AMD has a used 3D V-Cache a few times now as a way to boost gaming performance on CPUs. So what happens when AMD puts 3D V-Cache on its very best Ryzen 9000-series CPUs to date? The answer is the Ryzen 9 9900X3D and 9950X3D.
AMD just unveiled the Ryzen 9 9900X3D and the Ryzen 9 9950X3D CPU during its CES 2025 keynote. These chips are basically AMD throwing everything imaginable into an x86 CPU design. These aren’t the first 9000-series processors to get 3D V-Cache—that honor belongs to the Ryzen 7 9800X3D. But these chips feature, respectively, 12 cores and a whopping 16 cores, so adding 3D V-Cache on top not only makes them amazing CPUs for general use but also amazing CPUs for gaming and creative purposes. AMD claims that these are the best gaming/creative CPUs money can buy.
AMD’s graphs show the Ryzen 9 9950X3D as having an 8% advantage compared to the previous-gen Ryzen 9 7950X3D in games, and it’s also 13% faster in content creation. Comparing it to Intel’s offerings, the difference is even wider, as the company claims a 20% advantage compared to the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K. Of course, these are AMD’s own charts, which we should always take with a grain of salt. But if they’re true, it means that the 3D V-Cache trick is still working, even as several generations have come and gone. Maybe Intel should reconsider its position on tech like this.
These are probably the best consumer CPUs we’ll get from AMD until the next generation rolls around, so if you were waiting for 3D V-Cache flavors of Ryzen chips to land, this is probably your time to buy one. We don’t have pricing information for these chips, but they will probably be a tad higher than the pricing for the non-3D-V Cache versions. They will arrive on store shelves in March 2025, so we’ll probably know more as we near the launch date.
Source: AMD