AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is the gaming champion, and unlike previous X3D chips, it performs well under all types of workloads.

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D is the fastest gaming chip on the market by a large margin, easily beating Intel's competing processors. AMD has significantly improved performance in productivity workloads, too, helping to eliminate some of the trade-offs of selecting a gaming-optimized X3D chip.

The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is quite simply the fastest gaming CPU you can buy right now. It makes a mockery of Intel Arrow Lake, its frame rates are quicker than those of the 7800X3D, and its extra clock speed gives it a serious boost in multi-threaded software too. It's expensive, but just about worth the extra cost if you're a gamer.

The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is extremely powerful in games, which makes it easier to recommend than other recent processors like the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K or Ryzen 9 9900X. Especially if you’re building a rig with a powerful graphics card, the 9800X3D is going to be the best way to get the most performance out of whichever GPU you pair it with.

AMD’s 2nd Gen 3D V-Cache makes the Ryzen 7 9800X3D a winner.

Geared toward gamers, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D costs about as much as some faster Ryzen 9 CPUs. Buying a similarly performing Ryzen 7 or Intel Core Ultra 5 CPU for much less money and putting the difference toward a graphics card is a far better option.