AMDβs new Ryzen 9000X3D gaming CPUs are reportedly due to arrive in just a few weeks, according to the latest leak. The new 16-core AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D has already been officially announced, as has the 12-core 9900X3D, but AMD has so far only given the release date window as Q1 2025.
Thatβs exactly the same timeframe as the official Radeon RX 9070 release date window, leading to speculation that AMD plans to release the new CPUs and GPUs at the same time. According to AMD, the new Ryzen 9 9950X3D is, on average, 20% faster than the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K across a suite of 40 games the company has tested.
But when is it coming out? According to a report on French tech site Cowcotland, the new CPU is due to be released at the end of March 2025. The site cites its own anonymous sources for the information, saying that the new CPUs will be arriving at around the same time as the companyβs new Radeon RX 9070 XT gaming GPU.
Of course, AMD hasnβt officially announced a release date for the Ryzen 9 9950X3D yet, other than the Q1 2025 window, so take this with a grain of salt for the moment, but with only two months left of the first quarter of 2025, a release at the end of March seems highly plausible.
Back to what we do know, AMD has announced that the Ryzen 9 9950X3D will have 16 cores and 32 threads, with a maximum boost clock of 5.7GHz. However, that boost clock will only apply to eight of its cores β the ones without 3D V-cache. The CPU will have two CCDs (the chips that contain the CPU cores) under its heatspreader, each with eight cores. One of these CCDs will have 3D V-cache, much like the eight-core Ryzen 7 9800X3D. The other CCD will just have eight normal Zen 5 CPU cores, but the ability to boost to a faster clock speed.
When asked whether AMD could make a 16-core CPU with 3D V-cache on both CCDs, the companyβs senior technical marketing manager of consumer processors, Donny Woligroski, told us that βwe could do it,β but that the 9950X3D as it is makes for a better option for most peopleβs needs. It has higher clock speeds for speeding up heavily multi-threaded workloads, and eight cores with 3D V-cache for gaming β a workload that very rarely demands more than six cores, let alone eight.
Meanwhile, the 9900X3D only has six cores with 3D V-cache, and a second set of six cores that can boost to 5.5GHz. If gaming is your top priority, we recommend going for the eight-core chip instead. As we found in our Ryzen 7 9800X3D review, this CPU is fantastic for gaming, and youβll get little benefit from having more than eight cores in games.
If youβre looking to buy a new processor now, check out our guide to the best gaming CPU, where we take you through all our current recommendations to suit a range of budgets and users.
