AMD confirms 9000X3D release date, but one question remains

AMD just made a surprise announcement regarding its upcoming processors, but it leaves us with two major questions: What’s coming, and how much will it cost? The release date was announced to be November 7, but we’re unsure which chips are coming on that date. While details are very scarce, the first listings of the CPU emerged, giving us an idea of the kind of pricing we could expect. We’re also seeing more and more benchmarks of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D.

We knew this was coming, but AMD still surprised us. Various reports claimed that AMD would unveil the Ryzen 7 9800X3D on October 25, meaning one day after Intel launches Core Ultra 200-S processors. However, AMD broke the news today (as spotted by Tom’s Hardware), but the announcement is more vague than ever. It’s unclear which CPUs are coming in particular, as AMD hasn’t specified which X3D model will hit the shelves on November 7. The company may still say more on the matter on October 25.

In all likelihood, the first CPU to arrive will be the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, which gets an increasing number of leaks every single day. We’re now seeing a few retailers jumping the gun and listing the CPU early.

As spotted by harukaze5719 on X (formerly Twitter), Shop BLT listed the 9800X3D for $525. Considering that the 7800X3D launched at $450, that’s a pretty steep price increase. Things might not be as bad as all that, though, because Tech America (via momomo_us) lists the CPU at a considerably more acceptable price of $484. That’s still a price hike, but it’s far more reasonable.

What’s the ideal price for the 9800X3D? It’s hard to say because the 7800X3D is all but sold out everywhere, so the demand is consistently high — opening the door for a more expensive successor to the world’s best gaming CPU. On the other hand, the 9700X launched at $360, and it’s hard to say just how big a boost the 9800X3D will provide in terms of synthetic benchmarks. Of course, its gaming performance is almost certain to be much better.

According to benchmarks shared on the Anandtech forums by users such as Igor_Kavinski and itsmydamnation, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D may come with an impressive clock speed increase. The CPU has been spotted running at up to 5.7GHz, marking an improvement over the 7800X3D, which maxed out at 5GHz. These scores were achieved on an engineering sample with Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) enabled. The screenshot also shows that the PC was running Windows 10 22H2, so it’s possible that the score might yet go up, given that Zen 5 CPUs perform better after a recent Windows Update.

The CPU was also spotted hitting 25,258 points in the Cinebench R23 multi-core test, beating both the 9700X and the 7800X3D, but — unsurprisingly — falling miles behind the likes of the Core i9-14900K. However, given the powerful 3D V-Cache, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D should still do a great job in gaming scenarios. The question is not whether it will do well, but how big a boost it’ll provide over its predecessor.

Another leak, this time spotted by VideoCardz, shows the base frequency for the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, and there’s an improvement there too. MaxSun listed the CPU with a base clock of 4.7GHz, which is a lot more than the 3.8GHz provided by the 9700X.

It won’t be long until we know the final specs of the CPU, and until then, it’s important to take all of the above with some skepticism. AMD has also announced a price cut for the rest of the Zen 5 lineup today.