If ever there was a processor suffering from success, it’s Ryzen 7 9800X3D. Since its launch in November 2024, it’s been near-impossible to find the AMD CPU on store shelves and is even more rare a find at its RRP. Thankfully, it seems that stock levels are normalising and prices are falling accordingly. While still slightly above its target cost, the premium for the best gaming CPU on the market is now so small that it’s finally worth considering to buy once again.
Ryzen 7 9800X3D
“The conqueror of framerates is here. All hail the new gaming champ.” Read our review.
Over on Amazon UK, you’ll find Ryzen 7 9800X3D for £479.99. That’s a mere £29.99 (+7%) above its RRP, making it a steal in today’s market. Better still, there are no stock warnings from the storefront suggesting that this relatively low price will disappear in a wink. Even with no signs of shortages returning imminently, I’d suggest you get while the getting’s good.
What exactly makes Ryzen 7 9800X3D so special? To put it bluntly, there’s no finer processor to pair with the fastest graphics cards on the market, up to and including GeForce RTX 5090. This is all thanks to its 3D V-Cache technology via which AMD crams a whopping 96MB of L3 cache under the CPU’s hood. This allows it to be less reliant on RAM, executing instructions quicker, resulting in higher frame rates.
Comparing Ryzen 7 9800X3D to its predecessor, Ryzen 7 7800X3D, the differences are nuanced but nonetheless noticeable. In addition to the architectural advantages of Zen 5, this new champion of CPUs also boasts higher clock speeds that you can push even further via overclocking. Cache on cache, speed on speed, gains on gains. Check out our versus guide from when we pitted these two processors against one another for a more detailed comparison.
If you’ve been patiently waiting to grab Ryzen 7 9800X3D, now seems like a reasonable time to strike. Even with Ryzen 9 9900X3D and 9950X3D on the horizon, I don’t believe we’re in for a complete dethroning of the current king of the hill.
