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The $699 Ryzen 9 9950X3D sets a new bar for the company’s potent lineup of gaming-optimized X3D processors, sharing the top spot with the Ryzen 9 9800X3D as the fastest gaming CPUs in the world. AMD’s continued evolution of its ground-breaking 3D V-Cache tech has dramatically reduced the tradeoffs of lower productivity performance that used to be associated with its X3D chips, leaving little reason not to buy the chip if you prize both leading-edge gaming performance and real grunt power in productivity workloads.
Intel doesn't have a chip that can deliver a comparable blend of performance in both gaming and productivity. For gamers interested in Intel chips, the 14th-Gen processors remain the fastest for gaming, but they can’t compete with AMD’s X3D processors, and their aging design isn’t as powerful in productivity workloads as Intel’s newer Arrow Lake Core Ultra 9 285K.
Unfortunately for the Core Ultra 9 285K, while it maintains a lead over the 9950X3D in single-threaded work, it doesn’t establish itself firmly enough in multi-threaded applications to give it a complete win over Ryzen 9 in productivity work, and it is obviously a painfully inadequate competitor in gaming. That leaves Intel without a meaningful competitor for the Ryzen 9 9950X3D.
Below, we have the geometric mean of our gaming test suite at 1080p and a cumulative measure of performance 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.
It’s a dead heat in 1080p gaming at the top of the chart, with the Ryzen 9 9950X3D matching the 9800X3D. More impressively, the 9950X3D dispatches Intel’s chips easily, beating the 285K by 37% and the Core i9-14900K by 26%. Gaming is simply a no-contest.
The Ryzen 9 9950X3D is impressive in productivity work, too, matching the standard Ryzen 9 9950X in our overall measure of both single- and multi-threaded workloads, an impressive accomplishment. It’s also 11% faster than the 285K in threaded workloads, though Intel fires back by taking a 7% lead in single-threaded work.
It isn’t often that a generational increase in TDP and power consumption is considered a good thing, but that’s exactly what we get with the Ryzen 9 9950X3D. The previous-gen 7950X3D had to step back 50W behind its standard counterpart due to its top-mounted L3 cache chiplet, but AMD's decision to move the chiplet to the bottom has drastically improved its ability to dissipate heat effectively. While we saw strong gains from this new technique with the single-chiplet 9800X3D, it is perhaps most important with the dual-CCD models. In the case of the 9950X3D, the extra 50W of headroom unleashes more horsepower for gaming and productivity work, making it the most powerful all-arounder that money can buy.
AMD will also release the 9900X3D tomorrow, but this chip doesn't look as promising. AMD's previous-gen 7900X3D suffered from a sizeable performance gap with its more powerful counterpart, scuttling the value proposition. The company says it has reduced that disparity this time around; however, the price delta is still slim between the two chips, especially given what will be substantial differences between the chips in productivity workloads. Don't pull the trigger on that chip until you see third-party testing.
Meanwhile, Arrow Lake remains a disappointment for us, and pretty much everyone else, too. Despite a string of BIOS, driver, Management Engine, and Windows updates, the Arrow Lake processors remain underwhelming on the multiple platforms we've tested.
The Ryzen 9 9950X3D scores another walk-in touchdown for AMD, easily earning its $699 price tag. Given the intense demand for the Ryzen 9 9800X3D and the resulting rolling shortages, we expect it might be hard to get your hands on the Ryzen 9 9950X3D at first, especially at MSRP. For those on the hunt for the highest-end performance money can buy, it will be worth the effort. If you can afford it, you won't find a mainstream desktop PC chip that offers a stronger blend of gaming and productivity performance.
