AMD Readies Ryzen 5 9600X3D to Spice Up the Mid-range

[DaemonForce]

Sub-$300? If closer to the $200 mark I'll think about it but that's still too many growing pains.
I've been on entry AM4 since 2019. The 3600 is still a 6c/12t champion for everything multithreaded.
So my only real urgency to upgrade is another bandage to unoptimized single threaded nightmares.
Since 2025 is very much a solid gaming year, nobody is doing this for bad games. They're just moving on.
If I really need to jump over to AM5 it will be because something at entry level like X3D becomes exciting.
This one probably isn't it but I'll put a pin in this one for cheap future AM5 builds.

 

[windwhirl]

They're barely selling any chips that don't have 3D in the title due to misleading reviews showing edge use cases..

Doubt that.

TechPowerUp Interviews David McAfee, GM of Client Channel Business, On the State of AMD Ryzen and Radeon

As the 2025 International CES was drawing to a close, we hung around a little longer in Las Vegas to catch some important one-on-one interviews with industry leaders. We were invited by AMD to interview David McAfee Corporate Vice President and General Manager of the Client Channel Business. His...

www.techpowerup.com

See below:

3D V-Cache Tech, Why Not Just Standardize it?​

[...]

TechPowerUp: Right now, the volumes are heavily skewed toward X3D.

David McAfee: Not really. You'd be surprised. On a global scale, the split between AM4 and AM5 is not far off from 50/50. Different markets have different preferences. North America and Western Europe skew toward higher-end AM5 builds.

So Borderlands 4 pre-ordering was announced recently revealing an 8-core requirement for the minimum specs. Are <8-core CPU's like this about to become obsolete for gaming, or is Gearbox just trying to make sure their game runs well?

Hmm, a bit strange. Performance wise I don't think the amount of cores is an issue. 9th Gen Intel Core / Zen+ are old archs, and probably affected by Spectre/Meltdown fixes as well (those come built-in into Windows so can't really disregard the performance loss either), so I'd get why they'd prefer to go with 8 cores for old archs. What's more interesting is the "Additional notes" stating that 8 CPU cores are required. I don't know if that's just redundant/wrong or if there's an actual reason they need 8 cores for the game regardless of the actual performance.

 

[Pets4Ever]

They're barely selling any chips that don't have 3D in the title due to misleading reviews showing edge use cases...When in real world usage the much cheaper non x3d chips are going to be identical or even better. It'd be nice to see blind play-test videos in real world conditions with different CPUs rather than "canned benchmarks" which aren't necessarily representative of real world usage.

I'm pretty sure a lot of these games do not have canned / built-in benchmarks. You'll see the 285k jump ahead once and a while, but the 5950x non-3d isn't really taking any of these comparisons.

Click "Show Per-Game Results"

AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D Review - Great for Gaming and Productivity

The new AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D brings Zen 5 with 3D V-Cache to the high-end. This new $700 flagship offers the best application performance, beating even the 9950X, and at the same time you get a fantastic gaming experience that's better than any other non-X3D processor on the market.

www.techpowerup.com

 

[harm9963]

At native 4 K, the games I play, my 5950X is just fine, my 4090 does the heavy lifting.

 

[AndroidBR]

Of course...! Now that I've purchased the 9600X for 180 bucks. Nice AMD!

 

[Launcestonian]

Nah 8 cores will be fine, but I think in a year or two me might start to see 6 cores hitting 90% cpu usage on more titles… currently starfield has 75% cpu usage amd has to up its core count for next gen cpu and i think intel is readying more than 8p cores

75% cpu usage in SF? what resolution is this at?

 

[Jism]

The interesting parts always come late from AMD.

It's binning.

Once they have a pretty good line-up of defective CPU's they are rebranded into lower models.

 

[Hyderz]

75% cpu usage in SF? what resolution is this at?

This is just one link but there are many others
9800x3d hovers at 50-55% cpu usage @1440p

 

[Launcestonian]

This is just one link but there are many others
9800x3d hovers at 50-55% cpu usage @1440p

Hmmm, interesting. My custom PBO 9900X averages %35-38% with SMT disabled at 3440x1440p after an hour session with a mix of indoor & outdoor environments. I get 120-130 fps on ultra settings, no FG.

