AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D: the best gaming CPU

AMD has dominated PC gaming CPU performance for more than two years. Its X3D chips have provided a boost that Intel couldn't match, and its new $479 Ryzen 7 9800X3D goes a step further, improving not only gaming performance but everyday tasks and creative workloads.

The first desktop Zen 5 CPUs were disappointing in gaming, but the 9800X3D, coming November 7th, offers some big improvements over the already great Ryzen 7 7800X3D. I've been testing it over the last week and have seen big improvements in productivity workloads, as well as a roughly 8 percent increase in gaming performance.

Just like the $449 7800X3D: If you primarily play games on your PC, the 9800X3D should be your next CPU.

AMD's productivity gains on the 9800X3D are largely thanks to a processor redesign. AMD is using a second generation of its 3D V-Cache technology, in which the cache is now located below the processor cores. That's a big difference, meaning the processor cores have better access to cooling and the cache is now less sensitive to high temperatures. This is the main reason AMD was able to increase the base clock speed by 500 MHz and increase the boost clock by another 200 MHz.

Both clock speed increases, along with the Zen 5 architecture, have helped increase productivity. For the first time, AMD even supports overclocking on an X3D chip, which should mean we'll see even more impressive results with this processor.

I tested AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3D with a Gigabyte X870E Aorus Master motherboard, 32GB G.Skill DDR5-6000, and Nvidia's RTX 4090. This is one of the newest AM5 motherboards, but the 9800X3D thankfully works with existing AM5 boards for BIOS updates.

I tested a variety of workloads, synthetic benchmarks, and games with AMD's new Ryzen 7 9800X3D, the existing 7800X3D, and Intel's $589 Core i9-14900K and Core Ultra 9 285K. All testing was performed on Windows 11 (version 24H2) with virtualization-based security (VBS) and resizable BAR enabled.

All tests are performed at 1080p resolution to analyze pure CPU performance. Like most other CPU reviewers, we don't test at 1440p or 4K in games to ensure we demonstrate the differences between CPUs. Most games demand more from the GPU than the CPU at higher resolutions. But a better CPU can still help at 4K, especially in upscaling technologies like DLSS or in CPU-heavy titles like Baldur's Gate 3, Hogwarts legacyAnd Microsoft Flight Simulator.

AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3D outperforms the 7800X3D in terms of developer productivity and workload. It's not even close. In Geekbench 6, the 9800X3D is around 20 percent faster than the 7800X3D in both single-threaded and multi-threaded performance. In Cinebench 2024, it is almost 16 percent faster in the single-thread test and a full 27 percent faster in the multi-threaded workload.

Even in the PugetBench tests of Premiere Pro and Photoshop, the 9800X3D outperforms the 7800X3D, with a performance increase of 18 percent in the PugetBench for Photoshop and almost 10 percent in the Premiere Pro test.

These results highlight the major improvements AMD has made to the 9800X3D for everyday tasks and developer workloads. It's still far behind Intel's latest Core Ultra 9 285K in these workloads, but AMD has significantly closed the gap that the 7800X3D had.

AMD has increased its lead in gaming, especially over Intel's Core Ultra 9 285K. When I tested Intel's latest desktop CPU last month, I, like many other reviewers, found it to be a step down in gaming performance compared to the Core i9-14900K.

The 7800X3D has already beaten the 14900K and the Core Ultra 9 285K by a wide margin, and the 9800X3D leaves Intel's gaming CPU efforts even further behind. In my testing, I found that the 9800X3D is around 8 percent faster in games than the 7800X3D. That's exactly what AMD promised when it announced the 9800X3D, and in some games it's even higher.

In Metro Exodus, I saw frame rates on the 9800X3D that were almost 14 percent higher than the 7800X3D. Cyberpunk 2077 also improved by almost 11 percent. To put that in perspective, the 9800X3D is 50 percent faster than Intel's latest Core Ultra 9 285K Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p. It's a stunning gap for Intel that suggests there must be a bug with this particular game and CPU combination. But the 9800X3D is still 38 percent faster than Intel's previous 14900K, so AMD definitely has an impressive advantage here.

If you want to get even more performance out of the 9800X3D in games, Gigabyte offers an Balances hardware performance. The result is lower overall performance for workloads that rely on multithreaded performance, but some increase in gaming performance depending on the game.

I saw a 9 percent jump in performance Metro Exodus with X3D Turbo mode enabled, with an increase of just 3 percent Cyberpunk 2077. Other games, for example, saw smaller increases Shadow of the Tomb Raider recorded an increase of almost 2 percent. In 2023 Forza Motorsport, X3D Turbo mode had no impact on performance. However, if you have this enabled in the BIOS, you will definitely have to sacrifice multi-threaded performance in Creator workloads.

This additional performance comes with minor costs for power consumption and thermals. During Cinebench 2024, I noticed that the 9800X3D reached a CPU case temperature of 88 degrees Celsius, higher than the 82 °C I saw on the 7800X3D in the same test. The 9800X3D also consumed 160 watts at peak in this test, while the 7800X3D only reached 89 watts.

Both chips have a TDP of 120 watts, but it's clear that the 9800X3D uses this the most. During the Black Myth: Wukong In the benchmark, the 9800X3D used 131 watts, more than double the 63 watts the 7800X3D used in the same test. The 9800X3D's power consumption for creator workloads is still well behind Intel's power-hungry 14900K, which consumes more than 260 watts in Cinebench tests. Power consumption also varies depending on the type of games you play.

What's clear to me with this 9800X3D is that AMD has now created an even more impressive gap with Intel in gaming performance, while also narrowing the performance gap in developer productivity and workload. I think this smaller gap on the non-gaming side will now entice more developers who also play games to switch to AMD.

Intel sacrificed gaming performance for efficiency with the Core Ultra 9 285K, but many PC gamers simply don't care about power efficiency unless it leads to significantly cooler temperatures and therefore better performance and less throttling. Intel's sacrifices make the 9800X3D an obvious buy if you want the best PC gaming performance, and the Core Ultra 9 285K is an obvious choice if you want the best productivity and creator power and play very little or no gaming.

If you're like me, someone who plays a lot of PC games but also renders 4K video and needs high performance for productivity tasks, this is a tougher choice. Intel has always offered a good balance between developer workload and gaming, but AMD beats it in gaming and closes the gap on the productivity side. If I were mostly gaming, I'd go for the 9800X3D or even wait to see what a rumored 16-core Ryzen 9000 X3D chip might deliver very soon.