Ryzen 9950X3D: AMD strengthens its game with a new, ever more powerful desktop gaming CPU

Among a season of moribund desktop CPU novelties at the end of last year, there was one processor that stood out from the crowd: the Ryzen 9800X3D made a strong impression on the editorial staff, exploding our benchmarks and establishing itself as the logical choice for all gaming PC builds looking for the best performance. This 2025 edition of CES was an opportunity for AMD to unveil its successors: the Ryzen 9950X3D and 9900X3D.

The 9950X3D logically inherits the technical qualities that made its predecessor strong – notably the 3D V-Cache technology which consists of placing the 64 MB cache tile under the CCD (Core Complex Die), the cluster which brings together the cores Zen5 of the CPU, unlike the standard which consists of superimposing them. The 3D V-Cache approach has the advantage of facilitating heat dissipation – and thus allowing the Zen cores to express all their power, and even overclocking.

The 9950X3D takes up the technical sheet of the Ryzen 9 9950X released last November, with its 16 multithreaded cores and a maximum clock rate of 5.7 GHz. The addition of 3D V-Cache allows the processor to push its thermal envelope up to a maximum of 170 W – compared to 120 W on the Ryzen 7 9800X3D. A difference which translates into better in-game performance. Compared to Intel's Core Ultra 9 285K, the 9950X3D would display 20% better performance on average on around forty titles tested – “high” settings in 1080p resolution. To a lesser extent, this gain is also found on content creation applications like Photoshop, with an average of 13% ahead.

The Ryzen 9950X3D will be accompanied on the shelves by the 9900X3D, a less powerful version with 12 cores clocked at a maximum frequency of 5.5 GHz in boost, and with a TDP limited to 120 W. Both will be marketed in March 2025.