AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D & 9900X3D Prices Confirmed: $699 & $599​ - March 12 Launch is Official

[AnarchoPrimitiv]

Typical AMD pricing.

can you define what "typical AMD pricing" is? and why you have a problem with it?

 

[Bomby569]

seems like in 2025 for these insane prices we should have now more cores and threads, this does seem like what Intel was doing.
But I'm probably the only one that cares about pricing vs performance in 2025, everyone just jumped off this ship long ago

 

[john_]

can you define what "typical AMD pricing" is? and why you have a problem with it?

After you explain why you are so certain I have a problem with it.

seems like in 2025 for these insane prices we should have now more cores and threads, this does seem like what Intel was doing.
But I'm probably the only one that cares about pricing vs performance in 2025, everyone just jumped off this ship long ago

AMD started the whole "More Cores" thing. Intel started the "More Threads" thing.
(boring part)Intel introduced HyperThreading, so more threads per core. AMD moved on offering more cores, first with Athlon x2, then with Phenom x4 and later with Phenom x6. But Intel was offering more threads(and performance) by that time, so at AMD, not having a HyperThreading equivalent and thinking it will be a better idea of marketing cores vs threads, they created Bulldozer. Intel had a manufacturing advantage back then, meaning it was probably difficult for AMD to offer 8 full cores. So Bulldozer had something(modules) like 4x1.5 cores, that AMD was pushing as 4x2=8 cores. But it failed.
AMD made a come back with Zen, offering at the same time twice as many cores and twice as many threads compared to Intel. This time it worked, because Zen had a respectable IPC. Intel fell behind in manufacturing, trying to add full cores was a disaster (10th gen). So they remembered AMD's Bulldozer, while also looking at ARM's big.little. So they came up with the hybrid architecture, smaller cores that can be fit in a mainstream CPU without needing the latest manufacturing nodes. So they started offering now more cores and more threads. With Arrow Lake they dropped threads in favor of cores (I believe full cores are smaller without the Hyperthreading feature), because they can market a bigger number of cores, much easier than trying to market a high number of threads, that 95% of consumers wouldn't understand anyway.

In any case, in CPUs it's happening what is already happening in storage. In storage capacity keeps getting higher, in both HDDs and SSDs(in SSDs also speed is improving), but meaningful "low" capacity still remains at certain price points. A 2TB HDD for example, probably remained at the same price point (haven't really checked) the last many years. A 1TB SSD is probably selling at a not much lower price than what was selling 3-4 years ago. Companies will never offer a more than enough option to consumers for a very low price. 1TB SSD is more than enough for consumers, a 500GB SSD is more than enough for older systems. Well, we will never get a 1TB SSD for $20 and a 500GB SSD for $10, because now we have 8TB options. We will never get a 2TB HDD for $30, because now we have 30TB options. And we will never get a good 8 (big) cores CPU for $100, because now we have 16-24 core CPUs and tomorrow even 40-50 core CPUs.

PS Many who know their needs will just go AM4, or second hand/refurbished systems and do their job for peanuts. Even a 4 core Haswell system with an SSD can run about most things that people use today.

 

[Wirko]

Anything with dual V-Cache, but that's why AMD doesn't want to release it.

The X33D chips would make a (small but wealthy, therefore not ignorable) group of enthusiasts very happy, yes. But the existence of the same chips would create another, larger group of angry para-enthusiasts, bitching and moaning about some other bottleneck imposed by AMD, probably PCIe lanes or memory channels. And indeed there would be a bit of an imbalance between computing power and peripheral speed and flexibility, with a price premium on top of that.

 

[docnorth]

Those prices make me scratch my head ... who would pay $600 for a cut-down CPU with lower boost clocks when for $100 more ($100 is nothing for the target audience of those CPUs) you can have the best CPU for desktop computing with top productivity AND gaming power?
The 9900X3D will be marginally faster in some benchmarks compared to the 9800X3D (inter-CCD latency), with lower gaming performance, while generating more heat and costing more.

+1 from me, 9900x3d is blatantly expensive compared to 9950x3d.

 

[The Shield]

I never thought I would have miss the old Intel days, when the top gaming CPUs were going for 300 euro, Vat included.
Welcome to the greed-age.

 

[Daven]

Unlike food, chips don’t spoil. Therefore every chip fabbed can be sold eventually. Also unlike food, you never want to throw away a single functioning chip even if it is defective. That’s leaving money on the table.

When a chip like the 9950X3D is designed on a mature process node, 80% are good and like 20% have some defective cores. You don’t throw that 20% away but volume is lower so you price it close to the full chip to limit demand. Eventually both chips get sold over time especially when the full chip runs out of stock. That’s why the 9900X3D exists and AMD would be foolish to throw those 20% of chips in the trash like some of you suggest. It’s wasteful and millions of dollars would be lost.

