Review AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D Review: Stunning gaming performance meets top-tier productivity

[JayGau]

I gonna try to resist the temptation and keep my 9800X3D for a while. But it's not gonna be easy 😛

 

[rluker5]

RIP Intel 10th consecutive year

Nah, my 4770k still creamed whatever 8350 was around, then later that year 5775c creamed that same chip even worse.

 

[rluker5]

I don't think I'll have to upgrade from my 7800X3D for a while, and I believe others with similar chips will concur. The 9950X3D is compelling, but not enough. I got my chip for $266(from a bundle), 80% of the performance of a 9950X3D for ~30% of the price was a damn good deal. If I ever do upgrade, it'll be far in the future when I can also afford faster RAM and a new Mobo, perhaps even a new GPU, but that's just me dreaming

I like to upgrade when either my performance improves or I just really want to play with the hardware.
My main gaming pc runs 4k with a 3080. Living room has a 4k tv with a B580. Even after I upgrade my GPUs a 7800X3D would be plenty for no loss in performance.

But if Intel were to release a CPU with 52 cores for not a lot more than this CPU I would be tempted, just to play with all of those cores.

 

[Bikki]

Thank you Paul, the article is very well done. It's been a long time since i saw one of your article, so glad i see one today and none other than the review of historic 9950x3d.

 

[Shiznizzle]

I don't think I'll have to upgrade from my 7800X3D for a while, and I believe others with similar chips will concur. The 9950X3D is compelling, but not enough. I got my chip for $266(from a bundle), 80% of the performance of a 9950X3D for ~30% of the price was a damn good deal. If I ever do upgrade, it'll be far in the future when I can also afford faster RAM and a new Mobo, perhaps even a new GPU, but that's just me dreaming

I am on AM4 and also thinking the same with a 5800X which is now a 5 year old chip i got last xmas for 130 pounds.

The 5800x already gives my 3060 GPU enough trouble as at is and never goes above %5

But the time i am ready to join AM5, Am6 will be here. I can skip AM5 with the hardware that i have, provided i can get a decent 9070XT that wont break the bank

 

[spongiemaster]

you stated:

"AMD earned 25 Billion in 2024, Intel revenue earned 50 Billion.
AMD profited 2 Billion in 2024, Intel profited 17 Billion."

First - The numbers in the first line are Revenue (gross sales) not Earnings (net income or profit)

Second - Intel's net income is in parentheses which designates a loss.
Intel reported a 18.8 Billion LOSS on intel operations:

Intel full Year 2024

Revenue ($B) $53.1

Net income (loss) attributable to Intel ($B) $(18.8)

Definitions for earnings and revenue:

Earnings means after-tax net income.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/earnings.asp

revenue means sales (gross income). https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/revenue.asp

It's sad how often this misinformation is parroted and misrepresented. Intel's fab business losing billions every quarter has nothing to do with the profitability of their CPU business. Intel's client computing group is magnitudes more profitable than AMD's counterpart. Here are the last 5 quarters.

That's $3.1 billion to the positive this last quarter while AMD is supposedly kicking Intel all over the place. How about AMD?

For those who actually understand the numbers, Intel's CPU division generated 7 times the profits compared to AMD in Q4 of 2024. That $2.3 billion in revenue was a record for AMD, and it still trailed Intel's profit for the quarter. AMD has a long long way to go to catch Intel.

 

[spongiemaster]

It's going to affect them long term. They are losing space in the gaming market as they haven't released anything competitive as of recent, and they are losing space in the server market as AMD's Threadripper and Epyc lines exist. Intel is subsiding on locked-in server owners who are already on intel's platform, along with the sale of older(relative)CPUs in the gaming market. At least, that's what I think is happening. For all we know, Intel could just be cooking up the hardest comeback ever with all that money! I don't care who has the best, competition lowers prices and that's what we all need.

