At its CES 2025 event today, AMD unveiled its flagship X3D processor of this generation, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D. This succeeds the 7950X3D and has a similar core configuration. As such, the 9950X3D packs 16 Zen 5 cores, 144 MB of total cache including 128 MB of 2nd Gen 3D V-cache. Eight of the cores will be on the core complex die (CCD) optimized for core clocks, while the other eight will be on the 3D V-cache CCD. The TDP has been raised though from 120 watts to 170.
AMD's X3D chips incorporate a special sauce called the 3D V-cache (vertical cache) that stacks a ton of cache vertically on top of each other to drastically increase the amount of last-level cache (LLC) or L3 in a rather small footprint as workloads like games absolutely love it. AMD launched its 2nd Gen 3D V-cache last year with the Ryzen 7 9800X3D.
The company has provided a performance comparison of the new Ryzen 9 9950X3D against the 7950X3D and the Intel Ultra 9 285K.
Against its Intel competition, AMD claims the 9950X3D can offer up to 64% faster gaming performance in case of titles like Watch Dogs Legion. Across 40 games, the company says its new 16 core X3D part is on average 20% faster than Intel's 285K. AMD tested these at 1080p to eliminate GPU bottlenecks (read our dedicated article here to understand why it's important) on Windows 11 24H2 with VBS enabled.
AMD has also provided gaming data against the 7950X3D. It looks like folks will have a harder time justifying this upgrade as the company shows an 8% improvement across 40 titles. However, in some games, users can expect to see massive gains like in the case of Counter Strike 2 where 58% bump is claimed.
While AMD did not directly compare the Ryzen 9950X3D with the 9800X3D today, the firm has in the past shared gaming performance data of the latter vs the Intel 285K.
The table below shows the performance of the 9800X3D vs 9950X3D using the Intel 285K as baseline since it's at 100% in both the charts:
| Ryzen 9800X3D | Ryzen 9950X3D | |
|---|---|---|
| Counter Strike 2 | 128 | 125 |
| Hogwarts Legacy | 126 | 120 |
| AotS Escalation | 110 | 103 |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 159 | 136 |
| Far Cry 6 | 153 | 145 |
| Watch Dogs Legion | 155 | 164 |
| CoD Black Ops 6 | 147 | 127 |
It looks like the 9800X3D remains the fastest gaming CPU overall although the 9950X3D is also close behind. There are exceptions to this and we have bolded all such interesting cases.
In terms of content creation performance, AMD claims that the new 9950X3D is 10% faster than the 285K and 13% faster than the 7950X3D respectively across 20 applications. The new AMD X3D CPU is especially better in rendering apps (like Corona and Blender) vs its 7000 series predecessor. meanwhile against the Intel 285K, the largest differentials are seen in Adobe Photoshop and 7-Zip.
Aside from the 16 core 32 thread 9950X3D, AMD also unveiled the 12 core 24 thread 9900X3D. Spec-wise it is nearly identical to the 7900X3D though the boost clock is down by 100 MHz at 5.5 GHz. Thus the Ryzen 9 9900X3D also has 140 MB of total cache with 128 MB of L3 (3D V-cache).
In terms of availability, AMD expects the Ryzen 9950X3D and 9900X3D to be out on shelves in Q1 2025 although no particular dates were disclosed.
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