News AMD launches Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D, claims 20% faster gaming performance than Intel’s flagship Arrow Lake processors

[Admin]

AMD announced its two flagship Ryzen 9000-series X3D processors here at CES 2025 in Las Vegas, with the 16-core 32-thread Ryzen 9 9950X3D leading the way with the potent Zen 5 architecture paired with AMD’s dominating game-boosting X3D technology to provide 128MB of L3 cache, all of which AMD says makes it the world’s best CPU for gaming and creator workloads.

AMD launches Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D, claims 20% faster gaming performance than Intel’s flagship Arrow Lake processors : Read more

 

[A Stoner]

In order to get me to upgrade my 7950X3D they would have needed to add the cache to both CPU dies in order to ditch the requirement for software to pick which cores to utilize. Hopefully in the future they will be able to add the cache to both chiplets to make all cores equal.

 

[ezst036]

I guess AMD is going for the kill while Intel is still having firmware/BIOS issues related to performance.

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-com...es-coupled-with-the-new-csme-version-1854v2-2

 

[spongiemaster]

Alternate headline option:

"AMD launches Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D, claims same gaming performance as 9800x3D"

 

[A Stoner]

Alternate headline option:

"AMD launches Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D, claims same gaming performance as 9800x3D"

Which is a great improvement from the previous generation where the lower end chip beat them in gaming performance.

I do more workstation things than gaming, so the 7950X3D was important, but I certainly would be better off if it also performed better in games.

New builders will not have to sacrifice gaming for productivity.

 

[btmedic04]

Man, i really wanted this to be a dual x3d die set up. Disappointing

 

[why_wolf]

FYI the 9800X3D is available again on Amazon (US) for preorder for the February batch.

 

[halfcharlie]

New builders will not have to sacrifice gaming for productivity.

They already don't. If someone is making their CPU choice based on gaming they're a fool falling for marketing and nothing more. There's no real world difference. Benchmarks have clearly shown that at a 2K to 4K+ gaming that even a half decade old i5 only has single digit differences in framerates. Who's gaming at 1080p where it actually makes a difference? Oh and only with high end high refresh monitors and GPU's, there's only a tiny niche of competitive gaming where that's a thing so it doesn't apply to the vast majority. If someone cares about their gaming performance they focus on the GPU, simple as that, and a fast drive for loading.

 

[Sluggotg]

I have only done a few AMD builds in modern times. I will most likely be doing one several months from now when things settle down. Of course, availability will be a problem. I will try to get the CPU as soon as possible, but I want to wait a bit on the Motherboards. (Just incase there are issues or better MBs coming a little later).

This reminds me of when the Athlon 64 came out. Intel was not looking good for a while. Eventually they responded with the Core Series and passed them again. This time it is looking grim for Intel. I hope they have something up their sleeve, we need them to compete.

I prefer Intel and Nvidia, but I won't hesitate to buy AMD if they have what I need. AMD is a great company!

 

[cheetah2kk]

In order to get me to upgrade my 7950X3D they would have needed to add the cache to both CPU dies in order to ditch the requirement for software to pick which cores to utilize. Hopefully in the future they will be able to add the cache to both chiplets to make all cores equal.

Of course they will do this - next year to get people to spend more money on upgrades.. Everything we buy in the PC space is technically "incremental" with planned updates in the pipeline for years showcasing increases in speed, efficiency, etc for those that want to update yearly (which is most PC enthusiasts 🤣)

AMD really are on a roll at the moment, and no doubts they have the architecture to crush team Blue for many years to come... Until the coin flips again in Intel's favour

 

[cheetah2kk]

I guess AMD is going for the kill while Intel is still having firmware/BIOS issues related to performance.

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-com...es-coupled-with-the-new-csme-version-1854v2-2

Team Blue really have well and truly thrown themselves to the wolves at the moment... Their issues are not simply BIOS related. There will be many years of pain until they work themselves back to the top IMO

 

[Elusive Ruse]

In order to get me to upgrade my 7950X3D they would have needed to add the cache to both CPU dies in order to ditch the requirement for software to pick which cores to utilize. Hopefully in the future they will be able to add the cache to both chiplets to make all cores equal.

Why would you be thinking of upgrading your 7950X3D this soon anyway? If the 9950X3D was such a generational gain that made it a compelling upgrade over the 7950X3D it would only mean that the prior gen CPU was a bad product which in this case it is not.
I also highly doubt that putting 3D cache on both dies for the 950 line is a logical move since it would not add much to gaming performance while denting its productivity prowess drastically. 8c/16t is more than enough for games right now and if someone is paying $500+ for a CPU I'm pretty sure they aren't gaming at 1080p unless they are a CS Pro in that case the 9800X3D would be the better option anyway.

