UserBenchmark suggests you buy the i5-13600K over the Ryzen 7 9800X3D — says AMD drives sales with ‘aggressive marketing’ rather than ‘real-world performance’

UserBenchmark – the gift that keeps on giving! The website’s latest review of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D has left many in shock as it now deems spending extra on a gaming CPU pointless. Continuing its never-ending saga of denouncing AMD, which it often refers to as “Advanced Marketing Devices,” UserBenchmark doubles down and names the i5-13600K and i5-14600K as worthy competitors, even though AMD’s Ryzen 7 9800X3D has dethroned Intel’s fastest gaming CPU, the i9-14900K, by almost 33% per our testing.

This is not the first time we’ve encountered such an ‘intriguing’ take from UserBenchmark. The website has been in hot water for ranking the i3-8100 higher than the i9-9980XE merely based on clock speeds — make that make sense. A quick look at its CPU ranking chart based on performance from highest to lowest puts the Ryzen 7 9800X3D at the 12th spot, trailed by the “3D joker” Ryzen 9 7950X3D at the 25th place. The Ryzen 9 9950X follows suit, landing in the 28th position. No matter how you look at it – whether it be gaming, productivity, or efficiency – enthusiasts overwhelmingly think these numbers simply don’t add up. 

Moving over to their actual review, it doesn’t take an expert to discern fact from fiction. UserBenchmark asserts that the X3D design results in a 6% deduction in clock speeds but fails to address AMD’s redesign of the stacking hierarchy, which helps reduce the impact of this clock speed deficit, even in single-core scenarios. Better yet, the 9800X3D can keep up with the non-X3D 9700X in many production workloads.

The site further states that “AMD is looking to drive demand through aggressive marketing rather than delivering real-world performance,” even though the 9800X3D currently unanimously stands as the world’s fastest gaming CPU – beating Intel’s Core Ultra 9 285K by almost 40%. UserBenchmark then suggests users choose the i5-13600K/14600K since spending more than $200 on gaming CPUs is “pointless,” but that is a purely subjective statement. In addition, the actual performance, efficiency, and platform differences between the i5-14600K and the 9800X3D are factors UserBenchmark didn’t consider. 

UserBenchmark’s entire argument pivots around the proposition that faster CPUs are “pointless” for gaming. It is the same as saying that you shouldn’t get anything faster than an RTX 3050 since the human eye obviously can’t see past 60 FPS – sarcasm intended. Needless to say, enthusiasts are having a field day with this review.