When it comes to budget versions of the best gaming CPUs, we've been particularly big fans of the old AMD Ryzen 5 7600X. Those looking to save some money on a gaming processor are usually well-served by a fast-clocked six-core chip, and AMD's reasonably-priced contender has, until now at least, fit the bill perfectly.
What it's missing, however, is a good dose of 3D V-Cache. This has been AMD's ace up its sleeve for a while now, a stacked layer of extra L3 cache that many games love to take advantage of. We've seen its effectiveness when implemented on some of our favourite AM4 gaming processors of old, and it's also turned up in a more recent Zen 4 chip, the Ryzen 5 7600X3D, and the Zen 5-based Ryzen 7 9800X3D, our pick as the best gaming CPU overall.