 

[emike09]

I'd love to see statistical data on how they've improved their chipset drivers to work with thread scheduling, and integration with developers. Especially support for the Linux community, which has fallen behind Windows for general purpose usage and support.

AMD is so close to switching me over to their platform, benchmarks will tell, but I'm still not sold.

 

[ottonis]

I wonder what the target population for this 16 core X3D CPU may be:
It's definitely NOT the gamers, as they already have vitually same performance in the 8-core X3D variant, but at much lower cost.
It's certainly also not the creators, as they will get even better performance in productivity/creativity tasks from the non-X3D-variant of this chip - at a lower price.

So, the only people who might be interested in this 9950X3D chip are content creators who like to play heavy AAA games while their computer is rendering videos.

 

[logainofhades]

They already don't. If someone is making their CPU choice based on gaming they're a fool falling for marketing and nothing more. There's no real world difference. Benchmarks have clearly shown that at a 2K to 4K+ gaming that even a half decade old i5 only has single digit differences in framerates. Who's gaming at 1080p where it actually makes a difference? Oh and only with high end high refresh monitors and GPU's, there's only a tiny niche of competitive gaming where that's a thing so it doesn't apply to the vast majority. If someone cares about their gaming performance they focus on the GPU, simple as that, and a fast drive for loading.

I haven't watched this in awhile, so don't remember the details, but might be worth a watch.

View: https://youtu.be/98RR0FVQeqs?si=dMuzwYqJ1Al_t8Yj

 

[TeamRed2024]

I wonder what the target population for this 16 core X3D CPU may be:
It's definitely NOT the gamers, as they already have vitually same performance in the 8-core X3D variant, but at much lower cost.
It's certainly also not the creators, as they will get even better performance in productivity/creativity tasks from the non-X3D-variant of this chip - at a lower price.

So, the only people who might be interested in this 9950X3D chip are content creators who like to play heavy AAA games while their computer is rendering videos.

I have no idea. I've tested with multiple AAA games running while rendering/encoding and my 9950X/4090 didn't even burp.

Already running at capped fps... don't see any x3D benefit.

 

[ilukey77]

In order to get me to upgrade my 7950X3D they would have needed to add the cache to both CPU dies in order to ditch the requirement for software to pick which cores to utilize. Hopefully in the future they will be able to add the cache to both chiplets to make all cores equal.

100% i was hoping for dual ccd cache stacking .. while i game mostly i was hoping the 9950x3d bought something more than just another 9800x3d with more cores ..

I was happy to pay the premium with the 9950x3d if i knew i was going to get better performance in games for the money ..

I dont know much about cache in the sense is there diminishing returns past a certain point so if the 9800x3d has got 96mb of L3 cache and the 9950x3d has 128mb of L3 and able to use the full amount of cache over the both ccds will that result if higher frame rates ??

 

[OldAnalogWorld]

So, the only people who might be interested in this 9950X3D chip are content creators who like to play heavy AAA games while their computer is rendering videos.

Why do such people need this? It is easier for them to have 2 system units connected via a switch to one monitor, keyboard and mouse (if necessary, although gaming mice are poorly suited for everyday tasks due to increased sensitivity, and mechanical keyboards are too noisy in normal operation), completely independent in terms of their intended use, since they have money for all this. Simultaneous execution of heavy tasks on one machine will never provide both calculation of something and smooth gameplay - the architecture of buses and cores does not allow this a priori.

 

[A Stoner]

100% i was hoping for dual ccd cache stacking .. while i game mostly i was hoping the 9950x3d bought something more than just another 9800x3d with more cores ..

I was happy to pay the premium with the 9950x3d if i knew i was going to get better performance in games for the money ..

I dont know much about cache in the sense is there diminishing returns past a certain point so if the 9800x3d has got 96mb of L3 cache and the 9950x3d has 128mb of L3 and able to use the full amount of cache over the both ccds will that result if higher frame rates ??

The only reason I would want the cache to be on both CCDs is that it would eliminate the risk of a process being executed on the wrong CCD. Since having the cache under the processor allows the processor to run at the same speed as a non cached variant, having the cache on both CCDs would make every core fully and 100% interchangeable and there would not be a need to schedule threads.

Anyways, I am hoping they figure out how to add the cache across multiple CCD chips and make it work in the future. Either that, or make CCDs with more than 8 cores.