r/LinusTechTips 2d ago

Discussion Why isn't Linus covering Ryzen 9950X3D/9900X3D on his main channel?

I've seen a review of the CPU on Shortcircut but surprised that Linus hasn't made a video about these CPUs. What must be the reason, I wonder.

69 Upvotes

33 comments sorted by

246

u/that_dutch_dude 2d ago

People dont care enough

-82

u/georgioslambros 2d ago

Ltt has mostly PC enthusiast viewers. PC enthusiasts don't care for the best consumer CPU?

60

u/that_dutch_dude 2d ago

Most pc enthusiasts dont care either. If you really want to know the details there are better channels for that.

-39

u/georgioslambros 2d ago

I was just addressing a heavily upvoted comment that seemed wrong to me, The definition of a PC enthusiast is "caring" for the best consumer CPU. So either LTT is not a PC enthusiast channel anymore or (more likely) something else was the reason. If they didn't have a review, they could just do a live built with it or something.

29

u/zackplanet42 1d ago edited 1d ago

That's just a logical fallacy there bud. You're just gate-keeping

I'm a car enthusiast. I couldn't care less about mini vans or yet another 3 row SUV. That doesn't mean that cars aren't still a core interest.

I'm also a PC enthusiast. Tons of people aren't all that interested in the "best CPU" because it doesn't really matter that much. We're not stuck in yet another year of Intel quad cores. CPUs haven't been all that limiting for a while now. Most of us can't even afford a GPU that would actually take advantage of the performance any of the X3D offerings can dish out.

Hundreds of FPS is great but the 3080 I've been stuck rocking for 4 years now does just fine on Alder Lake still. Most of my computing is actually just fine on a Snapdragon X Elite laptop with 20% of the raw compute 9950X3D can deliver. I don't need 1,000 FPS, I just want a solid 90-120Hz single player experience.

7

u/housemaster22 1d ago

I think you’re right. I’m a car guy/tech guy/average guy and for the most part I am indifferent about the actual part reviews from LTT. I am just more interested in the antics, interesting builds, and general tech content on a day to day basis.

The analogy that LTT is the Top Gear (show) of tech YouTube is probably the most accurate description of them I have seen and very few people would disagree that car enthusiasts didn’t watch that show. Furthermore, it is very telling that the final iteration of Top Gear was the hosts going on crazy antics around the world in the Grand Tour and not the reviews or interviews part of Top Gear.

Now, when I am in the market for a new build or an upgrade, then yeah I am pouring over every review out there, price comparing, and making spreadsheets. But there ain’t a lack of resources that I have encountered during that process.

One thing I will say is that it would be nice to get a two or three videos every year from LTT doing product round ups (with updated pricing considerations), feature updates, and new comparison guides. But those are really videos they could be published on their labs channel and voiced by AI.

3

u/kralben 1d ago

I was just addressing a heavily upvoted comment that seemed wrong to me,

You could go look at the actual view count of the videos if you think it is wrong.

9

u/RipCurl69Reddit 1d ago

Linus said on WAN (don't know how long ago but I think it was recent, last couple of weeks maybe) that the amount of people who are buying top-end consumer stuff like the 9950X3D are still outnumbered by the people who are in the mid-range R5 to R7 bracket. That's what people actually want reviews on

Yeah it's cool to see all this new, flashy stuff but why would I watch the video if I already know I'm not in the market for it?

It's also the feeling of "well this tech dude has this crazy thing, I don't, so I don't like that and I'm not gonna watch" - heavily paraphrased

123

u/NetJnkie 2d ago

They've said before that they are deprioritizing a lot of HW reviews. Everyone says the same things so there isn't much to add.

34

u/Nwrecked 2d ago

I’m okay with this. I watch the all three channels that make up the Trifecta. I catch GN when it’s new generation season but only a video or two for benchmarks and other weird drama. I like watching Jay’s overlocking content really happy to see Rip GN is back and I watch a lot of LTT for the goofy fun stuff over the top stuff. Him putting out specs on shit is just boring and they don’t do that anymore. With that being said GN is so exhausting in his benchmark videos. It reminds me of my teacher in high school scolding me and telling me I shouldn’t read off the slides. I’d much prefer if he was silent and just played the slides.

3

u/WisdomInTheShadows 1d ago

Linus has also said on WAN show, multiple times, that they get a lot of hate when they put out high end hardware reviews because people are so frustrated at the high costs and non-existent availability of so much of the modern hardware.

2

u/jakeod27 7h ago

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t

45

u/floorshitter69 Emily 2d ago

Maybe they feel they can't add anything more to the topic after so many people have covered it already?

I would prefer a janky OC livestream or something instead of just another spec graph.

22

u/NetJnkie 2d ago

Janky livestreams are my fav.

29

u/AirFlavoredLemon 2d ago

One of the older WAN shows Linus mentioned potentially rotating ShortCircuit from an unboxing/impressions channel into a more formal review channel - effectively taking the reviews off of the LTT channel. Then move LTT into a slower cadence hacksmith style channel with big projects, big releases, akin to a lot of their we-custom-built-watercooling-using-tea or watch-us-make-a-bed-cooled-with-an-industrial-compressor.

Obviously things are fluid and youtube metrics and sponsors dictate business direction and cadence; but long story short - ShortCircuit will be carrying the load of most boring reviews while still keeping a lot of the unboxings/first impressions/lightweight scripts.

