Early 9950X3D and 9900X3D benchmarks surface online, here’s how much faster than the 9800X3D they are
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The first quarter of 2025 has been (and will be) home to a ton of PC hardware launches. All of the big competitors are working through their GPU releases, while AMD is unveiling its new Radeon cards on February 28th. On the CPU side of things, there are two more processors coming from Team Red to further extend its Ryzen 9000 series line-up.
Set for release in Q1, with no specific date yet, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Ryzen 9 9900X3D are set to deliver the best combination of specs for gaming and productivity workloads. New benchmarks have surfaced online for both of these CPUs, so let’s see how they compare to the current best CPU for gaming, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D.
- Cores: 8
- Threads: 16
- Boost clock speed: 5.2GHz
- Base clock speed: 4.7GHz
- L3 cache: 96MB
- TDP: 120W
- Platform: AM5
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D appear on Geekbench
Single-Core and Multi-Core scores have surfaced on Geekbench for the 9950X3D and 9900X3D. Based on these scores, we can see that the 9950X3D offers 2.7% and 6.4% uplift for single and multi-core performance compared to the 9900X3D. For comparison, the flagship is fitted with 16 cores / 32 threads, while the tier below drops down to 12 cores / 24 threads.
Looking at the Geekbench Processor Benchmark Chart, the 9950X3D offers around 15% better single-core and 4% multi-core performance than its predecessor, the 7950X3D. The 9900X3D on the other hand is around 14.5% and 9.3% better than the 7900X3D for single-core and multi-core respectively.
9950X3D vs 9900X3D vs 9800X3D on Geekbench
| Benchmark | Ryzen 9 9950X3D | Ryzen 9 9900X3D | Ryzen 7 9800X3D |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single-Core | 3,363 | 3,274 | 3,204 |
| Multi-Core | 20,465 | 19,227 | 18,838 |
Now let’s compare versus the 9800X3D – today’s current best CPU for gaming. The 9800X3D operates with a max boost clock of 5.2GHz (though it is the first X3D chip to feature overclocking support) and 8 cores / 16 threads design. However, 9800X3D Geekbench tests show it is not too far behind the Ryzen 9 picks, though multi-core performance is understandably hindered by the lower core count. You can check out the individual tests below:
- 9950X3D, X670 motherboard, 32GB DDR5 RAM, Geekbench 6.3.0 for Windows AVX2
- 9900X3D, X670 motherboard, 32GB DDR5 RAM, Geekbench 6.3.0 for Windows AVX2
- 9800X3D, X670E motherboard, 32GB DDR5 RAM, Geekbench 6.3.0 for Windows AVX2
All three of the processors were tested on X670 series motherboards, though this particular 9800X3D test was run with faster 6,002 MT/s RAM compared to the ~4,800 MT/s on the new Ryzen 9 chip tests. This may only make for a negligible difference, but it’s worth noting.
In any case, the 9800X3D holds up well, particularly in single-core. We firmly believe that the 9800X3D is still the gaming CPU to go for despite these newer releases, with the value for money reigning supreme if you’re building a system primarily for gaming – not productivity. Now, the pricing of the Ryzen 9 X3D chips has yet to be confirmed, but they could be ~$150-$200 more expensive than the Ryzen 7 option based on the previous generation.
Overall, it shouldn’t be a surprise to see the 9950X3D and 9900X3D excelling in multi-core performance, with single-core performance only representing a marginal uplift. However, AMD has said it's “excited” about the overclocking potential of these new Ryzen 9 processors, so the prospect of pushing them even further is worth thinking about.
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