This comes as no surprise, since we’ve been waiting for the official announcement of these new AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D and Ryzen 9 9950X3D processors. As a reminder, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D was launched at the beginning of November and lived up to all its promises, as our test confirmed. While the Ryzen 7 9800X3D only had a single CCD containing the 8 cores and 16 threads, these new processors will have two CCDs to accommodate the 12 cores and 24 threads of the Ryzen 9 9900X3D and the 16 cores and 32 threads of the Ryzen 9 9950X3D.
AMD 3D V-cache second generation :
The key feature of this series of “X3D” processors is the presence of second-generation AMD 3D V-cache technology. Despite the presence of two CCDs for these two new processors, AMD 3D V-cache will only be integrated on one of the two CCDs. However, as with the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, this has been placed below rather than above the processor cores. As a result, the main source of heat, the ‘Zen 5’ cores, is taken care of directly by your cooling solution. The 3D V-cache memory is less sensitive to temperature than the processor cores, which is a considerable development for this second generation. Thanks to cooler temperatures, it is possible to maintain higher operating frequencies in single- or multithreaded tasks than with the previous-generation Ryzen X3D.
As far as the amount of V-cache is concerned, it was 104 MB for the Ryzen 7 9800X3D and will be 140 MB for the Ryzen 9 9900X3D and 144 MB for the Ryzen 9 9950X3D.
Higher frequencies:
As with the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, operating frequencies are on the rise. Still comparing with the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, the Boost frequency can reach 5.2 GHz with a TDP of 120 watts. The Ryzen 9 9900X3D boosts to 5.5 GHz with a TDP of 120 watts, which is very interesting. The TDP rises to 170 watts for the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, but its Boost frequency can reach 5.7 GHz.
And in terms of performance?
Based on AMD’s slides, we can say that the Ryzen 9 9950X3D outperforms the Ryzen 9 7950X3D by an average of 8% in gaming. Things are looking up against Intel’s latest processor, the Core Ultra 9 285K, with AMD reporting an average gain of almost 20% over 40 games tested.
As far as application tasks are concerned, the differences between the Ryzen 9 7950X3D and the Core Ultra 9 9950X3D, based on 20 applications tested, were 13% and 10% respectively.
At the time of writing, we had no information on pricing or availability for the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D and Ryzen 9 9950X3D.