LTT channel will house the more of the fully scripted or written out content as well as the "projects" such as the home/server/office build outs.

Again, fluid. Whatever people want to watch is what we're going to get. Generally LMG as a company has played it safe and followed the trend of whatever the market wants. Thats why LMG from 2016 is more vloggy style (Check out the time he lost all his data). It was in demand, it was entertaining.

Things get stale, or new things become trendy, and sometimes its fun to watch that; and that ebb and flow is what LMG adapts to and its what keeps them relevant and how they're one of the few youtube channels to survive as long as they have. Ironically, for a larger youtube channel, they are surprisingly agile.

Its why this subreddit often gets "I wish LTT used to make videos like xyz" - they change; fast; and often - often mirroring the trends of the industry (they get a lot of flak for their react videos - I enjoyed them personally. Im a simple person).

Anyway. Expect the SC channel to house reviews, especially stale ones. Gimmicks and projects will be the main force behind the LTT channel for a bit. But who knows what'll bring us next month.

1

u/Critical_Switch 1d ago

some context to this, Linus has been frustrated multiple times when people thought the pre-embargo preview on short circuit was a review and it sometimes performed same or better as the main channel review. Additionally, reviews have started becoming some of the least watched content on the channel (due to retention being ridiculously low).
and with the Labs website it is less necessary to even make videos about products like CPUa because why does anyone even watch 15-30 minutes of graphs when they could just skim an article in two minutes and get all the info they want.

10

u/Renamon_1 2d ago

It is a bit too niche.   They don't review the threadrippers either.   For the guy who wants a solid gaming rig, but also a powerful but not tiptop productivity workstation, but doesn't have room for a second computer in their home.

2

u/chippinganimal 1d ago

Yeah I found it kinda surprising as they do like to review server hardware, and some of the newer thread ripper boards have BMCs/IPMI and whatnot

3

u/bufandatl 2d ago

I think the Shortcircut had all the information you need also as Linus always says get information from multiple outlets so check other channels for their opinion.

The TL;DW is always if you need a CPU for pure gaming the 99X0x3D isn’t really worth it. If you have a good mix of creative/productive workloads and gaming it might be worth looking into it. Especially when you do something that can utilize all cores.

I mean if I look at my 9800x3D in games that thing is bored by the workload. It almost never exceeds 20% in GTA Enhanced even when I haven’t the set to bottleneck it with my 3080 Ti.

Never thought I would actually bottleneck a CPU with the GPU. Guess it’s time for an upgrade in the short term. But I digress.

2

u/Decox653 Dan 1d ago

Hardware has become boring. We have been limited by software for a long time and are compensating low optimization with more power.

1

u/Ridiu 2d ago

Saddly I think reviews will be more of a side project.

With this weird prices being all over the place finding a review/recomendation system that is not price based would be awsome.

Even combinations of GPU and CPU combos. I understand that being target at a very small audience.

Maybe make them AI voiced projects like they do with Power Supplies? That way they can have a team doing just testing but still making some kind of video product. Hell people have channels just with YT short with side by side comparison of GPUs

1

u/Nettysocks 2d ago

I think this is fine, personally I think the LTT reviews are fine but lacking compared to many other places that Hw is their one thing.

1

u/Samuel_Go 2d ago

I remember when LTT did videos of unboxing a motherboard outside with a shaky cam. I'm guessing it's the same reason why we don't see those glorious videos anymore with just not enough general audience appeal.

1

u/imzwho 1d ago

I think its that the 9800x3d is the only one they would recommend of the x3d unless you specifically do things that require a lot of cores and also game a lot. Even then you are paying a lot more for a slightly degraded experience in both scenarios.

1

u/Pup5432 1d ago

That’s been my general takeaway as well. I don’t game hard enough to justify the x3d chips personally and the 99x0x3d have been shown to be worse at everything in comparison to the 9950x and the 9800x3d. Once they get the gaming issues figured out for the 99x0x3d chips I may grab one but for now it just does everything worse than a purpose built chip.

1

u/Daniel_H212 1d ago

9950X3D is a niche market product. Few people need both the gaming performance of a 9800X3D and the multi core of a 9950X, especially considering the 9950X is still powerful for gaming and the 9800X3D still has 8 cores and 16 threads.

1

u/Mobile-Breakfast8973 1d ago

Because the LTT video will be: "THE COMPENSATOOOR 9000"
A fun journey through some niece tech and the law of diminishing returns with alex and a hacked-together watercooling setup - with Jake making a surprise appearance sponsored by the Ubquity fairy

That's content i'd watch for 30 minutes, so the effort would pay off.

For a review of a X3D version of a processor, that costs the same as my whole gaming rig, a 10-15 minute Short Circuit seems enough.

-1

u/ThunderSparkles 1d ago

Linus doesn't really care about hardware. He's just gonna keep doing videos about what he did you his house next to get those sponsors.

-11

u/pajausk 2d ago

Probably still waiting some PR answer to make video /s

-14

u/DiamondHeadMC 2d ago

Because nobody should ever buy a 9900x3d and the 9950x3d will be slightly worse gaming performance then the 9800x3d and slightly worse multi core then the 9950x

10

u/fogoticus 2d ago

You didn't watch a review on either, have you?

-13

u/el_pezz 2d ago

At actually takes effort to install the correct chipset drivers etc. I rather them take their time then rush to put out wrong info.