Cheers buddy... Bloody AI garbage strikes again I guess. lol! The sentiment was there anyway. Hope you're havin' a great New Year too.

 

Yeah I definitely expect a leap over the previous gen mostly from the new way they are layering the cache this time around. Thermals will be drastically improved, which besides scheduling, is what held back last gen's performance.

 

Without a doubt, one of the best when it comes to paste. When i have high end builds lately, i use the Kryosheet thermal pad, also from TG and it's the best out there:
https://www.thermal-grizzly.com/en/kryosheet/s-tg-ks
Kinda expensive, but it's slightly better cooling on heavy loads, much better on light loads. Up to 7 degrees Celcius less when idling. Last tested very recently on a 7900X. Applying it is also much easier and less messy than paste. And it is also excellent for gpus too, if you ever bother to go through the hassle hehe.
Cheers man
PS: I got word of the 9950X3D's initial launch price at around 800 euros. I just hope it doesn't end up higher. That's bordeline server cpu territory lol. Close to the price we used to pay for Intel's Extreme Edition cpus back in the day. How times have changed...

 

Last edited: Jan 7, 2025 at 10:38 PM

I did see TG now make the thermal pads and was wondering how they perform. I already use one of the mounting brackets on my CPU, which replaced the default bracket. It's the metal brackets that were essential for the Intel CPUs to stop warping, and whilst they aren't necessarily needed for AMD nor do they change temps much, if at all (1 degree-ish reduction maybe, at best), they do make changing CPUs/coolers much easier as it makes it super easy to clean the thermal paste without any overflow down the sides of the CPU. The TG pads would be the next step up and I was contemplating trying one out next time, so good to hear the positive feedback!

If the 9950X3D is $800, then I think that would make it a no-brainer for me. If they peak $900, then it becomes difficult to justify over the 7950X3D potentially.

Talking of Intel Extreme Editions, the Core i7 4960X Extreme Edition was the last Intel CPU I owned. It was a beast at the time, but lept from it to Ryzen 3000 and never looked back!