Sunday, November 30th 2025
AMD Lists Ryzen 7 9850X3D CPU with 5.6 GHz Boost Frequency
AMD has launched an official website placeholder for the Ryzen 7 9850X3D processor, which was leaked in October. As a part of the "Granite Ridge" Ryzen 9000 X3D series, AMD is reportedly developing two additional updates to the lineup. One is a flagship model, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2, and the other is a refined eight-core, 16-thread X3D design. Today, AMD's website confirms the Ryzen 7 9850X3D, featuring 8 cores and 16 threads, 96 MB of L3 cache, and a boost clock up to 5.6 GHz, with a 120 W power envelope. This represents a 400 MHz increase over the Ryzen 7 9800X3D model, which has the same cache and core configuration. AMD is likely using higher-binned dies it has saved over the past few months to offer a better alternative to Intel's upcoming "Arrow Lake Refresh," scheduled for early 2026, and "Nova Lake," scheduled for late 2026.
However, details about the new flagship model, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2, featuring 16 cores and 32 threads, remain uncertain. This chip reportedly includes 3D V-Cache on both chiplets, totaling approximately 192 MB of L3 cache. It is said to operate at a base frequency of 4.30 GHz, with a boost up to around 5.6 GHz, and has a TDP of about 200 W. The 9950X3D2, with its new naming convention, suggests a tradeoff of slightly lower peak boost speeds (-100 MHz) compared to the single-stack X3D Ryzen 9 9950X3D model, but offers significantly increased cache capacity. Today only the higher-clocked Ryzen 7 9850X3D is confirmed by AMD, so we might have to wait on the dual-chiplet X3D2 SKU a bit more.
Sources:
AMD, via VIdeoCardz
However, details about the new flagship model, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2, featuring 16 cores and 32 threads, remain uncertain. This chip reportedly includes 3D V-Cache on both chiplets, totaling approximately 192 MB of L3 cache. It is said to operate at a base frequency of 4.30 GHz, with a boost up to around 5.6 GHz, and has a TDP of about 200 W. The 9950X3D2, with its new naming convention, suggests a tradeoff of slightly lower peak boost speeds (-100 MHz) compared to the single-stack X3D Ryzen 9 9950X3D model, but offers significantly increased cache capacity. Today only the higher-clocked Ryzen 7 9850X3D is confirmed by AMD, so we might have to wait on the dual-chiplet X3D2 SKU a bit more.
148 Comments on AMD Lists Ryzen 7 9850X3D CPU with 5.6 GHz Boost Frequency
9800X3D gets you +10% fps from a 9600x in 1440p, for $250 more
5070 -> 5070 Ti for $250 more gets you +20%
Up until a 9070 XT or 5070 Ti, X3D is too expensive. No one is pairing a 9060 XT and an X3D CPU. My GPU costed me 3x my CPU
Smart people don't buy a gaming rig for their current GPU or the GPU they want to buy today on an already tight budget. If you intend to be gaming on it seriously, you want to think about where you are 5 years from now and build your platform based on that.
So you get a PSU that isn't 'just enough' for your midrange POS x60 with 8GB... you get one that is more than sufficient to carry a spanking new x70ti 3 years from now.
You get a CPU that can run circles around that x70ti.
And then you have a rig that might cost 300-400 more today than your budget solution, but lasts twice as long, and at the end of the day, saves you at least 400 bucks instead because you're not upgrading your RAM, your board, your PSU AND your CPU again.
This is not complicated... You've now spent less money to get a more high end system, with more resale value, more performance on tap since day one, and yes, perhaps you can't spend an extra 200 on your GPU, but within the same gen, that really isn't making or breaking anything either.
It has been the case for several years now that buying low-to midrange systems and parts is a penny wise pound foolish approach to hardware. Since performance increases per gen are stalling and parts get more expensive, your parts keep their value longer and higher end parts resell extremely well, sometimes even for original purchase price.
If I buy something thats high end I buy it so I can get a high end experience right then and there. Not so I can get a mediocre experience in 5 years
In the end, you do you, its your money, but you're just doubly confirming why people make poor purchase decisions: its all aimed at the immediate and short term, and since your budget IS still limited, you pick a marginally (20% is marginal, 50% is too) GPU performance increase over platform longevity.
That's just a bad way to spend money, especially if you are budget limited.
Its the same silly thing as people borrowing money instead of saving up to buy what they really want. In the end, the people who saved, have more money to spend.
You can keep a platform for 10 years yeah if you don't play modern AAA games lol. You can also keep a GPU for 10 years if you don't play demanding games. CPU requirements go up. "they are just frames" and when you don't have enough of them, the game becomes unplayable or annoying to play
If 50% of a performance difference is marginal to you then I don't know what to say. That's the difference between 45 and 67 fps
If by "short term" you mean 5 years, then yeah I think for the short term. When I built my PC a month ago I had and still have every intention to build an entirely new one in 4-5 years. If I spent $250 more on a CPU right now that isn't changing
But like I said, you're at liberty to go about your spending in another way - but it is you who is saying 400 bucks is a high-end kind of money to spend on a hardware part.
