AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D official: 20% faster than Core Ultra 9 285K in gaming, reverse CCD layout and overclocking support confirmed

AMD has officially unveiled the Ryzen 7 9800X3D's gaming performance ahead of its November 7 launch. The CPU will cost $479 at launch, $30 more than the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. For that price, you get a paltry 8% average uplift in gaming performance.

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D is, on average, 20% faster than the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K in gaming, with it being 59% faster than the Arrow Lake flagship in Cyberpunk 2077. Then again, the comparison isn't exactly fair because the Core Ultra 9 285K gets trounced by Intel's own Raptor Lake-based Core i9-14900K in most titles.

If you're a Ryzen 7 7800X3D owner, you're better off waiting for the Ryzen 9 9900X3D or Ryzen 9 9950X3D slated to launch at CES 2025. That said, AMD has confirmed many rumours from earlier, such as a new layout where the 3D V-cache is sandwiched between the CCD and IHS.

This allows the Ryzen 9 9800X3D to run at higher clocks (4.7 GHz base, 5.2 GHz boost). Plus, you can now overclock your CPU to your heart's content and squeeze more performance out of it. Other specs include 8 Zen 5 cores, 16 threads, 120 Watts TDP and 104 MB cache in total (L1+L2+L3).