AMD has announced that it will release its long-awaited Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Ryzen 9 9900X3D processors on March 12th. AMD's new top-of-the-line CPUs will be sold for $699 and $599, respectively.
After being announced at CES 2025, AMD's new flagships will arrive to an excited market that has not seen a new CPU release since the Ryzen 7 9800X3D arrived in November. The 9800X3D has suffered from inflated pricing since its launch, and the addition of new X3D models should help to broaden the availability of AMD's gaming-optimized tech, though these new premium models will come at a much higher price point
The $699 Ryzen 9 9950X3D will launch at the same price point as its predecessor, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D. We fully expect the 9950X3D to become among the best CPUs for gaming on the market, as the current top dog, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, already beats Intel in gaming workloads, and 9950X3D's 16 cores are likely to make it a solid productivity CPU as well.
While we still don't know the base clocks of the two new releases, what we do know about their speeds and feeds is exciting, to say the least. The chips will be 16-core and 12-core parts, with the 9950X3D turboing up to 5.7 GHz. The "X3D" in the CPU names refers to the inclusion of 3D V-Cache technology, a game-boosting AMD invention that stacks a wicked-fast cache chiplet beneath the CPU dies to maximize gaming performance.
The 9950X3D will arrive with 144MB of total cache, dwarfing the 80MB found on the 9950, non-X3D. The 9900X3D's 12 cores will turbo up to 5.5 GHz and be aided by 140MB of total cache, almost double that of its non-X3D flavor. The chips will run mighty warm, with TDPs rated at 170W and 120W.
As far as getting your hands on a 9950X3D on release day, there are no promises to be made. The top-end CPUs and GPUs have been scarce lately; the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is currently out of stock via AMD and selling at inflated pricing at retailers, and not much needs to be said about the difficulty of obtaining Nvidia or AMD's newest GPU releases. So, while AMD's 9950X3D will be wonderful for gaming, if a CPU crushes frames with no one around to buy it, is it still the best number cruncher?
Ryzen 9 9950X3D Gaming and Content Creation Benchmarks
While we don't have independent benchmarks just yet, AMD claims the gaming and productivity performance of the 9950X3D and 9900X3D are outstanding. Per AMD's own internal testing shown at CES, the 9950X3D is 20% faster than Intel's flagship Core Ultra 9 285K in 1080p high gaming tests. The chip also ekes out an 8% performance increase over the last-gen AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, a nice generational improvement.
AMD's CES panel also stated that 9950X3D's performance is within 1% of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, which comes as little surprise as it matches the performance delta between last-gen's 7950X3D and 7800X3D. The 9900X3D didn't get nearly as much love in the panel, receiving no comparative tests, which is a bit worrying but not entirely surprising; last-gen's Ryzen 9 7900X3D was a 3-star chip at best playing in 7950X3D's shadow.
In terms of productivity, the same 3D V-Cache technology that blesses gaming speeds typically hampers productivity numbers a fair bit. The 3D V-Cache chiplet affixed to the die doesn't seem to be too much of an albatross around the neck of 9950X3D, with AMD claiming a 10% lead over the Core Ultra 9 285K in performance benchmarks. The testing suite shown off at CES seemed to be heavily weighted towards multi-core workloads, which the 16-core 9950X3D understandably run away with, but the 285K already leads over AMD's non-X3D SKUs in single-threaded performance testing, so those users with a productivity suite prioritizing single-core power may not fall in love with the 9950X3D.
For everything else we know about the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Ryzen 9 9900X3D, be sure to check out our CES writeup on the chips. March 12th will likely bring with it a new chapter in AMD's gaming CPU dominance, though whether it also brings enough supply to keep up with rabid demand is entirely up in the air. Keep your eyes on us for our full benchmark reviews on the chips coming very soon.