The same reasoning goes for the 9070 and 9070XT. You DON’T throw away chips. You create a new SKU and set pricing to limit demand because the number of defective chips produced is lower. Chip manufacturers have gotten so good at this they no longer have to artificially lock a fully functional chip when they don’t get enough defective ones. This is why you don’t read many stories about unlocking cores anymore from a lower SKU.

 

[freeagent]

Zen 5 is cheaper than Zen 3 by a couple hundred bucks for sure. I paid 800 for my 5900X, and 671 for my 9900X. Heck, my CH8 DH cost me 550, but this X670E cost me 448. 32GB of DDR5 A-Die was only like 200 vs 400 for 32GB of B-Die.

Big performance difference. AM4 feels slow now.

 

[john_]

Zen 5 is cheaper than Zen 3 by a couple hundred bucks for sure. I paid 800 for my 5900X, and 671 for my 9900X. Heck, my CH8 DH cost me 550, but this X670E cost me 448. 32GB of DDR5 A-Die was only like 200 vs 400 for 32GB of B-Die.

Big performance difference. AM4 feels slow now.

Oh my.... Things aren't cheaper today, you just overpayed in the past.

I payed 90 euros for my R5 5500 and almost 200 euros for my R5 7600. So same number of cores, double the price.
I payed 90 euros for my X470 and almost 250 for my X670E, so 2,5 times more for the new board.
I payed 45 euros for my initial 2X8GB DDR4 3200MHz and over 100 euros for my current 2x16GB DDR5 6000MHz, so DDR5 about 20% more.

 

[Daven]

Oh my.... Things aren't cheaper today, you just overpayed in the past.

I payed 90 euros for my R5 5500 and almost 200 euros for my R5 7600. So same number of cores, double the price.
I payed 90 euros for my X470 and almost 250 for my X670E, so 2,5 times more for the new board.
I payed 45 euros for my initial 2X8GB DDR4 3200MHz and over 100 euros for my current 2x16GB DDR5 6000MHz, so DDR5 about 20% more.

It’s a little more complicated than that. The first K8 FX processors in 2003 cost over $1000 for the regular desktop socket. Intel had $850 Core processors around the same time. The historical problem was the creation of double price ‘enthusiast’ SKU that gave 10-20% more performance. Today that has translated into a range of processors going up to high prices but not higher than the top SKUs around the turn of the century.

Here is a good review from that time period:

AMD Athlon 64 FX-57: The Fastest Single Core

www.anandtech.com

That $1031 FX processor in 2005 would be $1700 in today’s dollars.

Edit: Here is a good list of processors from AMD in 2003-2005:

List of AMD Athlon 64 processors - Wikipedia

AMD had three sockets at the time: 754 (budget), 939 (Mainstream), 940 (Enthusiast). The highest price 754, 939 and 940 processors were $710, $1001 and $1031 in that time period. I gladly take today's processor prices compared to the past.

 

[freeagent]

Oh my.... Things aren't cheaper today, you just overpayed in the past.

That is how AMD rolls. They charge high at first, then lower prices. I wont even tell you how much I paid for my 5600X. Though my 3600XT was the same price as the vanilla.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Zen 5 is cheaper than Zen 3 by a couple hundred bucks for sure. I paid 800 for my 5900X, and 671 for my 9900X. Heck, my CH8 DH cost me 550, but this X670E cost me 448. 32GB of DDR5 A-Die was only like 200 vs 400 for 32GB of B-Die.

Big performance difference. AM4 feels slow now.

Since I upgraded to 7950x the 5950x defiantly feels slower now. Going back and looking at charts a 7950x was a pretty decent upgrade over the last gen especially for productivity.

Comparatively at $400/450 (7950x) vs. $300/350 (5950x) your getting a much better deal in price/performance at $100 difference with 7950x hands down. Since you can get away with a good and inexpensive B650 and DDR5 prices are reasonable I also think Zen 4 is overall cheaper than Zen 3 at this point (outside of special deals) when you consider the price/performance delta between the platforms. There is no point in buying into AM4 at this point unless you are getting great deals and don't need the better performance of AM5 or the quirk with X570 AM4 having better PCIe slot configurations for expansion cards. AM5's iGPU on every chip including officially recognized ECC support is also an upside freeing up that PCIe x16 for some decent sever storage if the over abundance NVMe slots aren't enough.

Likewise $500/550 (9950x) vs. $300/350 (5950x) is a pretty good deal for an upgrade in favor of 9950x too (especially if you can snag one today at $500 it's a no brainer) although $100 premium over 7950x might be debatable.

I got to stop here before I upsell myself on a 9950x and force myself to sell one of my perfectly working 5950x systems.

That is how AMD rolls. They charge high at first, then lower prices. I wont even tell you how much I paid for my 5600X. Though my 3600XT was the same price as the vanilla.

