Objectivity means nothing if you use atypical test settings. Arbitrarily deciding to test at settings nobody uses proves nothing. That’s like testing the 0-60 acceleration of a car after removing everything inside but the drivers seat.
Nothing about it is arbitrary and no, it's not the same as removing everything but the driver's seat. It's like testing 2 cars against each other using the same environmental variables to make the test fair e.g., making sure that the review is done at the same environmental temperature, on the same road and with the same fuel and so on.
Reviewers go to great lengths to explain why they review products the way they do and it makes sense given what they are trying to achieve.
We keep being told these settings show “future” potential but they really don’t. Because each new gen of game gets more extreme graphical settings that render CPU performance a distant second to GPU performance. 4 years ago the 2080Ti was hailed as a 4K monster. Now it’s barely adequate because game engines move on.
Now you're mixing up the review looking to find the fastest product in the group of options versus how the industry has moved to using the increase in graphical and CPU processing power to offer gamers better-looking games.
Reviewing a graphics card's ability to render games at 4K and reviewing the fastest CPU aren't the same test and not the point of this discussion, you're just moving the goal posts to suit your argument and even as per your argument, the 7900X3D would be a poor choice for 4K gaming because of the move to higher fidelity games and the same would be said for any last gen high-end graphics card like the 1080 ti, 980 ti, 8800 Ultra and so on.
The 7900X3D is too expensive for the gaming and productivity performance that it offers relative to the 7800X3D which is £100 cheaper. The 7900 non X3D is often faster in productivity results because it runs at the higher boost clock and is £50 (ish) cheaper so you're sort of in a halfway-house situation where you don't get the benefits of the many many cores of the 7950 and you still have a dual CCD using 6 cores per CCD design which isn't great for gaming when it adds a latency penalty and 8 cores are now very good for games and is becoming far more common place (in both consoles and just general gaming systems).
I'm going to also argue the point that 6 cores might not be enough for future modern gaming in the same way the 4 cores have become a bottleneck on even 4K high-fidelity games (your 1% lows will become very noticeable gaming on a 4 core 8 thread CPU but your average frame rate might appear good) so yeah, you can sarcastically say "future" potential but there's enough evidence to say that even a 6 core CPU will become a pretty serious bottleneck in the long run given the way tech evolves.
Thank god you don't do tech reviews. Seriously. I don't think you understand anything about how reviews are conducted to make sure that it's an objective review and just want to confirm your choice.
OP, the 5800X3D would be the best drop-in upgrade but if you wanted the best whole system upgrade, the 7800X3D is extremely fast at gaming, well-priced and good enough in productivity to work very well for your needs.