And that's just bullshit :)
And the difference between 45 and 67 FPS is not a difference between playable and unplayable, either, (especially now that variable refresh is a thing) so no, 50% isn't a lot.
Your perspective is clearly young and low on experience ;) All in due time. Your experience is your own.
Again - you do you ;)Then you had enough CPU to begin with, but what we have seen in the recent past is that CPU performance is really quite important if you have any kind of reasonably fast GPU and want frametime stability. Alternatively you can also just frame cap - but then you weren't lacking CPU performance to run the game. Its not like CPU requirements change radically with a lower or higher resolution.
There is a reason an X3D games 'so smooth'. It is more than raw FPS - it is frametime consistency where strong CPUs help you, and if you bottleneck on the GPU, your frames can still be inconsistent because you momentarily lack CPU performance.
Its the same thing as lacking RAM capacity or bandwidth: it results in stutter and is an immersion killer. Frames going down a bit, and covered with GPU frame pacing because its just a graphical impact, barely influence the experience, especially with variable refresh rates.
This is the graph for 1% Lows, ie the measurement of how smooth the games feel. In 4K the difference becomes so small you get the 7800X3D beating the 9800X3D and 245K beating the 285K lol. Assuming this is them being within margin of error of each other. You can see a clear difference between CPUs in the 1080p graph though
Its not the actual minimum FPS, and neither does it show you the gap in frametimes between the average and lowest FPS number - which is what matters most.
Let's be honest with ourselves. Is that what we do? Do we really keep our CPUs for several GPU generations? That's why I asked the question: is there anyone here who games on a 5080 or 5090 with a 9900K?
What we think of as an ideal scenario, and what we actually do are totally different things. Sometimes our mouths say one thing, but our hands do another. This is one of those situations.
What is really happening in practice in people's minds when they have 1k budget to spend on a PC, is that they 'make it fit' that budget and end up with a system with no gpu upgrade path. And that is, irrespective of your financial capabilities, a more expensive path than buying what you need only once. Those are the people that open a topic on this forum with a low-end CPU after a GPU upgrade and asking us whether to upgrade their rig to whatever is top of stack on their platform (still on a premium, or poorly available now), versus starting all over. Either way - they are buying two CPUs, the second one at virtually the price of the one they should have bought initially!
You are correct on that last sentence. That is exactly my point. Emotion wins here over being rational, but if you bite the bullet just once in the beginning of building PCs, you have the capital for decades to keep moving to new platforms at optimal moments, and as a result, not only have excellent CPU performance on tap all the time, but also more budget towards GPU upgrades. Because it gets even better than just that: you ALSO have a platform / base system you can sell or re-use for a less performant use case after 7 years that can still go another 5 at least. Try doing that after 7 years with a low end CPU. It won't even suffice as a HTPC. I'm living the example... the 3570k from 2013 is 12 years in service and spent the last 5 or so under the TV, its obsolete now only because it can't stream 4K properly. That is a LOT of value for even a sub-top-tier CPU.
And that is why it is WRONG to suggest a CPU review should be aimed at 'your budget for your rig and desires' with various tests that are actually GPU bound. That is literally inviting the wrong purchase behaviour and promoting a poor rationale :) And... promoting more E-waste. So you're even aligning with climate saving by saving money, what's not to like.
The 9850X3D will not be a budget CPU, nor one for the conscious buyer. It'll be a CPU for those who demand the best and don't care about value. Like someone said, AMD's equivalent for Intel's KS SKUs. If you care about value, the 9800X3D is already out of your way (the 7800X3D, or the 9700X are much better deals), but the 9850X3D adds a spoonful on top.
While 720p tests are important for reasons discussed above, they are irrelevant if you also consider the intended audience. People who buy CPUs like this will most probably swap it for the next best thing when Zen 6 comes out. That's why you don't see anyone with a 5090 and 9900K. Longevity is very important, but the reality is that people don't buy wasteful top end SKUs with longevity in mind, whether we agree with it or not.
Edit: The 7800X3D wasn't just the fastest gaming CPU, but also the most efficient one. I'm sad that the 9800X3D didn't continue that legacy.
But without much competition from intel in gaming may only be a small drop.
Your argument, sorry to say, is bereft of any logic. You keep talking about a nonexistant 5090 x 9900k rig but really, if you had a 5090, you'd have been upgrading your CPU at this point and guess what, you'll just want to see what the fastest part is, how does a 1440p test help them?! The intended audience that tends to ask for a 1440p test is not the enthusiast, its the immense group below that, looking at bang for buck and most helped by, wait for it... CPU isolated testing, showing them the relative performance and giving them the clearest comparison to each part's price vs its raw perf.
Whatever 'the reality is' in your mind... I don't subscribe to catering to stupidity. People create their own reality. Doesn't mean it makes sense.
