CES 2025 | AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Ryzen 9 9900X3D unveiled with minimal upgrades over Zen 4 counterparts

AMD's high-end desktop CPU lineup is finally complete, with the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Ryzen 9 9900X3D being officially unveiled at CES 2025. Contrary to previous rumours, they won't come with an increase in L3 cache. Generation-over-generation performance gains aren't that impressive, either, but that was to be expected.

Starting with the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, you get a 16-core CPU with 144 MB total cache, a boost clock of 5.7 GHz and a TDP of 170 Watts. While its boost clock hasn't changed over its last-gen counterpart (Ryzen 9 7950X3D), the extra 50 Watts of TDP could help it spread its wings a little more.

Next up, the Ryzen 9 9900X3D is a 12-core CPU with 140 MB cache, a boost clock of 5.5 GHz and a TDP of 120 Watts. Despite the same TDP, it is 0.1 GHz slower than its Zen 4 sibling for some reason. Perhaps this can be offset with overclocking, but it isn't clear if these two SKUs support it yet.

Performance-wise, AMD claims the Ryzen 9 9950X3D offers, on average, an 8% performance increase over the Ryzen 9 7950X3D in gaming and a 13% uplift in content creation. Unsurprisingly, it trounces Intel's Arrow Lake-based Core Ultra 9 285K in both avenues with a 20% lead in gaming and 10% in content creation.

A closer look at AMD's test bench reveals even it uses Nvidia GPUs for internal tests. All three CPUs were tested on their respective Z/X motherboards along with 32 GB DDR5-6000 RAM and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090. The tests were done in November 2024 on a Windows 11 Pro machine.

Of course, these are first-party claims and only independent testing will determine how fast the Ryzen 9 9900X3D and Ryzen 9 9950X3D really are. Even looking at AMD's own numbers, they don't seem like compelling upgrades for Zen 4 X3D CPU owners.