that money money that

would have been spent on all new

components towards a better CPU and GPU

alone then that might be the better

option for you depends on how strict

your budget is the fact that AMD has

kept the platform alive this long is

commendable and we hope to see this more

going forward the environmental impact

and the e-w impact is far lower and the

value for existing owners of the

platform is strong so the 5800 x2d gets

our award for the best upgrade CPU this

year the next award is for the most

efficient CPU on the technicality of

actually being the most efficient on the

chart based on our testing that goes to

the thread Ripper 7980x 64 core CPU when

it's under an all core workload at

$5,000 though this CPU costs more than a

full gaming PC and they're totally

different markets so we'll name the

runner up as well that would be the r

77800 x3d coming up again with an

honorable mention going to the R9 7950 X

in eco mode we have some previous tests

for that they're not comparable to our

newest Power efficiency test because

we've updated all the software since

then but it did post impressive results

back when we tested Ecco mode the semi

8X though that leads by a lot in

workstation applications that fully

scale on 64 cores the amount of time

required to complete a given unit of

work by the 7980x is impressive in our

efficiency chart the 7980x posted a 12.9

WTH hour result with the 7800 x2d

previously being the most impressive

modern CPU but for gaming that is out

outside of utilizing eco mode or being

this HDT part although the 5950 X

remains a leader for its era but that's

what earns the 7800 xvd the runner up

status the

7980x goes a bit deeper though we talked

about this in our review so to keep it

short the power utilization per core is

exceptionally low due to the 0.84 to

0.85 volts VC core during an all core

operation when capped with a 350 watt

default pvt these result results plus

the multi-threaded efficacy in all core

applications earn it the most efficient

Award with the 7800 X getting a sort of

Cav out a note here that it would be

among the most efficient or often the

most efficient in frame rate per watt

efficiency if you wanted to look at it

that way just because it runs a lot

faster in games for frame rate than a

7980x does Intel currently is way behind

in all core efficiency for desktop class

Parts the 300 wat flagships are propping

up the highend CPU Cooler Market pretty

well here the next acknowledgement goes

to best budget CPU which is a really

weird category this year we normally

Target around the $ 150 to $200 price

range in the past things like the 2600

have made sense here or the 3600 this

one was hard there aren't many current

generation Options under $200 there's

the R5 7600 non-x right around 200 bucks

then the last gen r750 700x Intel has

its I5 12600 K around $140 and there's

also an R5 7500f that isn't officially

out in the west the R5 5600 also was in

our consideration here for its $130 to

$140 pricing today and all of this makes

choosing difficult because it's not as

clear anymore as just you're buying the

newest thing no matter what now in both

CPU and GPU there are current and prior

generation options that make sense in

different situations well do this two

ways if you're one of the many people on

am4 but you can't afford a 5800 X 3D

upgrade then the 5700x might be one of

your best budget friendly options to get

one final upgrade it has nearly

identical performance to the 5800 X

non-3d that is in gaming from the test

we ran in our original 5700x review but

it tends to be cheaper where price is a

hard limiter it could be a worthwhile

midst step if you have to stop short of

the 5800 X 3DD and most people don't

live near a micros Center to benefit

from a 5600 x3d the 5600 makes less

sense as an upgrade just because you'd

have to be upgrading from pretty low on

the stack and probably pretty far back

and Rising while also being budget

constraint so we'll give the best budget

CPU for an upgrade option at least the

5700x if you're keeping an old platform

and you have to be cost constrained as

for something new the r 57600 really is

worth considering the ryzen 7000 series

launched with high pricing that reduced

a lot of the initial heal against prior

Generations the 7600 is now at around

$200 it's dropped about 30 bucks from

when it launched and it's often within

Striking Distance of the 7600 X if

you're able to find a 7600 X at the same

price you'll get a little bit more

performance out of it because it is a

little faster but the TDP is lower on

the 7600 so there's maybe some benefit

there too the next category is for the

best high-end desktop CPU for this we

don't mean the literal best as in the

biggest number but instead what we think

would provide a strong foundation for

something like a video editing machine a

CPU based rendering machine or something

dealing with chromium like compiles

we're naming the thread Ripper 7970 X

here and the only reason we added this

CPU to this listing is because we're

probably going to switch to it for some

of our editing stations it also did

really well in Spec workstation

performance for its Financial Services

Benchmark but that's not an area we're

familiar with in a professional sense we

are very familiar with video though for

our purposes the 7980x isn't really

viable for video editing well Premiere

has some known issues although those

sound like they're getting fixed at the

moment and additionally it's just really

expensive but the 7 970x posted

excellent Adobe Premiere results in the

Puget bench while also posting

particularly strong raw video Benchmark

results and intraframe Benchmark results

in that sense this is kind of a selfish

pick we're planning to build the 797 X

machine for the office because based on

our hands-on experience with it we think

it'd really help accelerate some of our

video editing and rendering experiences

this next award isn't just for a budget

CPU but for the cheapest CPU that can

still manage to play at least some games

and is new we're back with an award

that's getting increasingly difficult to

assign each year as for best CPUs under