 

[sLowEnd]

Hmm, a bit strange. Performance wise I don't think the amount of cores is an issue. 9th Gen Intel Core / Zen+ are old archs, and probably affected by Spectre/Meltdown fixes as well (those come built-in into Windows so can't really disregard the performance loss either), so I'd get why they'd prefer to go with 8 cores for old archs. What's more interesting is the "Additional notes" stating that 8 CPU cores are required. I don't know if that's just redundant/wrong or if there's an actual reason they need 8 cores for the game regardless of the actual performance.

Some games do run strangely without a minimum number of threads

Example: This guy paired an RTX4080 with a G5920. If you try to run GTA5 on a 2C/2T PC, it'll freak out, even if they're relatively powerful cores. It'll run worse than a weaker CPU that has 4 threads. The guy wouldn't have seen the same issues he saw with the G5920, if he used even something like an i3 2100

 

[Pets4Ever]

Some games do run strangely without a minimum number of threads

Example: This guy paired an RTX4080 with a G5920. If you try to run GTA5 on a 2C/2T PC, it'll freak out, even if they're relatively powerful cores. It'll run worse than a weaker CPU that has 4 threads. The guy wouldn't have seen the same issues he saw with the G5920, if he used even something like an i3 2100

It'd be better if the test was run simultaneously against a cpu with more cores/threads but the same core type. Look at how much the strength of a single core can vary part to part:

Intel Celeron G5920 vs i5-12600K [cpubenchmark.net] by PassMark Software

Still though, I believe having a couple of extra cores is important because windows has a lot of shit it does in the background and a scheduler can only do so much.

 

[phints]

6 core gaming cpu? Waste of sand.

 

[kiakk]

As the price of 9600X, It always should be X3D, because of now 9600X is not a good deal in any aspect (maybe at 5700X3D vs. 9600X)
As I see the pricing in EU, now 13600KF/14600KF is better deal at the 5700X3D/5800X3D/9600X/7700 non-x price range.
Of course 7500F-7600X could have better price/performance ratio, but these are on lower price range and there is only DDR5 MOBOs, while we could still buy cheap DDR4 RAMs and MOBOs for 13600KF/14600KF if anybody wants to save some EURs. Or ther are some cheap alternatives at Intel sides as well against 7500F-7600X: 12600KF, 13400F, 14400F. These are also very good alternatives.
Overall, again, as i see the EU market, 9600X is not the best offer, and If 9600X3D will have a much higher price, than It could be a fail, because of just 6C/12T and price range.
I see at online competetive high refresh game titles a 6C/12T CPU could be a limiter option, does not matter L3 size.

 

[ARF]

6 core gaming cpu? Waste of sand.

True, but this is because the community never listens to the sane logic.
I have been explaining for at least 5 years that a 6-core is a no-go, because Windows has many processes and it will lead to severe micro-stutter - you kept buying and now you see it yourself.
Learnt it the hard way.

 

[DaemonForce]

As the price of 9600X, It always should be X3D, because of now 9600X is not a good deal in any aspect (maybe at 5700X3D vs. 9600X)

The fact the 5700X3D/5800X3D still holds its weight in the compare only makes 5000 series sound that much more appealing.
It's not supposed to be. First gen X3D technology vs current doesn't mark massive improvement over the non-X3D compares.
Still interesting if only for single core improvement, which I'm guessing is the real champion in this mess. Might need it in 5yrs.

I do expect a bit of single core dropoff from X to X3D but it's like what, 8% difference? This is more than fine.
Might be similar between 9600X and 9600X3D. By the time I see one we'll see things like 9600XT/9500X3D though.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Good chip for most people. I am not one of them, but this should be great for budget gaming rigs.

 

[RaceT3ch]

Chances are it'll be microcenter exclusive again.

 

[freeagent]

I have been explaining for at least 5 years that a 6-core is a no-go, because Windows has many processes and it will lead to severe micro-stutter -

Newsflash!

My 5600X games just fine. It just does not cinebench like my 5800X3D lol.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I really don't understand why AMD doesn't offer Ryzen 5 X3D chips in the beginning.

The biggest win for AMD isn't that people buy a CPU. AMD's biggest win is that when someone does buy a CPU, they become somewhat of a happily captive audience because of AMD's platform longevity.

For AMD to maximise this win, they need to get as many people on board as soon as possible because once you're on an AMD platform, you'd have to be a fool to switch to Intel.

If AMD had released the R5-7600X3D when AM5 first came out, they would've captured even more market share and any upgrades that those consumers purchased would've undoubtedly been AMD since they could still use their extant motherboard.

