Why you can trust Tom's Hardware
Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
The $600 Ryzen 9 9900X3D is the middle child in AMD's gaming-optimized X3D lineup, and those willing to pay the extra $200 premium over the standard Ryzen 9 9900X for the game-boosting tech are going to be primarily interested in gaming performance with a side of additional performance in productivity and heavy multitasking workloads. However, while the 9900X3D is now the fastest 12-core gaming chip on the market, it faces stiff competition from AMD's own lower- and higher-priced chips, making its $600 price tag hard to justify, just like the previous-gen model.
Unfortunately for Intel, neither of its competing chips can make a compelling case in gaming against the Ryzen 9 9900X3D, unless you're looking for a lower-priced value alternative in the $445 Core i9-14900K (which may not be a great value after factoring in power use over time). The Intel chips are strong alternatives for those interested solely in productivity work, but they aren't strong contenders against the 9900X3D's niche target market.
Below, we have the geometric mean of our gaming test suite at 1080p and a cumulative performance measurement in single- and multi-threaded applications. We conducted our gaming tests with an Nvidia RTX 5090, so performance deltas will shrink with lesser cards and higher resolution and fidelity settings.
Image 1 of 4
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)
In 1080p gaming, the 9900X3D is 28% faster on average than Intel's current-gen Core Ultra 9 285K and 18% faster than Intel's fastest gaming chip, the previous-gen Core i9-14900K. As such, the similarly priced 285K isn't competitive. However, the Core i9-14900K costs $155 (26%) less for roughly 15% less performance in gaming, giving it some room as a value alternative, especially in light of its faster performance in productivity applications.
Speaking of which, the $445 Core i9-14900K is 10% faster in multi-threaded work than the Ryzen 9 9900X3D and 3% faster in single-threaded. Meanwhile, the Core Ultra 9 285K is 23% faster than the 9900X3D in threaded workloads and 7% faster in single-threaded. Still, its woefully slower gaming performance and similar pricing make it unattractive compared to the Ryzen 9 9900X3D.
The 9900X3D's real competitors come from AMD's own stable and bracket it on both sides of the pricing equation. If you're solely interested in gaming, the Ryzen 9 9800X3D costs $120 (25%) less than the 9900X3D but is roughly 8% faster in gaming. Conversely, the 9900X3D is 36% faster in multi-threaded applications, but if you don't need more heavy lifting in productivity apps or don't commonly do heavy multitasking while gaming, the 9800X3D is the chip for you.
The $700 Ryzen 9 9950X3D is better still. For $100 (20%) more than the 9900X3D, you get 7% more gaming performance, matching the fastest gaming chip on the market, 27% more performance in heavily-threaded work, and 3% more performance in single-threaded applications. If you're already willing to spend $600 for a gaming-optimized chip that's also great at productivity work, earmarking an extra $100 for the Ryzen 9 9950X3D is clearly the better choice.
The Ryzen 9 9950X3D and the Ryzen 7 9800X3D are more future-proof gaming chips, too. Both chips essentially operate as an eight-core processor during gaming, while the Ryzen 9 9900X3D operates as a six-core processor. Games are inevitably making better use of higher core and thread counts as the years go on, and spending $600 for what is essentially a six-core gaming chip, albeit with a large L3 cache, doesn't feel like a wise investment for longevity.
Overall, the best CPU for most gamers remains the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, while the Ryzen 9 9950X3D is the best option for higher performance in gaming and more demanding productivity tasks. The Ryzen 9 9900X3D will need a significant price adjustment to earn our recommendation.
Really not sure why AMD are bothering with the #900 X3D variants. Neither the price or the performance fit, in either direction. Those 6 core chips with the extra cache would be far better diverted to a cheaper #600 X3D if there are enough defective dies to bother, that is.
If it was another 50-75 of your chosen currency cheaper, then it might be more interesting.
From reading and hearing several reviews (Gamers Nexus), i'm surprised that the 9950X3D and 9900X3D did not demolish the lesser and older 9800X3D. In fact Steve Burke from GN, said the 9950X3D was on par with the 9900X3D and 9800X3D. I decided for my gaming build to go with the 9800X3D, not because of price but the 9800 was the choice for a gaming rig. I recently snagged a new 9800X3D on sale from Amazon for $443.
High power usage in idle, really? One could draw some conclusions based on graphs provided, but definitely not that.
Why not? Are you missing these charts?
