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AMD’s Ryzen 7 9800X3D is official and it’s shaking things up in a big way

AMD’s Ryzen 7 9800X3D is official and it’s shaking things up in a big way

We all knew it was coming. A series of rumors in recent months have pointed to AMD releasing the Ryzen 7 9800X3D on November 7, but the company itself has just confirmed the new CPU. It’s aiming for a place among the best processors and packs 3D V-Cache on top of an eight-core Zen 5 CPU to boost gaming performance.

True to the rumors we’ve seen this week, AMD is pricing the CPU at $479, which is almost $30 more expensive than the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. AMD claims that the new chip offers an average gaming increase of 8% over the last generation CPU, and 20% faster gaming performance compared to Intel’s recent Core Ultra 9 285K. Additionally, AMD says minimum frame rates have gone up, with the Ryzen 7 9800X3D improving 1% lows in The Last of Us, Part One by 31%.

Performance of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D.Performance of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D.

AMD

AMD is using its second generation of 3D V-Cache, which comes with a pretty big change. Instead of stacking the cache on top of the processor, the cache now consists of a single die that sits underneath the processor. According to AMD, this ensures that the cores remain cooler on the processor, allowing the CPU to reach a maximum clock speed of 5.2 GHz. This change also allows AMD to open up overclocking. The Ryzen 7 9800X3D is the first 3D V-Cache processor that is fully unlocked for overclocking.

That’s the biggest change this time. Aside from using the new Zen 5 architecture, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is largely the same as its last-gen counterpart. It comes with a total of 104 MB cache, along with eight cores and 16 threads. It also has the same thermal design power (TDP) of 120 watts, but as we saw with the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, there’s a good chance the CPU will run below that power limit while gaming.

However, it may not be as efficient. By placing the cache under the CPU, AMD can cool the cores more effectively and therefore push them harder. That requires more power. That’s especially true if you fully overclock the CPU, which until now has only been an option via AMD’s Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) on 3D V-Cache processors.

As is always the case with pre-release benchmarks, we’ll have to wait until we can strap the Ryzen 7 9800X3D into the test bench to see how it actually performs. However, an 8% increase in gaming performance is promising, especially considering that the Ryzen 7 7800X3D has remained unchallenged in gaming, even against the Core Ultra 9 285K and Ryzen 9 9950X.