CES 2025 saw the announcement of some exciting new Zen 5 CPUs from AMD, not least two X3D additions that we've been anticipating for some time. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D look like they might be some seriously powerful CPUs, and now the latest scuttlebutt suggests they might be coming at the end of March, alongside some long-awaited RDNA 4 graphics cards.
That's according to French hardware website Cowcotland, who's sources say that the new AMD 3D V-cache-sporting chips will make an appearance at roughly the same time as the RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT.
AMD's David McAfee had previously tweeted that gamers will get their hands on the new GPUs in March, so that all lines up rather nicely if true.
As does the naming scheme, giving that these are the latest 9000-series CPUs, potentially launching next to the 9070-series GPUs. What a difference a digit makes, ey?
As for the chips themselves, the specs are pretty monstrous. The 9950X3D is a 170 W TDP chip with 16-cores and 32-threads with a boost clock of 5.7 Ghz and 144 MB of total cache, whereas the 9900X3D has 12-cores, 24-threads, and 140 MB of cache, with a slightly slower 5.5 GHz boost clock.
| Header Cell - Column 0 | Cores / Threads | Boost clock | Total cache | TDP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D | 16 / 32 | 5.7 GHz | 144 MB | 170 W |
| AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D | 12 / 24 | 5.5 GHz | 140 MB | 120 W |
| AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D | 8 / 16 | 5.2 GHz | 104 MB | 120 W |
Compare those specs to our current best CPU for gaming, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, and you can see why hearts are a flutter in anticipation of the new chips. The 9800X3D is the fastest gaming CPU we've ever tested, but with eight cores, 16-threads, and 104 MB total cache, it looks like it's firmly outmatched by its new siblings—when it comes to multi-threaded workloads at least.
Still, there's always price to consider. While the new AMD mega-CPUs are likely to be top performers, if the 9800X3D can still monster ahead of the Intel competition at a more reasonable price point, it might still be the chip to go for this generation to get the best bang for your buck. Time will tell. Still, if these rumours prove out, it looks like we won't have too much longer to wait.