Yea I made that mistake when 3800x came out. No doubt it was a great CPU but for $400 I should have waited a bit for that first good discount.

 

[Daven]

Since I upgraded to 7950x the 5950x defiantly feels slower now. Going back and looking at charts a 7950x was a pretty decent upgrade over the last gen especially for productivity.

There was a huge clock speed boost between Zen 3 and Zen 4. While IPC unevenly boosts performance dependent on the application and OS, clock boosts increase the performance of any application.

Ryzen 9 5950X Base 3.4 GHz Turbo 4.9 GHz
Ryzen 9 7950X Base 4.5 GHz Turbo 5.7 GHz

That's why Zen 5 wasn't so great over Zen 4. It was just an IPC boost and therefore highly dependent on whether or not the OS and application is 'aware' of the new architecture changes at the time of reviews.

Ryzen 9 9950X Base 4.3 GHz Turbo 5.7 GHz

 

[A Computer Guy]

There was a huge clock speed boost between Zen 3 and Zen 4. While IPC unevenly boosts performance dependent on the application and OS, clock boosts increase the performance of any application.

Ryzen 9 5950X Base 3.4 GHz Turbo 4.9 GHz
Ryzen 9 7950X Base 4.5 GHz Turbo 5.7 GHz

That's why Zen 5 wasn't so great over Zen 4. It was just an IPC boost and therefore highly dependent on whether or not the OS and application is 'aware' of the new architecture changes at the time of reviews.

Ryzen 9950X Base 4.3 GHz Turbo 5.7 GHz

Comparatively for me I run at stock so average 4.0/4.2 (5950X) vs. average 5.0/5.3 (7950X) doing a quick CPUz bench, so about +1GHz advantage in favor of 7950X. In VM's I think I measured around 30% improvement in CPUz benchmark and everything in the VM felt improved. (I have background stuff running so I'm not hitting top boost clocks)

 

[freeagent]

The clocks on Zen 3 R9 parts are kind of misleading. AMD added 100MHz to the advertised spec, but I don't think they mentioned it much anywhere. so 5950X tops out at 5050MHz before even touching PBO, and 5900X boosts to 4950 before touching PBO.

But comparing the two twelve cores, under load my 5900X runs at ~4600 in something like WCG, but my 9900X runs the same job at 5400-5600. Not sure about stock though..

I am talking about effective clocks just so we are on the same page.

 

[efikkan]

Expensive but I would have paid for one of these if only they had the 3DV cache on both CCDs.

That would only make a gimmicky product even more gimmicky.
The L3 cache is logically shared, and the latency reduction from having extra cache on both will be negligible for most realistic workloads. And as games get more demanding, the advantage of the extra L3 cache is only going to diminish in favor of CPUs with more computational power.

Those prices make me scratch my head ... who would pay $600 for a cut-down CPU with lower boost clocks when for $100 more ($100 is nothing for the target audience of those CPUs) you can have the best CPU for desktop computing with top productivity AND gaming power?
The 9900X3D will be marginally faster in some benchmarks compared to the 9800X3D (inter-CCD latency), with lower gaming performance, while generating more heat and costing more.

Except for some edge cases, the main advantage of 3D V-cache is for low resolution gaming. If a user have a real workload where the 12-core or 16-core offers a real world difference (not just for bragging rights), such workloads tends to lose slightly with the X3D versions due to lower effective clock speeds. So effectively, the user is trading a few percent lower workload performance for a few percent more gaming performance at 720p/1080p or low details, and which user group falls into this category? Pretty much only enthusiasts who buy gimmicks they don't need, not informed "prosumers". I draw a sharp line between these two, as one cares about synthetic and edge case performance, while the other wants real world performance.

For the past three generations, the non-X3D versions have been much better deals. For those who have a real use for those extra cores, the 12- and 16-core versions are regularly $50-100 off, while the X3D versions are often sold out or even above MSRP.
(That is actually the only reason why I bought a 5900X, even though I still have no real use for those extra cores, at the time it cost the same as 5800X, and I was deciding between 5600X and 5800X.)

-----

The major issue that often makes these otherwise excellent CPUs fall flat for productive workloads is memory bandwidth and IO. But the solution here is not to add more to the mainstream, but to lower the entry for high-end workstations for the prosumers. (Hint: Wirko)

 

[kondamin]

Just be glad CPUs sell direct and there's no such thing as selling through partners like XFX, Powercolor as in GPU land etc or else you'd be seeing a nice 40% markup.
Dang, shouldn't have said that. Now they're gonna be getting ideas.

The Strix Halo would be one of those products as are all laptops at the moment.

 

[harm9963]

Since day one , 5050 boost easy , golden sample 5950X , $799.99 retail at Micro Center ,live down the street , at the time , was lucky to get at retail , was also the most I ever paid for a PC part at that time , 1080Ti was second , I did have a 3080Ti , was not impress , best decision to return it , turns out the 4090 was 100 dollars cheaper .

