In late October, AMD's mid-cycle Zen 5 refresh leaked, giving us a glimpse at two new X3D CPUs the company has in store for CES 2026. One of those was the Ryzen 7 9850X3D, a higher-boosting version of the existing 9800X3D, and which has been featured in several leaks over the past few weeks. The other chip was a lot more mysterious: a supposed dual-cache Ryzen 9 9950X3D2, but updates on it went radio silent ever since — today, it has finally reappeared on both PassMark and Geekbench.
In PassMark, the 9950X3D2 achieved a multi-score rating of 71,585 and a single-core rating of 4,716. Both of those numbers are within the margin of error of the 9950X and 9950X3D, but a bit far from the highest-scoring CPUs on the database. Keep in mind that PassMark listings can be fabricated, so take all this with a heavy grain of salt.
The 9950X3D2 is reported to carry a whopping 192 MB of total L3 cache, which PassMark confirms, achieved by stacking it across both CCDs. It features the same 16-core, 32-thread layout as the 9950X and 9950X3D, but instead of 3D V-Cache on just one chiplet, it's present underneath both. This doubles the otherwise 96 MB L3 cache (32 MB L3 + 64 MB X3D) to 192 MB.
This would be the first time the chipmaker has achieved such a feat, rounding out an impressive generation as Zen 5 already made a massive leap by fully unlocking these SKUs. That was made possible by putting the extra 3D V-Cache under the CCD instead of on top, allowing for better thermal and power efficiency. Now, doubling that cache can lead to even more (albeit slight) gains in gaming workloads.
The second leak comes courtesy of Geekbench, where it appeared on socketed on a Galax B850M motherboard, paired with 96 GB of DDR5 memory. This listing confirms the boost clocks at 5.6 GHz, which aligns with the initial rumor. The 9950X3D2 scores 3,456 in the single-core test — the highest on Geekbench's processor benchmark database — while netting 21,062 points in the multi-core test, close to its namesake 16-core brethren.
Both the PassMark and Geekbench listings reiterate the core config, while the former mentions the 9950X3D2 as a 170W CPU, going against the 200W TDP that was being thrown around till now. AMD could've tweaked the final specs, or what's more likely is just the lack of samples and early nature of these runs has led to incorrect reporting.
These appearances suggest that either the CPUs have started to be shipped off to reviewers, or that motherboard vendors are testing these to configure the BIOS for launch.
This leak comes with CES 2026 right around the corner, where AMD could reveal new processors.
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