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/Wpec6VRKFNm8Yz2XX46WN3.pnghttps://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/MZ7DJqYn2gNn4vTHK9aWJ3.png
In idle and light workloads, AMD's CPUs are sitting about 14~17 watts higher than the Core Ultra 9 285K. Is that a terrible thing that should prevent people from buying it? No, but it is a weakness of AMD's design right now. It's something AMD should look into addressing with future designs. Because even though it's only 15W or so (that's two 60W LED bulb equivalents), it should be possible to get that power use down.
Imagine a phone or mobile device that used almost 3X more power at idle than the competition. That would be a major concern. And in light workloads like YouTube, if it had to use twice as much power, that would also be bad.
Some people seem to think the pros and cons are us screaming "THESE ARE AMAZING ASPECTS" and "THESE ARE TEH WORST ASPECTS" but they're really just a high-level summary of some key points — things that are going well, things that could be improved (without the shouting).
Heat_Fan89 said:
From reading and hearing several reviews (Gamers Nexus), i'm surprised that the 9950X3D and 9900X3D did not demolish the lesser and older 9800X3D. In fact Steve Burke from GN, said the 9950X3D was on par with the 9900X3D and 9800X3D. I decided for my gaming build to go with the 9800X3D, not because of price but the 9800 was the choice for a gaming rig. I recently snagged a new 9800X3D on sale from Amazon for $443.
I'm not sure why anyone would be surprised that, in gaming, the 8-core X3D and the 8-core X3D plus 8-core standard CCDs perform better in games than a 6-core X3D plus 6-core standard configuration. The whole point of the X3D is to shift cache-sensitive workloads to that CCD, away from the other CCD that lacks the extra cache.
It's a whitelist software solution (meaning, AMD explicitly lists which games should effectively disable the non-X3D CCD), and not everything benefits. But as we've seen plenty of times in the past, the dual-CCD (and quad-/hex-/octal-CCD Threadripper) solutions add latency to memory and cache transactions and that reduces gaming performance.
In fact, that's precisely the problem Intel has with Arrow Lake: higher memory latency means lower gaming performance.
Really not sure why AMD are bothering with the #900 X3D variants. Neither the price or the performance fit, in either direction. Those 6 core chips with the extra cache would be far better diverted to a cheaper #600 X3D if there are enough defective dies to bother, that is.
Higher margin on the chip, perhaps? Although the street price is already below MSRP.
This should be the last hurrah for the awkward AMD 12-cores. Zen 6 will move to 12-core chiplets. The equivalent chip in that lineup might have 16, 18, or 20 cores, a minimum of 8 cores in each CCX. The 3D cache whitelisting problem could persist, but the single-CCD 9800X3D successor will have 12 cores and walk all over the 9900X3D in every scenario.
Higher margin on the chip, perhaps? Although the street price is already below MSRP.
Oh, I definitely understand the reason for it, but I like to delude myself in to thinking that AMD would do something 'nice' for us dinky liddle consumers. I know; I may as well wish for world peace, with a mysterious multi-million inheritance thrown in.
Then again, I can't see how a 9600X3D wouldn't sell like hot cakes at 300, or even a bit more.
Oh, I definitely understand the reason for it, but I like to delude myself in to thinking that AMD would do something 'nice' for us dinky liddle consumers. I know; I may as well wish for world peace, with a mysterious multi-million inheritance thrown in.
Then again, I can't see how a 9600X3D wouldn't sell like hot cakes at 300, or even a bit more.
The other reason they are wary of doing a wide, early release of 6-core X3D is because it clearly undercuts the 8-core X3D for the many games that are fine running on 6 fast cores.
They could probably get away with charging $350 for a 9600X3D, but if it costs about the same to make as $480+ 9800X3D due to high yields, a chunk of money is left on the table. So it will probably get introduced much later in this generation when enough defective chips are accumulated, following the pattern.
"We measured the Core Ultra 9 285K at 20W under these conditions, but the Ryzen 9 9900X3D consumed 37W. While we can see that the 9900X3D has improved compared to the previous-gen Ryzen 7000X3D models, this is still a significantly higher amount of active idle power draw than the Intel chips."
What about medium-light conditions Paul?
I've been able to pull a (relatively) insane amount of power with the 9950X3D just by spinning my mouse around really quickly.
With the disclaimer that I haven't tested this in detail, it appears that AMD's flagship X3D CPU is much less efficient below 100W, but is more efficient above 100W.
What AMD really needs is an 8+4, not a 6+6
Although, judging by the amount of binned 4-cores they sell, it seems the yields are so good they have almost none.
