A new year, a new CES event, where the world's biggest tech companies show off their latest and greatest new products. In the case of AMD, however, it's pretty much a case of 'more of the same, but just a little bit faster'. And when it comes to the newly launched Ryzen 7 9850X3D, that 'little' really isn't very big at all.
The listed specifications for the Ryzen 7 9850X3D are entirely unsurprising, not least because all the previous leaks and rumours on the new chip all tallied on the point of it just sporting a small increase to the boost clock. It's literally just a Ryzen 7 9800X3D, with a 7.7% overclock.
It's not the first Zen 5 X3D processor that AMD has released that's faster than the 9800X3D, though. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D has two core chiplets (CCDs), one with 3D V-cache, and one without. When it comes to boost clocks, the latter can hit 5.7 GHz, whereas the former topped out at 5.5 GHz in the tests I carried out in my review of the 9950X3D.
This suggests that the CCDs rolling off TSMC's production lines are generally very high quality, resulting in a surfeit of CCDs that, when they've also gone through the V-cache packing routine, are more than capable of running over 5.2 GHz.
You might think that this would mean that AMD could just churn out a whole host of 9800X3D processors and reduce the price a bit, but I should imagine that shareholders are happier seeing Team Red just roll out another processor model to use up all those decent CCDs.
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There's no indication of what the Ryzen 7 9850X3D's price tag will be yet. However, since you can get the 9800X3D for $469 at Amazon and the 9950X3D for $676 at Amazon, it will obviously be pitched somewhere between the two. Best case scenario? It'll be $499—$20 more than the 9800X3D's launch MSRP.
However, AMD's best gaming CPUs are substantially better than any Intel Core Ultra 200S processor, so it will probably set the price higher than this. When there's little to no competition around, you basically have a free pass to do whatever you like.
So, does this mean that the new Ryzen 7 9850X3D isn't going to be worth buying? The answer to that question will come down to how expensive it is. The standard Ryzen 7 9800X3D isn't known for being great at overclocking (or rather, it's quite a challenge getting it above 5.4 GHz), but it will happily run at 5.2 GHz across all cores in tests.
If the new Ryzen 7 9850X3D can do the same thing but at 5.6 GHz, then that might be of interest to gamers and serious overclockers looking to get the absolute best performance or benchmark results possible. For everyone else, you're going to be looking at an uplift of 2 to 5% in games, compared to the 9800X3D, according to AMD.
Should the price tag only be the same degree higher, then it'll be a potential buy for many a PC gaming enthusiast. Any more expensive and you'll just be better off leaving it alone.
