AMD Ryzen 5 7500X3D leak hints at new budget AM5 Zen 4 gaming CPU

AMD could be preparing to launch a new budget-friendly version of its much-celebrated X3D gaming CPUs. A fresh AMD Ryzen 5 7500X3D leak points to the company adding to its lineup a new six-core variant of its Zen 4 CPU range, bringing potentially excellent gaming performance to a new low price.

AMD first launched its 7000 series X3D chips to great acclaim back in early 2023. The likes of the 7800X3D proved to be the best gaming CPUs available at the time, as demonstrated in our 7800X3D review. Since then, they've been outclassed by the company's latest 9000 series X3D models, such as the 9800X3D, but they remain excellent choices for those seeking excellent gaming performance on a tighter budget. That's why a potential new entry-level addition is such exciting news.

This AMD Ryzen 5 7500X3D leak comes from a UK retailer, Westcoast.co.uk, which has a listing for "7500X3D RYZEN 5TRAY" on its website, suggesting the availability of trays of five Ryzen 7500X3D chips for purchase. Spotted by regular tech leaker @momomo_us on X, the listing also shows the product code for the part as 100-000001904. This is a code that hasn't been seen before, but which does fit the existing style for AMD CPU product names. 

No details about the chip are mentioned on the website or in @momomo_us's post. However, GPU news and rumor site, Videocardz, speculates that the chip will be a six-core model, likely with slightly slower clock speeds than the existing 7600X3D but with the same 96MB of 3D V-Cache as other 7000 series X3D chips.

The reason the arrival of a new X3D is so significant is that there are relatively few versions of these CPUs, and yet they tend to have excellent gaming performance. This is due to them including an extra chip stacked on top of the CPU die which houses a massive portion of L3 cache. A normal 7000 series CPU, such as the standard Ryzen 5 7600, has 32MB of L3 cache, but the extra X3D chip adds 64MB more, for a total of 96MB.

This cache is much faster than system memory (RAM), so the more that a CPU has, the less often it needs to access that slower memory. This is particularly useful for gaming because games often deal with a lot of constantly changing information (because human players are unpredictable), so the more of that information the CPU can store in cache, the faster it can respond.

So impactful is the cache chip that, even with only six cores and potentially slow clock speeds, the 7500X3D could still be a decently fast gaming CPU.

Of course, this is all rumor and speculation for the time being, and even if the CPU does materialize, its true impact will depend on its price. Most previous X3D chips have demanded a premium. For instance, the 7800X3D currently sells for $300, whereas the non-X3D 7600X sells for just $175. If AMD prices the 7500X3D closer to, say, $250, it could prove a new go-to choice for gamers on a budget.

Crucially, all current 7000 series AMD CPUs use the AM5 motherboard platform, which is also shared by the 9000 series and is expected to support AMD's next generation of CPUs too. That means you could buy a chip like the 7500X3D and have an easy upgrade path to the likes of the 9800X3D or mighty 9950X3D.

Would a CPU like the 7500X3D be a natural choice of upgrade for you, or would you rather sacrifice a bit of gaming performance for an overall faster CPU, such as the Ryzen 5 9600X, for a considerably lower price? Let us know your thoughts over on our community Discord server.