AMD unveils the highly anticipated Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Ryzen 9 9900X3D processors at CES 2025

At CES 2025, AMD unveiled the highly anticipated Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Ryzen 9 9900X3D processors.

Let’s talk about the Ryzen 9 9950X3D first, a 16-core, 32-thread powerhouse built on AMD’s Zen 5 architecture. This chip comes with a massive 128MB of L3 cache, thanks to the integration of AMD’s X3D technology that uses 3D V-Cache to ramp up gaming performance. AMD claims the 9950X3D delivers up to 20% better gaming performance than Intel’s flagship Arrow Lake processor, the Core Ultra 9 285K, across 40 titles. Despite the impressive gains in gaming, the 9950X3D does see a slight trade-off in its thermal design power (TDP), increasing by 50W over its predecessor – the Ryzen 9 7950X3D – to 170W. But the extra headroom allows the chip to perform better in CPU-intensive tasks, particularly in gaming and content creation.

AMD’s strategy with these new X3D chips seems clear: provide enthusiasts and content creators with a processor that excels in gaming but also brings substantial improvements in content creation workloads. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D’s higher TDP is designed to unlock better thermal headroom, allowing it to push higher frequencies and deliver better all-around performance. In contrast, the Ryzen 9 9900X3D, with 12 cores and 24 threads, a 140MB cache and a TDP of 120W, serves as the option for users who want strong gaming performance without the full power draw of the 16-core model.

In terms of creator applications, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D continues AMD’s push to outperform Intel’s offerings, with the company claiming up to a 10% advantage in content creation tasks, particularly in multi-threaded workloads. However, it’s worth noting that the results AMD provided only cover a subset of the total benchmarks conducted, leaving a few question marks regarding the overall consistency of the chip’s performance across a wider range of applications.

Both the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D processors also come with some architectural changes that further optimise performance. Like the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, one significant adjustment is the reorientation of the 3D V-Cache die, now placed at the bottom of the chip instead of on top of the compute die. This change allows the chips to run cooler, thereby offering the potential for better clock speeds and greater efficiency

AMD is launching both chips in March 2025 but did not disclose pricing details. Here’s hoping the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D might be easier to find at retail than the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, which has proven to be so popular that it’s sold out at most places.

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