AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D Review: The Top Multi-Core Gaming CPU!

Epilogue

Unfortunately, I couldn’t include the 9800X3D in the charts because the processor I bought from Amazon was fake, and there was no time to get a new one in time. At the time of this review, the single 9800X3D I had was occupied in my GPU test system.

Moreover, you only found three CPU entries in most charts because I decided to fully reset the corresponding information in every major CPU or GPU release, to include only the most recent results obtained with the most recent drivers, Windows, game, and application updates. Given that we typically receive the new hardware several days before the official release, this is my case at least. This means I can only re-test a limited number of parts, so I carefully select them. Nonetheless, I prefer to provide a smaller but highly accurate comparison set.

The Ryzen 9 9950X3D fulfills AMD’s promise of improved gaming performance compared to the previous generation flagship, the 7950X3D. Besides a 7.1% gaming performance improvement, there is close to 11% improvement on all CPU tasks, gaming included, and an 11.7% improvement on all tasks but gaming.

You have to be careful with core-parking when it comes to gaming at low resolutions (FHD), because you only need the cores with the L3 cache to handle the games and not all of them. In most cases, this works well, but if you make the mistake of using the legacy Control Panel to change or customize the power plan, you will disable this feature. You must go to Windows Settings>System>Power and make any desired power plan changes, or core-parking won’t work. This is a small detail, but you have to keep in mind. It is highly advised to have the most recent AMD drivers, BIOS version, and the latest version of the Game Bar app. In a single case, I noticed that the wrong cores were parked, and the CPU used the ones without the extra cache, so to solve this, I had to completely remove all AMD drivers and install them again, after a reboot, to fix the issue.

Generally, if you play at FHD using a strong GPU, you must check if core-parking works as intended, or you might lose performance. This is why most hardcore gamers prefer the 9800X3D which only has a single CCD, so it doesn’t have such issues.

The performance per watt tells a completely different story from the relative performance. Here, the dead low gaming power consumption of the 7950X3D provides a strong advantage. The difference gets lower in the other two sections, but it is still notable. I guess this is why AMD didn’t include any performance per watt scores in its reviewer guide. Nonetheless, the 50W TDP increase on the 9950X3D over its predecessor shows increased power consumption. However, this doesn’t affect the operating temperatures because of the better contact of the CCDs with the heatspreader. This is what most likely allowed the TDP to increase and also allowed AMD to provide a direct overclocking option.

The 9950X3D is a fine processor, not only for gaming but for everything. It aims at users who need strong gaming performance without any compromises in tasks that require more than eight cores. If only its price were lower. Hopefully, AMD will drop its price close to 600 dollars at some point, because currently, at 700 dollars, it is way too expensive compared to the 9950x.