In a recent Q&A between AMD and PCGuide, the brand offered some insight into the overclocking potential of the upcoming 3D V-cache chips – with ‘excitement’ being the overarching message from Team Red.

We spoke with Martijn Boonstra, AMD's Product and Business Development Manager, on the performance and potential of the brand’s upcoming 9950X3D and 9900X3D parts. While he couldn’t divulge too many sensitive details on the CPUs, he did confirm that the brand was “excited to see what kind of results the owners will be able to achieve with these new processors.”. While not conclusive, it does hint that the new chips could offer excellent overclocking headroom in the right hands.

He expressed similar excitement when questioned on the overclocking potential of the 9800X3D in another interview with PCGuide, so it’s no surprise to see the same response for the upcoming 16-core (presumed) part. Furthermore, with the brand’s 9950X breaking several records at the time of its launch, the same could be expected for this new X3D variant.

That said, it’s unclear what overclocking speeds the new parts will achieve, but I’m sure expectations of HWBot world records are high. Sadly, while he doesn’t elude to any in-house overclocking results that may have occurred behind the scenes – we can only imagine the brand’s XOC team has been hard at work.

AMD 9950X3D and 9900X3D CPUs will be fully unlocked for overclocking

Like the 9800X3D, both 9950X3D and 9900X3D parts will be fully unlocked for overclocking on launch – which is expected to be sometime in Q1, 2025. While already public information, AMD has confirmed this again during our Q&A, stating that “All Ryzen 9000X3D Series desktop processors are unlocked for advanced overclocking scenarios: PBO, memory, fabric, core frequency, memory controller, core voltage, fabric voltage, memory voltage, and more.”.

This innovation sets the new chips apart from last generation’s 7000X3D series, which weren’t unlocked due to the configuration of the 3D V-cache. Thanks to the new arrangement of the cache, AMD was able to more effectively cool the part when under load – allowing for fully unlocked overclocking.

That being said, it’ll be interesting to see how these parts are received by the community. Will the 9800X3D put people off buying the new chips, or will they have enough going for them to warrant unique user situations? I suppose only time will tell on that one – thankfully, we shouldn’t have to wait too long to find out.

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Charlie Noon

Charlie is the Affiliate manager for PC Guide. He has a vast understanding of most PC hardware and consumer essentials, using his knowledge to provide the best products and the biggest deals.