It didn't stop people from buying the most expensive cards and CPUs when the world was ending in COVID-19 days. Average Joe doesn't know anything about CPUs. This is a gaming community that squeezes the most out of each buck. I wouldn't use CPU market for economic prediction.
Average Joe does not know anything about CPUs, but when they are out to buy a new computer they can see the prices of a new DDR5 computer vs an older or used DDR4 one.
Do they even know what DDR5 or DDR4 are? Best Buy still sells 10-year-old laptops, and people buy them. CPU power means nothing to the average user. They do not know anything about RAM or CPU. Maybe here and there, a little disk space knowledge, just because they are familiar with the concept of disk space because of their phones.
The consumer economy is the reason for existence of everything else related to economics. Corps stressing the consumer economy is like the tail wagging and starving the dog. Amirite?
> everything is flocking and concentrating around AI related hardware due to better ROI
The "better ROI" is the results of crooked financial schemes that steal from the consumer economy and redistribute to corporate fancies.
The circular debt schemes being employed here are going to be bailed out by the consumers by inflation and starvation, outright bailouts of the CDS market are quite likely as well.
Upgraded my 2400G to a 5700G with new 64GB RAM a while back, which is really the end of the road for my system. I got a solid 3x performance increase on multi-threaded apps. Also have enough RAM to play with some this AI stuff - yes even on an AMD APU. Next purchase will likely be Zen 7.
Same, 5800X in my X470 AORUS mobo and it's been fantastic, no desire to upgrade (already had the 64gb ram, so the CPU swap was simple, I think I got $50 from my old 2700 cpu)
5900X here with mobo from 2019. Will upgrade my GPU or get a mac if I'm able to setup my wacom pen the way I want. Either way I will keep the current machine
The 5800X3D is an almost four year old CPU (2022), which was the last major product on its platform (first product in 2016, last new chipset launched in 2020). The successor platform (AM5) was released just months later and is now about 2/3rds or so through its lifecycle.
Normally an old, used CPU for a dead 10yo platform will go for a small fraction the MSRP. Not a multiple. Silicon economy seems in a good shape.
> Normally an old, used CPU for a dead platform will go for a small fraction the MSRP.
True in general- used CPUs from discontinued platforms sell for a small fraction of the original MSRP.
Buuuut, the final flagship part on nearly every platform is an exception to this rule. They are generally sought after as the definitive 'End Game Upgrade' because they provide users with the simplest, most cost-effective performance boost—a single component swap—bypassing the need for a costly migration to a successor platform (which requires new RAM and a new motherboard).
It tends to happen every generation swap, 5800X3D is just the latest.
Best is a bit of an overstatement. It's middle of the pack (performing akin to a 7700, but significantly worse than AMD Zen 5 and the Intel 13th/14th gen). I think the main thing is that it is still plenty capable in 2025 if you're running at a reasonable setting for most games.
Certainly there are situations where it is still among kings like MSFS, but definitely not a leader in most games.
I browsed thru my comment history to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. Just over a year ago I had priced out a used Xeon and 256GB kit on eBay for my old X99 board (DDR4) for under $300.
I did not pull the trigger. I did thankfully get it up to 64gb for ~ $50.
I double checked my RAM purchase from early September. $450 for 128GB of DDR5. That same RAM is now $1400.
I know it’s a bit naive to extrapolate from that, but something doesn’t smell right, the PC hardware market is clearly going through something, probably caused by the AI boom. I wonder what else is shifting that isn’t so apparent.
Everybody says this is because OpenAI bought up 40% of the world's supply of DRAM. Certainly that has hugely tilted the supply and demand teeter-totter, but to me this just feels like another "because we can" by the market.
When beef is expensive, you buy chicken. There's no alternative to RAM. If you need it, you've gotta pony up.
5800X3D have been high for a long time now. Ever since they were discontinued the price has only inflated. Same as the 5700X3D. AM5 was a bit of a slow start for a lot of people who didn't a big bump in jumping to the new platform. So while their high price isn't driven by RAM prices, I'm sure it's getting some extra inflation from it.
oh ffs, I was just thinking about upgrading my current PC with a new GPU and CPU and just keeping the same 64gb of AM4 DDR4 I already have. But now even the prices for the CPUs are skyrocketting? Eff everything about this and curse Sam Altman.
The gaming focused CPUs yeah. If you're on an early generation AM4 cpu (ie 2600x) then updating to a 5xxx cpu that's not gaming focused is still pretty cheap and likely worthwhile. ie 5950x
Depending upon your workload and motherboard support of course.
