AMD's hotly anticipated Ryzen 7 9800X3D gaming CPU gets official

After confirming that its next-generation Ryzen 9000 X3D processor was headed our way, AMD has now announced its flagship chip: the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, which will benefit from its Zen 5 architecture as well as a new arrangement of its mammoth array of 64MB of cache.

Officially, AMD will begin selling the Ryzen 9000X3D family on Nov. 7, as it has said before. Now, however, we know what AMD will be selling: the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, a 120W part, for $479.

Here are the specs:

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D: 8 cores/16 threads, 4.7GHz (5.2GHz turbo), 104MB cache, $479.

AMD’s Ryzen 7 9800X3D follows the launch of the Ryzen 7000X3D family at the beginning of 2023. At the time, AMD positioned the chip as a gaming monster, using the array of first-generation V-cache to assist games that repeatedly needed to access the same information, over and over. As our Ryzen 7950X3D review showed, that paid off in a big way.

Of less importance at the time was power: the Ryzen 7000X3D family consumed just 120W, a fact whose importance surged as Intel launched its 13th- and 14th-generation Core parts, which consumed far more power. Qualcomm then zeroed in on low power with its Snapdragon X Elite mobile chips. Finally, Intel’s Arrow Lake desktop processors promised huge power gains — and then failed to deliver. Now, power draw is a key metric.

AMD is promising that the Ryzen 7 9800X3D will deliver 8 percent faster gaming improvement in FPS versus the Ryzen 7800X3D, plus deliver an average of 20 percent more performance compared to the new Intel Core Ultra 9 285K (which wound up being slower than its predecessors in gaming). It also believes that you’ll see an improvement in minimum frame rates, as well. (In The Last Of Us: Part 1, the 9800X3D’s minimum frame rate is about 31 percent higher than the competition, the company said.) But it will do so using just 120W of power, the same power draw that its predecessor offered.

How? Its second-generation V-Cache. In this generation, AMD’s innovation is to put the V-Cache on the bottom of the processor, rather than the top. That puts the Core Complex Die (CCD) closer to the cooling solution, AMD said, allowing the company to run the cache at a faster speed and thus increase the overall performance. AMD is also totally unlocking the 9800X3D, which allows it to be treated a traditional gaming processor and overclocked. Note that AMD still uses hyperthreading, as well, unlike Intel.

Add to that AMD’s Zen 5 architecture, and AMD believes that it’s created a next-gen powerhouse. We’ll learn more about what it’s achieved soon.

Author: Mark Hachman, Senior Editor, PCWorld

Mark has written for PCWorld for the last decade, with 30 years of experience covering technology. He has authored over 3,500 articles for PCWorld alone, covering PC microprocessors, peripherals, and Microsoft Windows, among other topics. Mark has written for publications including PC Magazine, Byte, eWEEK, Popular Science and Electronic Buyers’ News, where he shared a Jesse H. Neal Award for breaking news. He recently handed over a collection of several dozen Thunderbolt docks and USB-C hubs because his office simply has no more room.

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