Some people say that AMD would be cannibalising their own sales. To some degree, this is correct but what's far more important is knowing that for every consumer that buys AMD, Intel is possibly denied up to three CPU sales in the future while guaranteeing itself the same.

I think that's a much better strategy than trying to get a few dollars more profit now. It's clear that AMD lacks vision in this regard.

 

[Dr. Dro]

I really don't understand why AMD doesn't offer Ryzen 5 X3D chips in the beginning.

The biggest win for AMD isn't that people buy a CPU. AMD's biggest win is that when someone does buy a CPU, they become somewhat of a happily captive audience because of AMD's platform longevity.

For AMD to maximise this win, they need to get as many people on board as soon as possible because once you're on an AMD platform, you'd have to be a fool to switch to Intel.

If AMD had released the R5-7600X3D when AM5 first came out, they would've captured even more market share and any upgrades that those consumers purchased would've undoubtedly been AMD since they could still use their extant motherboard.

Some people say that AMD would be cannibalising their own sales. To some degree, this is correct but what's far more important is knowing that for every consumer that buys AMD, Intel is possibly denied up to three CPU sales in the future while guaranteeing itself the same.

I think that's a much better strategy than trying to get a few dollars more profit now. It's clear that AMD lacks vision in this regard.

This is when I have to remind you that AMD is in the lead, and leaders don't play nice. The DIY channel has been overwhelmingly AMD for quite some time now, and if you need to gawk at how they would behave with Intel out of the picture, look no further than their $5k Threadrippers.

 

[ejolson]

Some games do run strangely without a minimum number of threads

I agree its possible a game tuned to run on a processor with 8 cores might run surprisingly poor with fewer. Said another way, time slicing works well for productivity applications and cases where where latency isn't as important as the near real-time requirements of a video game.

When Borderlands 4 comes out, an article comparing performance with a 6-core X3D CPU to the corresponding 8-core processor would be interesting.

 

[Geofrancis]

I really don't understand why AMD doesn't offer Ryzen 5 X3D chips in the beginning.

The biggest win for AMD isn't that people buy a CPU. AMD's biggest win is that when someone does buy a CPU, they become somewhat of a happily captive audience because of AMD's platform longevity.

For AMD to maximise this win, they need to get as many people on board as soon as possible because once you're on an AMD platform, you'd have to be a fool to switch to Intel.

If AMD had released the R5-7600X3D when AM5 first came out, they would've captured even more market share and any upgrades that those consumers purchased would've undoubtedly been AMD since they could still use their extant motherboard.

Some people say that AMD would be cannibalising their own sales. To some degree, this is correct but what's far more important is knowing that for every consumer that buys AMD, Intel is possibly denied up to three CPU sales in the future while guaranteeing itself the same.

I think that's a much better strategy than trying to get a few dollars more profit now. It's clear that AMD lacks vision in this regard.

The simple answer for that is EPYC, they sell for thousands per chip, so they will get priority, same as NVIDIA does with its enterprise cards. once they have built up a stock of defective chips then they release the lower core count chips.

 

[dirtyferret]

So Borderlands 4 pre-ordering was announced recently revealing an 8-core requirement for the minimum specs. Are <8-core CPU's like this about to become obsolete for gaming, or is Gearbox just trying to make sure their game runs well?

Fan boys talk about cores and people who understand hardware talk about performance. Borderlands simply states the info below for performance requirements. The 9600X3D will runs circles around most non-X3D CPUs when launched as did the 7600X3D when it launched. Not because of cores but because of performance. When a CPU can longer perform up to par for user gaming demands (regardless of cores) then it becomes obsolete for gaming.

Minimum Specifications:

• Operating System: Windows 10 or Windows 11
• Processor: Intel Core i7-9700 or AMD Ryzen 7 2700X
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• • Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 or AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT
  • Storage: 100 GB available space (SSD recommended)
  • Additional Notes: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system.

Recommended Specifications:

• • Processor: Intel Core i7-12700 or AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
  • Memory: 32 GB RAM
  • Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 or AMD Radeon RX 6800 X

Newsflash!

My 5600X games just fine. It just does not cinebench like my 5800X3D lol.

Not only that but reading some of these replies especially from some of these "newer" people, wow just wow. I hope people are not taking their advice thinking they have a clue to what they are talking about.