a 100 bucks which goes to the Intel I3

1200f right now we checked and at the

moment the brand new CPU Options under

$100 and again new are pretty slim

there's the I3 1300f which is uh first

of all not under $100 in the places

we've checked it's like 110 to 120 but

that one's problematic not just because

it's over 100 bucks but also because

it's not that distant from the 12100 F

in performance and they better options

that are not much more expensive than it

the R5 4600g is also around but not

competitive with the 1200f and it's

intended use case with a discret GPU

there's also the r 55500 but last time

we reran that through the suite we found

its value was worse than the 12100 F the

12100 F was also just a better performer

with boosts anywhere from 5% average fps

to 31% in games or 2% to 35% 1% lows we

had a lot of reservations about this

type of FPS per dollar chart back when

we showed it in the 13100 review and we

explained it there if you're curious why

these charts uh are kind of difficult to

perfectly use but it does help

illustrate a point using the pricing of

the time that had the 1200f as one of

the best value CPS available higher was

better here in an absolute sense the I3

1200f is more than capable of playing a

lot of games it's not flashy it's not

going to work great with every game

that's the challenge with a cheap CPU

but in a lot of them it's fine F1 2022

for example foresting at the time had it

at 270 FPS average it'll struggle in

games probably like City skylines 2

assuming you're not just completely

bound up on the GPU as we showed in our

testing or maybe Starfield with a

similar caveat but overall for builds

where you can't spend more money and

especially where you're playing what

typically would be classified as quote

unquote ESP sports games this is a good

starter option when financials are the

bottleneck it really helps to give some

perspective on how good a cheap CPU can

be for just the basics and this really

is an important category for PC parts

every year we have people comment about

well if you just spend another $40 but

for a lot of people going from1 to $140

is not a matter of just it's a make or

break for the build everyone has a price

limit on their hobbies and keeping the

range as tunable as possible is good but

have no Illusions about it the 12100 F

will struggle in some games and it won't

age as well that's the nature of

spending as little as possible but it

does fall into the good enough category

for a lot of games right now and it does

come in technically under $100 that also

helps keep the board cost down the last

category is a classic of ours it's for

the biggest disappointment and

congratulations to Intel they've won it

this year the award goes to the entire

14

generation and that's sort of the first

clue it's not a generational iteration

it is however a numerical one which is

fine except there wasn't any meaningful

uplift the 14th series didn't do

anything to advance performance in a way

that mattered but it at least briefly

reset the prices now the 13 and 14 CPUs

have continued to shuffle around in

price we're completely okay with product

refreshes they should offer at least

something they don't have to go as far

as the steam OLED did where it's

basically a new device but a little bit

more than change the number would be

good the 14700 K added some cores but

even that didn't really help in a way

that mattered the 14th series just isn't

interesting and the temporarily High

pricing was likewise unfortunate it

actually made Intel look worse than if

people just paid more attention to the

13 series for example by attacking a

number 50 to the end of it or something

that's why the 14 series gets the

biggest disappointment award this year

so that's it for this one now the

pricing is just before Black Friday is

actually happening depending on how much

that affects pricing you're going to see

some numbers move around and if it if

things drop in price which is what we're

talking about then that may affect how

much we value a processor versus

something else of course so you'll keep

an eye out on prices certainly as you're

shopping but based on the numbers we've

given you uh from our data we have and

the prices we have today the decisions

for the most part are pretty clear

couple categories where it's less clear

so best budget it's really not as

straightforward as it used to be for us

it used to be as simple as like R5 2600

20000 bucks yep that's definitely the

winner no questions about it assuming it

didn't win best overall or something uh

for that year but now there's just it's

difficult because some of the best CPUs

are a prior generation which feels a

little weird to recommend now since

they're EOL platforms there's a lot of

value in buying into a new one if the

companies well andd specifically let's

let's be honest here uh do anything like

Andy did with am4 that's the one

category where it was kind of difficult

to nail down a single CPU so we gave you

the two options but uh that covers it

for the best CPS again you can find the

full reviews in the description below

and those will get you the complete

depth uh this one hopefully got you up

to speed quickly so you can use it as a

launching point to go do your next bit

of research on the CPUs we've hopefully

pointed you in the direction of and we

have other roundups coming up so

subscribe and check back regularly for

all that of course you can also go to

store. gam access.net to support us and

our efforts with these pieces directly

just a quick note too these are really

fun to work on because I mean it's we

lose sight of just how much how many

products ship in the computer hardware

Market over the course of a year and

there's a lot that aren't that

interesting but compiling the most

interesting ones plus one in this case

group of disappointing ones into a

single video it's a lot of fun and it

gets us back up to speed because there's

so much going on it's hard to stay on

top of it all the time so hopefully that

helped you as well and we're enjoying it

we'll do a couple more of these and uh

we'll see you in the next one thanks for

watching subscribe for more see you all

next time