During its reveal at CES 2025, AMD proudly dubbed Ryzen 9 9950X3D “the world’s best gaming processor” accompanied by a bar chart of performance uplifts relative to Ryzen 9 7950X3D. Of course, those in the know will point out that Ryzen 7 9800X3D is the chip to beat when it comes to pushing frame rates to new highs. Since then the company has finally commented on what it expects to see out of comparisons between the two 3D V-Cache Zen 5 CPUs.
Speaking to Videogamer, AMD’s Martijn Boonstra said that Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D will “provide similar overall gaming performance to 9800X3D.” Expanding on their point, Boonstra highlights that some games will perform better or worse depending on how much they utilise additional threads and cores versus favouring a single CCD configuration. In other words, it’s the same story as with previous CPUs like Ryzen 9 7950X3D & 7900X3D.
As a reminder, AMD splits the cores of its Ryzen 9 9000X3D CPUs across two CCDs just like their non-X3D counterparts, Ryzen 9 9950X & 9900X. However, only one CCD boasts 3D V-Cache leading to potentially substantial differences in performance depending on which cluster of cores an application calls upon.
It intrigues me that Boonstra describes Ryzen 9 9900X3D performance as being broadly comparable to Ryzen 7 9800X3D. Each of its two CCDs features six cores, for a total of 12. As such, I’d expect it to sit closer to a hypothetical Ryzen 5 9600X3D. This could be an unintended simplification on Boonstra’s part but Club386 and other outlets will reveal all once they get the chips in hand.
While Ryzen 7 9800X3D will almost certainly continue to provide gamers with better bang for buck, there’s still plenty to look forward to from these new X3D CPUs. For instance, in addition to their higher core and thread counts, both Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D boast higher boost clocks of 5.7GHz and 5.5GHz, respectively. That’s 300-500MHz more than the current champ.
Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D should hit store shelves sometime in Q1, making March the latest possible month of launch. AMD hasn’t unveiled pricing yet but you can expect them to cost more than Ryzen 7 9800X3D and their non X3D counterparts.