AMD 5950X /pick up at Micro Center January 5, 2021

AMD 5950X /pick up at Micro Center January 5, 2021

www.youtube.com

 

[tetrapak]

Typical AMD pricing.

No, they should give 'em for free so intel can be successful with ultra crap i9's.

 

[john_]

No, they should give 'em for free so intel can be successful with ultra crap i9's.

So, explain to me why when you read my post you thought I want AMD to give them for free.
Please.....

That is how AMD rolls. They charge high at first, then lower prices. I wont even tell you how much I paid for my 5600X. Though my 3600XT was the same price as the vanilla.

I didn't knew that AMD set the prices for your over $500 motherboard and that over $400 DDR4. Please enlighten us more.

It’s a little more complicated than that. The first K8 FX processors in 2003 cost over $1000 for the regular desktop socket. Intel had $850 Core processors around the same time. The historical problem was the creation of double price ‘enthusiast’ SKU that gave 10-20% more performance. Today that has translated into a range of processors going up to high prices but not higher than the top SKUs around the turn of the century.

That processor was top of the line, like releasing today a Threadripper for the masses. If AMD was offering a 64 core CPU for AM5 today, it would probably have that $1700 price that you mentioned. Also back then Intel was behind AMD. While Pentium 4 was competitive and had Hyperthreading, it was losing in benchmarks, lacked 64bit and was more power hungry. The FX line was a line of halo products like the Threadripper, they where expensive and they where competing with Intel's Extreme Edition models that had also an original price tag of $1000. AMD was pricing it's FX CPUs at $1000 for two reasons. Because they where faster and because AMD was trying to change it's image as the second best. Pricing FX at lower prices than inferior Intel offerings would have been a bad idea. And we can see it even today, AMD offering the best CPUs and the majority still looking at them as an inferior option to Intel.

From your link

 

[Lew Zealand]

I never thought I would have miss the old Intel days, when the top gaming CPUs were going for 300 euro, Vat included.
Welcome to the greed-age.

You mean like how the 8700K was $360 for 6 cores and the 9900K was $490 for 8 cores?

It's almost like it's easy to keep prices to $300 w/VAT when you rehash quad-cores for an entire decade.

Oh my.... Things aren't cheaper today, you just overpayed in the past.

I payed 90 euros for my R5 5500 and almost 200 euros for my R5 7600. So same number of cores, double the price.
I payed 90 euros for my X470 and almost 250 for my X670E, so 2,5 times more for the new board.
I payed 45 euros for my initial 2X8GB DDR4 3200MHz and over 100 euros for my current 2x16GB DDR5 6000MHz, so DDR5 about 20% more.

You're implying that buying mature tech is cheaper and buying new tech is more expensive. And after a period of higher inflation than normal, prices are higher.

Yeah, crazy stuff.

 

[dismuter]

If a user have a real workload where the 12-core or 16-core offers a real world difference (not just for bragging rights), such workloads tends to lose slightly with the X3D versions due to lower effective clock speeds.

That's no longer the case with Ryzen 9000 series though, is it? They put the 3D V-cache underneath the compute die, so that heat could be dissipated more efficiently, thereby unlocking the same clock speeds as the non-X3D models. So if the MSRP is observed, you can just pay $50 more than the 9950X and rest assured that you get the best-ever gaming performance in all situations without sacrificing on other workloads. And if some of your other workloads benefit from the additional cache too, all the better.

 

[john_]

You're implying that buying mature tech is cheaper and buying new tech is more expensive. And after a period of higher inflation than normal, prices are higher.

Yeah, crazy stuff.

I didn't knew that when AM4 was out the cheaper DDR4 was over $400 and you needed to spend over $500 for a motherboard. I also didn't knew that inflation was running wild at double digits the last 5 years. Crazy stuff indeed.
People make choices and some times they are just the expensive ones. It doesn't have to do with how mature a tech is. Prices haven't changes much in CPUs and RAM the last 20 years. Only motherboards became more expensive in the AMD platform.

 

[gasolina]

I just wait till 2026 to upgrade to zen6 , happy with my 5550mhz 7700 , around 15% slower than 7800x3d , 20% than the 9800x3d in gaming but better or equal to normal tasks. A 10700x would give same or a littler slower in gaming than 9800x3d but other things just much better. X3d cpus are ripoff

 

[SamuelL]

This pricing is reasonable considering inflation and input costs going up over the past five years. Some seem to think AMD should undercut Intel pricing… why would they do that? You can like it or not, but the reality is that AMD is currently the premium option. AMD wins on performance for gaming, most productivity, and most efficiency benchmarks. There’s no scenario where their best-in-class CPUs shouldn’t command a premium price.