Its also interesting how you do a 180 on longevity. High end parts have far higher longevity than the cut down poor bin parts lower in the stack. I'm even explicitly pointing that out repeatedly with practical and verifiable examples :D They offer more value for money, have a higher shelf life, and remain relevant for longer, but in your mind they are 'wasteful'. You don't get it at all mate, you're just coloring your perception with your own point of view on people buying high end parts (very judgmental too).
The piles of E waste are low end parts. Not high end parts finding new lives after the enthusiast has moved on. High end parts, and Iphones, for example, end up in refurbish stores, get new screens and are actually repaired. Because its worth doing. The Samsung Galaxy A-whatever junk is floating in the ocean, discarded because 'meh it was just a hundred bucks'. You're oblivious to all that, it seems, busy trying to save pennies on a dollar by not buying 'wasteful' parts, that are in fact far more economical.
Everybody: if you're determined to get a 9850X3D, and not any of the lower variants, then please let us know what CPU you're planning to replace with it. :)Exactly. So how does a 720p test help, then? Why would you care how your CPU will perform in 4-6 years if you upgrade ever 1-2 gens anyway?Let's leave the personal insults out of it, please. We're better than that.So you think a 9850X3D has better longevity than a 9800X3D because it's something like 2% faster? What about its price? I doubt it'll reflect its performance and be just 2% more expensive. Higher priced parts plummet in value like a rock in a glass of water, not just because they have higher value to drop, but exactly because of the above: people who look for such parts want the newest, shiniest thing, not your last gen used crap. I highly doubt that the 9850 will ask for a much higher price on the used market than the 9800, if at all.
Just a small addition: the 7950X3D launched for $699. I bought mine for £300 a couple months ago. Is that so because it's not such a good CPU anymore? Or is it because it got dethroned by the 9950X3D that still goes for £600 brand new? Or is the 9950X3D simply two times better? Think about it. ;)Another notion I disagree with. Nowadays, there's zero difference between midrange and high end in general use. An 8500G opens your web browser instantly, just like my 7950X3D does. Heck, we're using Comet Lake i5s at work with 8 GB RAM with no issues.
I'm typing this post on my nearly 5 year old Samsung "whatever A-junk" because it's fine. Meanwhile, the typical iPhone buyer stands in line at the store every time a new model comes out. They don't care how long the old one can last with a little care. It's people on a tight budget who ask such questions, but they won't buy the newest, most expensive model anyway for obvious reasons.
Buyers of high end models of whatever don't care about value, only about having the best. If this was any different then they wouldn't be interested in those high end parts to begin with. Please no one try to explain to me why a 9800X3D for £400 is a much more value-oriented and forward thinking purchase than a 9700X for £250, or even a 7800X3D for £335, because it is just simply not.
High end parts thrown away every year, and the power they consume is much more wasteful than midrange parts that people try to take care of because they can't afford to replace so often.
Needless to say, I'm generalising, exceptions do exist, as always.
As for insults, nothing personal intended here, sorry if it came across as such. Its a general remark about stupidity and catering content towards stupidity and you are not stupid :). We do a lot of that in the world, and catering CPU reviews towards the mood of the day in hardware parts is not a good path. By catering for it, we enable it and normalize it.
As for the perceived worth of less expensive offerings, of course. OEM exists for a reason, it seems to be 'fine' for most and that is also exactly what its meant to be. I'm generalizing too, world's too big to point out every exception to rule. But in general you do see that higher end products simply last longer - and OEM parts aspire to include as much of that quality at the lowest price, but corners are cut to get there. Its the same thing as buying quality shoes, and out comes the good old shoe analogy: you can buy ten dollar sneakers every year, or buy a proper pair that lasts many years, and the buyer of the latter not only spends his money once (before the inflation of all subsequent years, where the one buying 10 dollar sneakers is actually buying 11, 12, 13 dollar sneakers as the years go on, while quality has remained shit), and spends less on shoes, but also has better shoes to walk on and might save himself $400,- for special soles required later down the line :)
The real art of buying today is identifying what segment is 'safe' as in: not overpriced, still as much quality as high end offerings, and not having all sorts of hidden defects. That's where the real value is at, because I agree, the flagship phone or GPU isn't always a cost-effective endeavour, it only becomes that if you extract its value over many many years, and it depends on the market situation too. We call that 'the sweet spot' and it is NEVER a low end part. The current sweet spot for gaming is clearly the 7800X3D or 9800X3D. Anything under or above is somehow missing the mark. It'll be just as functional today, but it won't retain (as much) value later down the line.This though... seems like plank is thick :) A 720p test helps because it isolates the CPU and an enthusiast will want the fastest CPU part for their rig today. Its that simple. It doesn't matter how long you use it, you want to know where the CPU ranks in the list, and that is all you need, alongside the knowledge virtually every CPU will run the content anyway. Also, the relative performance between each CPU alongside its purchase price allows you to make a very informed choice about value for money. If you just want the minimum CPU to run what you need, you buy the cheapest option in the list. Either way, an isolated CPU test helps you buy what you need, while more focused non CPU isolated testing just creates noise.