Gamers think the world revolves around them. In reality, the gaming market is irrelevantly small compared to the overall market. Take a look at AMD's gaming segment revenue for 2024 if you want to see something miserable. Down 58% from 2023. Company overall still doing ok, because gaming barely matters to these giant companies. It isn't worth Intel's time or money to target gamers. Their client CPU group is still pummeling AMD's in revenue and profitability without gamers' support.

 

[P1nky]

It's sad how often this misinformation is parroted and misrepresented. Intel's fab business losing billions every quarter has nothing to do with the profitability of their CPU business. .

Is this suppose to be a joke? Who owns Intel's fabs? Who is responsible of Intel's fabs strategy and decision making?

Intel lost a lot of revenue, market share and most importantly it lost a lot of money in the last years. Intel is in a coma, it's dying for the last 3-4 years.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/tsmc-pitched-intel-foundry-jv-nvidia-amd-broadcom-sources-say-2025-03-12/

 

[das_stig]

Although many says why give away crown jewels, but AMD should licence the 3D tech to other chippers and create a standard, imagine Intel having to pay a % of each chip made to AMD, nice little earner guvnor.

 

[stuff and nonesense]

Gamers think the world revolves around them. In reality, the gaming market is irrelevantly small compared to the overall market. Take a look at AMD's gaming segment revenue for 2024 if you want to see something miserable. Down 58% from 2023. Company overall still doing ok, because gaming barely matters to these giant companies. It isn't worth Intel's time or money to target gamers. Their client CPU group is still pummeling AMD's in revenue and profitability without gamers' support.

This comes up every time.

We all know that today Intel has a bigger market, it’s called business. They are entrenched.

Currently the people buying with their own money are moving towards AMD and that is shown in their sales growth.

Is an old argument. The reasons are known.

 

[rluker5]

Although many says why give away crown jewels, but AMD should licence the 3D tech to other chippers and create a standard, imagine Intel having to pay a % of each chip made to AMD, nice little earner guvnor.

I believe 3D is TSMC tech that AMD is utilizing so AMD would only be able to license out their chip IP.

 

[TerryLaze]

This comes up every time.

We all know that today Intel has a bigger market, it’s called business. They are entrenched.

Currently the people buying with their own money are moving towards AMD and that is shown in their sales growth.

Is an old argument. The reasons are known.

Yes amd sales are up but the money they actually make from these increased sales is going down, that's amds big problem.
They are forced to make their CPUs for more and more money while they can't ask the consumers for more money, on the contrary their CPU prices usually drop hard after only a little while.
They can't keep this up for much longer.
If AMD doesn't come up with a way to make their CPUs cheaper to produce while not losing much performance we will get another decade of bulldozers.

 

[jeremyj_83]

Yes amd sales are up but the money they actually make from these increased sales is going down, that's amds big problem.
They are forced to make their CPUs for more and more money while they can't ask the consumers for more money, on the contrary their CPU prices usually drop hard after only a little while.
They can't keep this up for much longer.
If AMD doesn't come up with a way to make their CPUs cheaper to produce while not losing much performance we will get another decade of bulldozers.

The client side (Ryzen 7's or Core Ultra) of CPUs isn't what drives the money for Intel or AMD. These companies make their money off of data center (Epyc or Xeon) CPUs.

 

[JasonovichClone]

I believe 3D is TSMC tech that AMD is utilizing so AMD would only be able to license out their chip IP.

I'm not sure that's correct, TSMC don't design, they implement the designs of their clients into their processing.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

intel made 96.8bil in the last 10 years....
that's net income after all expenses including dividends and after all the losses they had.
intel is RIP-ing all the way to bank, laughing.

During the same last ten years amd made 8.5 bil.

10 years ago AMD was still on faildozer................................................................................................................................................

Ah, Terry. Welcome back! We've missed your point of view on such things 😉

No mention of the massive losses in the last few years and the idea of Intel being bought out by Qualcomm and/or TSMC. I wonder will the make that 96B in the next 10 years though! 😆

 

[rluker5]

I'm not sure that's correct, TSMC don't design, they implement the designs of their clients into their processing.

