If you’re thinking of jumping on the AMD bandwagon for your next upgrade, now is certainly the right time to do so. Right now, AMD’s most popular Zen 5 “X3D” processors – the AMD Ryzen 9 9800X3D and the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D – are available and shipping from Amazon. They’re also on sale by about $25-$30 off, which is better than what we saw during Prime Day. These are collectively the best gaming CPUs from AMD; from a performance to cost standpoint, the 9800X3D is the CPU of choice for pure gaming builds, but the 9950X3D pulls ahead when it comes to creator workloads.
The Gamer’s Choice: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU
For gaming rigs, the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is easily the best value because its gaming performance is moreorless on equal footing with the more expensive 9900X3D and 9950X3D CPUs. The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D boasts a max boost clock of 5.2GHz with 8 cores, 16 threads, and 104MB of L2-L3 cache Although perfectly capable of handling multitasking, rendering, and creation, the limited number of cores means that it won’t perform as well in this regard as the 9950X3D. However, this is an absolute monster of a processor for gaming, especially at this price point.
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Review by Jacqueline Thomas
“The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is extremely powerful in games, which makes it easier to recommend than other recent processors like the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K or Ryzen 9 9900X. Especially if you’re building a rig with a powerful graphics card, the 9800X3D is going to be the best way to get the most performance out of whichever GPU you pair it with.”
The Creator’s Choice: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D CPU
Creative professionals who also want the best gaming chip on the market shouldn’t think twice; this is the CPU to get. The new 9950X3D boasts a max boost clock of 5.7GHz with 16 cores, 32 threads, and 144MB of L2-L3 cache. In terms of gaming, it’s only a few percentage points better than than the 9800X3D. However, for productivity use, it easily outperforms both the 9800X3D and 9900X3D, and anything offered by Intel for that matter.
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D Review by Jacqueline Thomas
“The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D might be the most powerful gaming processor on the market right now, but that doesn’t mean it has a de facto lead on every other chip on the market. Most people will have no problem getting by with the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, which just so happens to be much much more affordable at $479. Instead, the 9950X3D is geared towards gamers that both play games and use creative apps like Photoshop and Premiere, the latter of which sees a 15% performance improvement over the 9800X3D.”
Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn’t hunting for deals for other people at work, he’s hunting for deals for himself during his free time.
