Forget for a moment that PC memory and storage prices are getting out of control. If you’re building a new gaming PC or upgrading and existing one, you could do a lot worse than assembling a system around AMD’s spunky Ryzen 7 9800X3D (see our review). It’s a stout chip for gaming, and even better, it’s on sale for the lowest price it’s ever been.
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Slashed To $419.95 For A New All-Time Low Price
Based on Zen 5, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is an 8-core/16-thread chip with a 4.7GHz base clock and up to 5.2GHz boost clock. It also sports 8MB of L2 cache and a generous heaping of 96MB of L3 cache, for 104MB of total cache.
It’s the boosted L3 cache courtesy of AMD’s second-generation 3D V-Cache that makes this chip such a capable gaming CPU. Yes, it’s been supplanted by the Ryzen 9 9850X3D with a higher boost frequency, but it remains a great option with close to the same performance.
How does it stack up to Intel’s Arrow Lake Refresh parts, though? Let’s have a look at some benchmarks…
Plucking a couple of Monster Hunter Wilds results from our Arrow Lake Refresh review that went live this morning, we see the Ryzen 7 9850X3D sitting at the top. We don’t have Ryzen 7 9800X3D results in the same graphs, but you can expect similar performance. Also note that this is only a partial snapshot, though gaming on the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is quite good in most titles.
The Ryzen 7 9850X3D, meanwhile, is listed for $485 at Amazon. That’s a $65 (plus a nickel) price difference, which in today’s landscape might be better applied to RAM or storage, if you’re in need of either one.
Here are a few more CPU deals worth checking out…