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AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D review: obliterating the competition

An easy recommendation, even at $479.

Will Judd avatar
Review by Will Judd Deputy Editor, Digital Foundry
Published on

With the great testing machines finally falling silent, it's clear a new high-water mark has been set by the 9800X3D. It will be fascinating to see the margin of victory found by other reviewers, but I have no doubt whatsoever that the 9800X3D will be extremely well received. That's an absolute joy after two underwhelming CPU launches on the trot, and good news for consumers as this is an easy recommendation for a high-end gaming system.

As well as delivering the goods when it comes to gaming frame-rates, the 9800X3D is also a surprisingly good option for content creation, outperforming the stock 9700X by a decent margin - although consuming more power in the process. The 7900X, 7950X, 9900X and 9950X are all still better when it comes to all-core workloads like 3D modelling or video transcoding, but this improvement speaks to the clever new design AMD has adopted and makes the 9800X3D a good all-rounder.

The 9800X3D also performs impressively when it comes to gaming power efficiency, often drawing just a touch more power than the 9700X while delivering substantially better performance. Of course, a high-end GPU like the RTX 4090 draws a greater proportion of your system's power when gaming, but it's nice to see that the unreal performance numbers here aren't the result of a supremely toasty and power hungry processor.

Image credit: Digital Foundry

The only minor criticism I have here is pricing. With a £449/$479 RRP, the 9800X3D is still a good value compared to the likes of the $589 285K, but it's $30 more expensive than the 7800X3D was at launch - and far from the bargain that the discounted 7800X3D was just a few months ago. Since then, we've seen 7800X3D prices rise from around £300/$340 to a ludicrous £398/$476 as of the time of writing. I'm sure the 7800X3D will become a little more affordable after the 9800X3D is available - and (presumably positive) reviews hit - but I'm not sure we'll ever see the current fastest gaming CPU available at the £300 mark.

The good news is that AM5 motherboards are quite affordable these days, as are "sweet spot" DDR5-6000 RAM kits, so your total system spend is likely to considerably less than anyone considering a high-end Core Ultra 9 285K rig, for example. That takes the sting out of the tail somewhat, and in concert with the generally cool operation of this chip, means that you can probably afford to spend more of your budget on the CPU itself.

To sum up, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D continues the proud X3D tradition, delivering impeccable gaming performance while remaining relatively power-efficient and more or less affordable. The improved content creation performance and more favourable thermals are the icing on the cake. Well done, AMD.

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D analysis

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