AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D promises unrivalled gaming performance

After a lengthy five month wait, Zen 5 will soon have its gaming flagship as both AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D finally hit the scene. Announced at CES 2025, Team Red lifted the curtain on its latest 2nd Gen AMD V-Cache CPUs, promising plenty of frames in the process.

AMD dubs 9950X3D as “the world’s best processor for gamers and creators” and it’s easy to see why. Ryzen 7 9800X3D already proves excellent at doling out framerates, and this new flagship features double the core count, a 50% larger L3 cache, and 10% faster frequencies.

Its predecessor proves a more direct comparison with an identical layout, placing emphasis on 9950X3D’s architectural improvements, 50W overhead, and loftier 144MB 3D V-Cache. Painting a fairly realistic picture, AMD’s internal tests suggest you can expect an 8% average uplift in games at FHD on high settings and a 13% jump in apps including Adobe and Davinci.

Looking towards the competition, AMD’s top dog has fewer cores than Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, but four times the L3 cache makes up the difference. Team Red claims it puts 20% between Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Intel’s latest efforts across the same games, with Ubisoft’s lot seeing the biggest leaps. Apps also benefit from Zen 5, with AMD boasting an average 10% improvement.

Underscoring the difference in performance is the contrast in test systems. AMD manages to keep most things in line on Windows 11 Pro 26100 with VBS (virtualisation-based security), SAM (smart access memory), and Resizeable BAR all on and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 at the helm, but there’s a small difference in memory.

Ryzen 9950X3D outpaces its rival using 32GB DDR5-6000 despite Core Ultra 9 285K running 32GB DDR5-6400. This is likely indicative of processor limitations on AMD’s side, as 9800X3D’s official maximum runs just DDR5-5600. In our experience, there’s usually room to nudge it further through overclocking as its little brother runs just fine at 6,000MT/s, but we can’t comment until we get our hands on the chip.

The takeaway here is that Ryzen claims victory in a near-one-for-one comparison at somewhat of a disadvantage, but it’s not a clean sweep. The sample size is limited to just 40 games and 20 apps, making it a cherry-picked head-to-head and all tests were conducted in November, before Intel’s promised performance fixes.

AMD is shy of sharing Ryzen 9 9900X3D data for the moment, but much like its beefier sibling, it features the latest X3D design. While 9800X3D’s slimmer core count allows it to operate with a single CCD (core chiplet die), the 12-core and 16-core designs of its Ryzen 9 siblings warrant dual-CCD arrangements that could introduce extra latency, but the chipmaker hasn’t gone into specifics just yet.

Fortunately, they’re both drop-in CPUs thanks to AMD’s commitment to the AM5 platform, making upgrades from Ryzen 7000 Series possible without swapping your motherboard. A simple BIOS update should do the trick.

As usual, it’s worth waiting for reviews to get the full picture. We still have no indication on the price of either processor to draw any conclusions on value. Fortunately, both CPUs are due to release in Q1 2025, so we should find out more in the coming months.

Over on the mobile side of things, AMD has also adorned its Zen 5 laptop processors with X3D goodness with its new Fire Range. It’s keeping hush on figures for now, but exudes confidence by also giving its Ryzen 9 9955HX3D the title of “world’s best gaming and content creation mobile processor.” I’m sure we’ll see why come release in the first half of 2025. Follow us on Google News to be the first to know when details drop.