Tested: AMD's new Ryzen 9 9950X3D absolutely dominates

No caveats, no compromises.

- ALAINA YEE & ADAM PATRICK MURRAY

AMD loves to build to a crescendo. As it's shown since 2016, when its first Ryzen CPUs launched, the company progresses incrementally but steadily—until Team Red sits all the way at the top.

That time has come for its 3D V-Cache processors, which sport extra L3 cache to boost gaming performance. When AMD released its first variant into the wild, that AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D (fave.co/3D3nyxE) shot past Intel's best in gaming—but only gaming. Ryzen 7000X3D chips (fave.co/3YX4mJR) pulled more even with Team Blue, but still couldn't pull ahead in some key benchmarks.

But now, with the release of the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, AMD can take the crown for best chip for both gaming and productivity tasks. This $699 16-core, 32-thread slots above last August's Ryzen 9 9950X, which previously served as the company's premier chip. Accompanying the 9950X3D onto retail shelves today is the $599 12-core, 24-thread 9900X3D.

This outcome seemed likely when the first Ryzen 9000X3D processor dropped last November, with the $479 8-core, 16-thread 9800X3D (fave.co/3OM9NIY) easily trouncing Intel's best chips (both current and last gen). But now, as the benchmark numbers show, it's confirmed.

Because the run-up to this March 12 launch has been stuffed with hardware releases, we on the PCWorld team have only had a short time in our labs to give the 9950X3D a spin. But between my colleague Adam Patrick Murray's preliminary numbers and other reviews from around the web, the story's pretty clear—this chip slaps hard, as my boss Brad Chacos said in his 9800X3D write-up.

Let's dive into the highlights.

1. IT’S A PRODUCTIVITY BEAST (AND STILL A GAMING MONSTER)