At this point, AMD has been on top when we’re talking about the best processors for gaming, but it still took CES 2025 to do a victory lap and extend its lead. Opening up the keynote address, AMD revealed the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Ryzen 9 9900X3D, both of which will be available in the first quarter of this year.
The performance here doesn’t sway things much, as AMD has already claimed the top slot for gaming processors with its wildly popular Ryzen 7 9800X3D. As you can see below, however, AMD claims an 8% lead over last-gen’s Ryzen 9 7950X3D on average after testing 40 games. Unsurprisingly, graphically intensive games like Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Black Myth: Wukong see little benefit, but AMD is claiming a lead as large as 58% in a game like Counter-Strike 2.
An 8% lead is fine, but AMD really shows its gaming prowess against Intel. Compared to the Core Ultra 9 285K, AMD says the Ryzen 9 9950X3D is 20% faster on average at 1080p. There are still those graphically demanding games, but AMD is claiming boosts as high as 40% in Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 and 64% in Watch Dogs: Legion.
It’s no surprise that AMD’s new CPUs dominate in games considering they pack AMD’s second-gen 3D V-Cache. However, unlike the Ryzen 7 9800X3D that’s already available, the Ryzen 9 9900X3D and Ryzen 9 9950X3D are angled toward both gaming and productivity workloads with 12 and 16 cores, respectively. On that front, the margins are a bit more tight.
Compared to Intel, AMD says it’s around 10% faster across productivity workloads. The battle is close in rendering applications like Blender and Cinebench — an area where Intel’s latest CPUs are particularly strong — but AMD comes out ahead by margins of 14% in Premiere Pro and a massive 47% in Photoshop.
For the gen-on-gen comparison, AMD is claiming a 13% lead, though with far fewer peaks and valleys than what you can see in the Intel comparison. That’s not too surprising. As you can read in our Ryzen 9 9950X review, AMD’s latest Zen 5 desktop CPUs don’t claim huge leaps over last-gen Zen 4 options, but they’re consistently faster in nearly every application.
As is always the case, it’s important to treat these performance numbers with a healthy dose of skepticism. I saw some pretty large performance gaps between AMD’s claims and real-world performance with chips like the Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X — an issue AMD eventually addressed through several updates. Regardless, I’m withholding judgement until I have the chips in hand to test myself.
AMD hasn’t provided a firm release date for its new X3D options, but they should arrive soon. With clear performance comparisons, they’ll likely be among the first AMD products to hit store shelves in the first quarter of this year.
