If you've been trying to get your hands on the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D since its launch in March, then I'm happy to report that you can now score one at MSRP at not one but two retailers ahead of this Memorial Day weekend.
Right now, you can grab one at the MSRP of $699 at Amazon, and also at B&H Photo, both with free shipping and just a few days' lead time. The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D is our slam-dunk best CPU pick for high-performance gaming, thanks to its performant hardware and energy efficiency. It's not cheap, but if you're in the market, this is your best chance yet to buy one.
The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D is the best high-performance CPU for gaming on the market right now. It's the fastest 16-core chip in gaming, offering near-parity, on average, with the 9800X3D, without compromising productivity performance. It's also fully overclockable and energy efficient, with AVX-512 support in tow.
Our CPU benchmarks reveal it is 37% faster than the flagship Intel Core 9 285K in 1080p gaming, and 26% faster than the Core i9-14900K on average. Gaming performance is buoyed in part by AMD's 3D V-Cache technology, with the second-gen revision on offer here taking the chips to a whole new level.
As noted, the 9950X3D is clocked to a 4.3 GHz base speed, with 5.7 GHz boosted speeds. It's also unlocked, so ripe for overclocking if the mood strikes you. Specifically, Ryzen-optimized AMD EXPO profiles enable user-friendly overclocking
Connectivity on offer includes NVME, native USB 4, USB 3.2, and PCIe 5.0, perfect for pairing with any good GPU, SSD, and up to 192GB of DDR5-5600 memory. It also has integrated Radeon graphics if you need them.
Our only reservation with the 9950X3D is the pretty steep price, but given it's very new and hard to get hold of, there's simply no chance of scoring a discount on it at this stage. In fact, even finding it at MSRP is an undertaking, hence our excitement about these listings.
