The best value AMD gaming CPU is £25 off for Valentine's Day
The Ryzen 7 7800X3D offers legendarily good performance at mid-level prices.
The AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D is my current go-to high-end gaming CPU recommendation, on account of its brilliant top-tier performance at a mid-tier price. The CPU normally costs around £375, but today it's down to £350 at Amazon UK. This isn't the cheapest we've ever seen this model, but it's the best price recorded in 2024 so far and a solid £25 below the going rate.
I'm currently running a Ryzen 7 7800X3D in my gaming PC and it's proven extremely capable of driving games at high refresh rates, even boosting some esports titles beyond the 360fps I can benefit from with my current OLED monitor. Thanks to its powerful Zen 4 architecture paired with an oversized L3 cache - the latter of which is signified by the X3D suffix - this is a capable option at any resolution, and generally shifts the bottleneck back onto your graphics card. Simulation games seem to benefit the most from this extra cache, but you'll see benefits in almost any title based on my testing thus far.
That performance puts the 7800X3D in direct competition with the Intel Core i9 14900K and 13900K, where the AMD option wins as often as it loses while consuming significantly less power and generating less heat, making it a better option for rigs with limited CPU cooling.