AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D review: obliterating the competition

Our Ryzen 9000 reviews this summer heralded the debut of our new DF benchmarking system, based on performance capture from CapFrameX and bespoke game integrations. It's a pretty cool system that now supports 11 titles - including three recent RPGs which have emerged as some of the most CPU-demanding titles in recent times.

You're more than welcome to scroll on, but it's worth noting that our benchmark results are presented a little differently to what you might be used to elsewhere on the internet. On mobile browsers, you'll get a basic overview, with metadata from the PresentMon-based capture of each CPU generating simple bar charts with average frame-rate and lowest one per cent measurements for easy comparisons.

On a desktop-style browser, you'll get a fancier arrangement: an interactive bar chart with average frame-rates and highest/lowest one percent scores, with the option to click to swap between absolute and percentage measurements. You can also see live frame metrics when you hit play on the embedded YouTube video.

Dragon's Dogma 2

Dragon's Dogma 2 is a great game that can run surprisingly poorly in some areas both on PC and console, with cities being noticeably more taxing than smaller settlements and rural locations. DLSS performance mode helps keep this title CPU-limited, but you'll see similar degrees of CPU bottlenecking even on less aggressive settings.

This is also the first title in which the 9800X3D takes the top spot overall, outperforming the previous winner - the Core i9 14900K - by a significant 14.5 percent margin at 1080p. This means that the advantage over the 7800X3D is a surprisingly high 17 percent, while there's a 46 percent improvement over the venerable 5800X3D.

Baldur's Gate 3

Another fantasy RPG, another game that runs brilliantly in the wilderness and the one-horse towns... and slows down considerably once you hit the big city. We're again using a bespoke game integration for our route through Baldur's Gate, and here the 9800X3D records a frame-rate nearly 25 percent higher than the 7800X3D. The 9800X3D is also much faster than the Core i9 14900K, with a 43 percent margin of victory for the new AMD chip in these extremely CPU-limited run.

Starfield

Our third fly-through is in a slightly more exotic but no less demanding location of Akila City from Starfield. We see a similar 24 percent improvement for the 9800X3D over the 7800X3D, though Intel's 14900K and Core 285K are actually the second and third-fastest CPUs on average in our Starfield testing. Here, the margin is around 12 to 14 percent in favour of the new AMD chip.

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D analysis

• Introduction, test rig and content creation benchmarks
• Gaming benchmarks: Dragon's Dogma 2, Baldur's Gate 3, Starfield [this page]
• Gaming benchmarks: Flight Simulator 2020, F1 24, Forza Horizon 5
• Gaming benchmarks: Counter-Strike 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Crysis 3 Remastered
• Gaming benchmarks: Far Cry 6, Hitman World of Assassination
• Power analysis: Counter-Strike 2, Far Cry 6, Forza Horizon 5
• RAM gaming benchmarks: Cyberpunk 2077, Far Cry 6, Flight Sim 2020
• AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D: the Digital Foundry verdict