An AMD Exec has stated in a recent interview that gamers should expect similar performance with its upcoming flagship X3D processors to its recently released top-tier gaming counterpart. AMD officially announced its Zen 5-based Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D processors as CES 25 which feature 16 cores/32 threads and 12 cores/24 threads respectively. Both processors are known to utilize 2nd-gen 3D V-Cache memory that has traded places with the CCDs and is now below them but there continues to be a catch here, only one CCD has access to the 3D V-Cache. With only one CCD having access to the 3D V-Cache, this means that the flagship AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D processor ends up having more similarities to the current king of gaming CPUs, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, than not, at least when it comes to gaming.
The CCD on the Ryen 9 9950X3D with access to the 3D V-Cache reportedly (via Tom’s Hardware from a CPU-Z snapshot of an engineering sample) has the same amount of memory, cores, and threads at 96MB L3, 8 cores/16 threads as the 9800X3D. The most notable difference will be the clock rates with the max boost for the 9550X3D being 5.7 GHz while the 9800X3D tops at 5.2 GHz. Anyone who’s overclocked their CPU knows that 500 Mhz will make a difference but expectations should be tempered. That being said, this is probably what AMD’s Product and Business Development Manager, Martijn Boonstra, refers to in that the two processors will perform similarly in gaming, but that is far from the end of the story for the 9950X3D.
Per VideoGamer:
“There will be some games that perform a bit better (if the game engine utilizes more cores and threads), and some games will perform a little worse (if the game engine favors a 1CCD configuration), but on the whole the experience is comparable.”
AMD has relied on a software scheduler to direct gaming tasks to the CCD with the 3D V-Cache on its multi-CCD processors as needed. While effective this does mean those tasks are essentially running on half of the package. However, games that may not need the extra L3 cache such as strategy and simulations, do see improved performance by utilizing all the threads from both CCDs. The biggest trick comes down to the scheduler correctly identifying the needs of the game for the best performance, something that AMD continues to improve upon with each new generation. Meanwhile, productivity tasks on the 9950X3D and 9900X3D ought to exceed considerably when compared to the 9800X3D.