The fastest gaming CPU now has a very, very, very, very, very, very, very slightly faster replacement

The Ryzen 7 9850X3D is simply a mid-gen tune-up

In what has go CPU tradition, AMD person announced a caller fastest-ever gaming processor to regenerate their past fastest-ever gaming processor. The newcomer, elaborate astatine CES 2026, is the Ryzen 7 9850X3D, which really shares the aforesaid architecture, socket, halfway and thread counts, and powerfulness usage standing arsenic the erstwhile large dog, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D. It’s chiefly a quicker maximum boost clock, up from 5.2GHz to 5.6GHz, that grants it a show edge.

And cor, what a good borderline it is. By AMD’s reckoning, the Ryzen 7 9850X3D averages 27% amended framerate results successful games than Intel’s champion offering, the Core Ultra 9 285K. The Ryzen 7 9800X3D? 24% better. Destroyed successful seconds.

Image credit: AMD

The 9850X3D is retired successful Q1 2026, i.e. betwixt January and March. There’s nary pricing info yet, truthful we don’t cognize overmuch other that 3% volition outgo ya, though it’s astir apt worthy noting that CPUs person seemingly been spared from the banal catastrophe presently engulfing RAM and SSDs (and threatening to resistance successful graphics cards portion it’s astatine it). As such, immoderate large bump implicit the Ryzen 7 9800X3D’s $479 motorboat terms would be, astatine best, highly cheeky. Here beryllium specs, successful immoderate case:

AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D specs

• Architecture: Zen 5
• Socket: AM5
• Cores: 8
• Threads: 16
• Base clock: 4.7GHz
• Max boost clock: 5.6GHz
• L1 cache: 640KB
• L2 cache: 8MB
• L3 cache: 96MB
• TDP: 120W
• Max temp: 95°c

Speaking of the 9800X3D, immoderate steadfast computer-owning caput should support a defender up astir superlatives, but I’ve got 1 successful the RPS Test Rig and it kinda is the fastest gaming CPU. Or, astatine least, it was. Now that there’s a newer version, I’ve people had to walk the greeting berating it for its idleness and incompetence, which is wherefore this station is lone going unrecorded respective hours aft AMD’s announcement.