The people that predicted this face a dilemma. They were ridiculed when their forecast was against popular opinion and now they are ostracized because they were right. I've seen this happen to many researchers in AI and it's demoralizing.
Based on the benchmarks that I've seen, 5800X3D is still a good CPU for games, when paired with a very expensive GPU, otherwise a 5600X is cheaper and acts less than a heater over the winter. Someone with the money for a nVidia 5800 GPU will pair it with a 9800X3D, for most games even 16 GB of RAM will work and would be cheap enough, while for applications one does not need X3D, so what exactly is the point of 5800X3D scalping?
5800x3d / 5700x3d are MUCH MUCH MUCH faster than non-x3d in some games that are CPU bound (for some even 2x / 3x faster than non-x3d) so even with a "slower" GPU it can still be a large upgrade
> so what exactly is the point of 5800X3D scalping
in the past, growth in PC gaming came naturally with the growth in the adoption of computers around the world.
at saturation of "new to computers" audiences, growth in PC gaming comes from convincing the core gaming demographic, newly-turned 13 year old boys, to agitate for PCs instead of XYZ.
so a big part of it is the retail-marketing experience - the aesthetics of buying - and scalping / sense of urgency plays extremely well with the buyer who actually chooses PC over a nintendo switch, as opposed to a kid who will never make the more expensive choice ever.
this is really a story about saturation than it is about hardware or shortages for AI usage or whatever.
Consoles don’t pay for online subscriptions with f2p games anymore, which is the overwhelming lions share of online play today.
Consoles also get to flip games you’re done with. I’m positive about 3 of my friends spend much less than I do on gaming these days because of all the games they buy, play once, then flip again on FB market place
And then you get to the rising entry level cost of PC gaming. If you want something better than a Steam deck you’re looking at 1K USD to start with an Intel dGPU
But I guess if you’re fine with a Steam deck it’s a bit cheaper than consoles to start
The best claim that PC gaming has today is that it has a much larger library with indies that don’t release on console
Looking forward the physical media will disappear (with maybe the exception being Nintendo). Next gen playstation will probably be more expensive than the ps5 pro which is already 800 EUR in Europe so there will be little difference in pricing I think.
You are right about f2p though but you also don't need an insane PC to play most of the popular ones. Even a mini pc does that these days pretty decently and Integrated Graphics will keep on improving.
Does your motherboard have auto-oc enabled? Have you checked what voltage it's using? Have you tried setting a negative voltage offset and stability testing? Some motherboards will apply 1.3v+ when 1.2v is plenty.
The 5800X didn’t ship with a stock cooler IIRC. Mine is cooled with a 360 AIO + PTM7950, the thing just runs really hot when all cores are hitting ~4.4GHz.
The 5700X has the same 8 cores as a 5800X3D but with a slightly higher maximum clock speed (the X3D CPUs tend to have lower maximum voltages because the extra cache die doesn't tolerate voltages as high as the CPU cores do). The only reason the 5700X is running cooler for you is because it comes with a 65W "TDP" setting out of the box rather than the 105W "TDP" setting used by the 5800X3D. If you configure a 5800X3D to operate at the same power limit, it'll give you generally better performance than a 5700X.
In general, buying a power-limited desktop CPU has never been a good strategy to get better efficiency. You can always configure the full-power chip to only use that extra headroom for short bursts, and to throttle down to what you consider acceptable for sustained workloads.
I'll let others judge for themselves, personally I'd be tempted to get an x16 GPU since the 5800X3D is actually very near top of the line and the GPU should match the CPU imho but in general even the worst case of x8 GPU on a PCIE 3.0 motherboard doesn't seem to be the end of the world
I think its the memory price checked and 32gb of ddr4 is a 170 eur while same size kit in ddr5 is over 400 now. If you want to build a cheap 1080p 1440p gaming desktop it all adds up.
The article claims "Second-hand prices for the 5800X3D average around $500-$600 on eBay. Some of the highest-selling units sold at nearly $800, showing how desperate some buyers are to buy AMD's best gaming chip that still uses DDR4 memory"
This is absurd. "Average quoted" on ebay does not mean anything, neither dors their claim of "highest selling" which is "highest listed". Nobody is buying at these prices.
People buy the lowest priced (incl. Shipping) with modifiers for professional>private, seller review rating, location and picture/description quality.
You can search sold auctions to get an idea for what things actually sell for. I saw the majority of 5800x3d selling for ~$500 so this looks to be mostly true to me.