I believe the copper to copper vertical connection was all TSMC and predated X3D by a few years.
The integration of that into their chip design was AMD, but general connections perpendicular to the die exist in nearly all chips so it would be tough to patent that.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

I'm not sure that's correct, TSMC don't design, they implement the designs of their clients into their processing.

No, this is correct. It's TSMC's tech, and AMD have used it and changed spec along with TSMC to produce the X3D parts. At least, that's how I understand it.

 

[Geo Leaf]

TPU has 1440 numbers.

So checking this for 4k in comparison to 9950x

Alan Wake 2: No difference
BG3: +36fps
CS2: No difference
Cyberpunk: No difference
Elden Ring: +20fps
Kingdom Come 2: No difference
Space Marine 2 : No difference
Spiderman 2 : No Difference
Stalker 2 : No difference
Starfield: No difference
Last of Us 2: +7 fps


With Ray tracing on no difference in anything...
In my opinion no one will notice the difference with a big monitor

 

[spongiemaster]

Currently the people buying with their own money are moving towards AMD and that is shown in their sales growth.

Bull. AMD currently has an advantage in the DIY market which is another largely irrelevant market from a revenue perspective. Overwhelming, people spending their own money are still buying Intel when they go to Best Buy to buy a computer, or Dell or any other major OEM.

How dependable is the DIY market? Look at AMD fanboy's favorite retailer. Mindfactory. All those AMD CPU's and GPU's they sold and they're about to go out of business.

 

[tamalero]

When you have to go 10 years backward to prove your point haha! I hope you read the other comments. AMD made money last year while Intel lost money. And your second paragraph here is pure projection. Intel is the company that has no clue what to do to innovate. They cannot even add cores without crippling some of them with their "efficiency core" bs. The only way they can improve performance is by increasing the clock speed and the TDP, and that doesn't work anymore. AMD keeps improving the X3D design while Intel is more and more going toward the room heater business.

They literally went back to the Pentium D era.

It's sad how often this misinformation is parroted and misrepresented. Intel's fab business losing billions every quarter has nothing to do with the profitability of their CPU business. Intel's client computing group is magnitudes more profitable than AMD's counterpart. Here are the last 5 quarters.

That's $3.1 billion to the positive this last quarter while AMD is supposedly kicking Intel all over the place. How about AMD?

For those who actually understand the numbers, Intel's CPU division generated 7 times the profits compared to AMD in Q4 of 2024. That $2.3 billion in revenue was a record for AMD, and it still trailed Intel's profit for the quarter. AMD has a long long way to go to catch Intel.

Also makes me wonder. I do not think AMD can subplant intel if all OEMs suddenly switched to EPYCs or RYZEN chips because of limited supply from TSCM.
Isnt Apple always #1 priority for TSCM with nvidia second?

 

[BladePocok]

It's "barely" better than 9800X3D in a number of (game) titles, but costs a LOT more, so what's the verdict, can the 9950X3D be a more future proof CPU in 3-4-5 years ahead? Or the 9800X3D will be plenty enough?

 

[Thunder64]

So checking this for 4k in comparison to 9950x

Alan Wake 2: No difference
BG3: +36fps
CS2: No difference
Cyberpunk: No difference
Elden Ring: +20fps
Kingdom Come 2: No difference
Space Marine 2 : No difference
Spiderman 2 : No Difference
Stalker 2 : No difference
Starfield: No difference
Last of Us 2: +7 fps


With Ray tracing on no difference in anything...
In my opinion no one will notice the difference with a big monitor

Completely ignores application performance clearly on purpose.

 

[-Fran-]

I know some time has passed already, but please do bare with me, as I recently got the 9950X3D for several things, including VR and this has been the best test (outside of my own experience) that reflects exactly what I found, but has the numbers to explain it better at how much of an improvement the 9950X3D is:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbklG9T6ekI


Regards.