Upgrade your PC for a wide-screen experience and future 4K gaming. Choose between a Ryzen 7 9800X3D or a Ryzen 9 9950X.
Upgrade your PC for a wide-screen experience and future 4K gaming. Choose between a Ryzen 7 9800X3D or a Ryzen 9 9950X.
Hey everyone, I'm planning a PC upgrade to boost gaming performance on a large screen, aiming for 4K resolution. I need a stronger CPU to avoid bottlenecks. Recently, I've been less informed about CPUs. While the 9800X3D is popular, it's sold out and heavily discounted. The 9950X is available at its MSRP on Amazon, on sale, and appears more capable overall—especially for multitasking and 4K gaming. Should I purchase the 9950X now or try to find an unscammed 9800X3D? Or maybe I should wait for a chance to win one from the AMD Tech Upgrade giveaway? I'm aware a Ryzen 9 9950X3D might be coming soon, but with potential tariff concerns and my need to ship to Basic in a few months, it's best to start buying components quickly. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
I'm struggling to decide, as I'm not entirely confident about the best choice. My main games include Star Citizen, Helldivers II, and several RTS and TBS titles. From what I've noticed, multi-threaded performance tends to work better for those, but with wide-screen and 4K setups and my limited experience in both, it's unclear which would be superior. However, considering the current situation and ongoing promotions, I'm leaning more toward the 9950X for a quick fix.
One thing to note that because of the dual CCD topology of the 9950X (and also the 9950X3D), you mostly want to run the games on one CCD only, or the inter-CCD communication will kill the fps, but in cases where higher core count does benefit more than the inter-CCD latency, it would win. I think your games will do fine with just 8 cores only. But the 9800X3D is honestly a bit too extreme. Yes it is fast, but you do sacrifice the core count. I don't think that you need that fast of a gaming CPU. It mostly only helps in getting even higher fps, and of course the 9950X is still so fast that it will give you enough fps in games. People buy the Ryzen 7 X3D chips not because they are the fastest in gaming, but they also provide value (until when your competitor is busy firing its CEO). If you do something like programming, video editing, 3D modelling, etc, 9950X is obviously the better choice. The 9950X also helps you multi-task better. Remember, it has twice as many cores as the 9800X3D. 7 years from now, the 9950X is probably what going to still carry you for your day to day tasks, where the 9800X3D might chug a little. If you have the budget, I suggest maybe waiting for the 9950X3D and getting that instead. It's the best of both worlds. And unlike last gen, it is not slower than its non X3D equivalent in multi-threaded performance. If you really want to buy an X3D processor, then the last gen 7800X3D is still an option. One thing that they greatly improved with the 9800X3D is that they but the 3D V-Cache die below the CCD, which greatly helps in thermal transfer, which is a huge W. That is why I like the 9800X3D more, but the 7800X3D is still fine. You can even overclock the 9800X3D but not the 7800X3D.
I’m worried about whether the 9950X3D will be available and affordable. Since the 9800X3D is sold out with high prices, I fear the same might happen with the 9950X3D. I also don’t have a clear plan to get one before launch unless I’m very lucky. After reading everything, I feel more certain about the 9950 series now.
I've heard the 9800X3D will soon have more stock. If you really intend to purchase one, you might find the 9950X3D available early if you act quickly. I believe it will perform better than the 9800X3D since it operates at higher clock speeds. It's essentially the top CPU option. Honestly, I just rechecked—why was I caught off guard? Games such as Hogwarts Legacy and MS Flight Sim demand a lot of CPU power. I reviewed benchmarks once more, and the 9800X3D actually outperformed my expectations now. In many more demanding titles that use significant CPU resources, the 9800X3D surpassed my previous thoughts, often achieving higher FPS than the 9950X. While they usually hover around 100 FPS or a bit above, they rarely exceed that. They also don't reach very high refresh rates. What I meant by the 9950X is still quite fast, especially in less CPU-heavy games like CS2, Forza Horizon 5, and Horizon Zero Dawn—where it delivers impressive FPS. Even then, the gap between these options shrinks, particularly with clock speed being more crucial for top performance. However, in CPU-intensive titles, the 9800X3D clearly shines. As new games release, there will come a point where your 9950X won't even hit 60 FPS, but your 9800X3D will. I'm unsure what distracted me, but these high-end CPUs seem to struggle with maintaining high refresh rates. We're not discussing GPUs here. So, if you have a limited budget and just want to play, it might be better to wait. If you need more than just gaming, you'll notice performance drops when multitasking. And if you run programs that benefit from multiple cores, go for the 9950X. If you can afford it, the 9950X3D will remain unmatched. It's expected to debut at CES and will likely be priced high. You can gauge prices by comparing models. But right now, you can't get a 9800X3D, so why not wait?
Really, the effect is significant, isn't it? I'm hoping to secure the 9950X3D, though I'm worried about its availability and price.
Stock levels are expected to rise soon. Whispers suggest they might even be advocating for a laptop X3D CPU similar to the previous generation. I believe its availability will likely improve. Regarding pricing, I think it will be slightly higher than when the 7950X3D was introduced, though that’s just an assumption.