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AMD’s 3D V-Cache CPUs have always been targeted at gaming, but the advent of second-gen 3D V-Cache, where AMD places the SRAM under the compute die, has allowed the X3D offerings to match their non-X3D counterparts in productivity workloads. In fact, this design helps the Ryzen 7 9800X3D to enjoy a solid 6% lead in multi-threaded performance over the Ryzen 7 9700X. The bad news is that the Ryzen 7 9850X3D posted identical multi-threaded results as the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, and both are 25% behind the Core i7-14700K and 29% behind the Core Ultra 7 265K, both of which are cheaper.
As powerful as the Ryzen 7 9800X3D and Ryzen 7 9850X3D are in games, they’re ultimately eight-core parts, and that reality shows clearly in our multi-threaded rankings. For heavily-threaded productivity workloads, it’s hard to justify the $500 price tag of the Ryzen 7 9850X3D when something like the Core i7-14700K offers such a clear performance advantage in multi-threaded tasks for less money.
The story changes when looking at single-threaded rankings. Intel reclaimed the single-threaded performance lead with Arrow Lake, and the Core Ultra 7 265K and Core Ultra 9 285K still top the charts in our results. The Ryzen 7 9850X3D now claims AMD’s top slot in our rankings due to its 400MHz boost, eeking out a 1.6% lead over the Ryzen 9 9950X3D.
Compared to the Core i7-14700K, which is Intel’s strongest competition against the Ryzen 7 9850X3D currently, AMD comes out ahead with a minor 3% improvement in single-threaded tasks. The Core i7-14700K or Core Ultra 7 265K are still better options when looking purely at productivity workloads, however, even if AMD was able to climb up the single-threaded performance rankings with the binned Ryzen 7 9850X3D.
This performance dynamic plays out without much deviation throughout our individual benchmarks. In heavily-threaded workloads, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D and Ryzen 7 9850X3D are in lockstep, while in lightly-threaded tasks, the Ryzen 7 9850X3D enjoys a lead of between 5% and 7%.
Rendering Benchmarks
Most modern renderers are heavily threaded, so it’s no surprise that the Ryzen 7 9850X3D doesn’t offer any meaningful performance improvement in LuxMark, Corona, Blender, Embree, or C-Ray. The single-core results for multiple versions of Cinebench, as well as POV-Ray, show some improvements, unsurprisingly falling around that 6% to 7% mark depending on which test you look at.
Here, we have our first results for the brand-new Cinebench 2026, as well. The Ryzen 7 9850X3D climbs up to a 7.7% lead in single-threaded performance over the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, but the results are largely in line with what we see in previous versions of Cinebench. This test wasn’t included in our geomean due to how recent Cinebench 2026 is, but as you can see, it wouldn’t change the overall rankings.
Encoding Benchmarks
The Ryzen 7 9850X3D doesn’t gain much in rendering tests due to most renderers being heavily-threaded, but encoders are different. The Ryzen 7 9850X3D doesn’t gain much in the way of video encoding, with most encoders using as many threads as possible. Audio and image encoding sees some gains, however, with the Ryzen 7 9850X3D cutting the encoding time of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D in LAME’s single-threaded encoder by 6%, and improving the megapixels per second metric of a single-threaded JPEG-XL decode by 5%.
Creator App Benchmarks
Although the Ryzen 7 9850X3D doesn’t offer tangible improvements in most encoding and rendering applications, larger creator suites show better performance. AMD rules the overall ranking in Photoshop, and the Ryzen 7 9850X3D now tops the charts, outpacing the Ryzen 7 9800X3D by 3%.
DaVinci Resolve doesn’t care much about the boost in clock speed on the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, nor does Premiere Pro. Flipping over to Procyon, which runs real versions of Lightroom and Photoshop, you can once again see the Ryzen 7 9850X3D setting a new bar in photo editing apps, even if its lead over the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is only marginal. The script flips, looking at a heavily-threaded task like batch processing, however, where the Ryzen 7 9850X3D’s lead shrinks and Intel’s hybrid architecture shines with its boosted core count.
Web and Office Benchmarks
Looking at browser performance and speeds in the Microsoft Office suite, the Ryzen 7 9850X3D claims some marginal victories over its predecessor, but that doesn’t say much. A modern, $500 CPU is capable of running these applications without issues, and the data here shows that our test suite is mostly on the same page performance-wise, short of the older Ryzen 7 7800X3D and soon-to-be-defunct Core i7-12700K.
Chess Engines, Compilation, Compression, AVX, and Other Benchmarks
Rounding out our productivity benchmarks are a range of tests looking at everything from chess engines to applications that can leverage AVX-512 instructions. The Ryzen 7 9850X3D mostly matches its predecessor, and there’s true everywhere from molecular physics simulations via NAMD to web server performance.
One interesting result to draw attention to is the single-threaded Y-Cruncher workload, which calculates Pi on a single thread and leverages AVX-512 instructions. This app is an easy win for AMD, with Zen 5 sporting a 512-bit data path for AVX-512 instructions, but the Ryzen 7 9850X3D and Ryzen 7 9800X3D posted identical results; it appears AVX-512 is responsible for the improved performance here, and clock speed does very little to help this workload.
For compression workloads, Intel claims the crown, with the Core Ultra 7 265K or Core i7-14700K offering a clear lead depending on the benchmark you look at. The Ryzen 7 9850X3D offers an advantage over the Ryzen 7 9800X3D when looking at in-memory lossless data compression/decompression, however, which isn’t surprising.
Looking at encryption and security-related workloads, the dynamic between Intel and AMD remains unchanged, and the clock speed advantage of the Ryzen 7 9850X3D disappears entirely. AMD makes up some of that advantage in our coding benchmarks like PyBench and PHPBench, even if the gains are marginal.
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