AMD has quietly listed the Ryzen 7 9850X3D processor in its 'Drivers and Downloads' section (via Gray). With this official mention, the existence of the product is all but confirmed, and if the new CPU does exist, it could be the next best processor for gamers in this generation of CPUs.
AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor with eight cores running at up to 5.20 GHz with a 96MB last level cache already offers formidable performance in games. It has even inspired our Editor-in-Chief to call it the best gaming CPU. A higher product number almost certainly means higher performance, unless we are dealing with an OEM-specific SKU designed for a particular system.
Tom's Hardware has inquired about the new SKU, but due to the long weekend, we don't expect a quick response.
Now that TSMC's advanced packaging technologies enable AMD to place the extra SRAM tile below the compute tile itself, major thermal issues are solved and the way for higher CPU clocks is open. Also, now that the silicon is in production, it means better binning and tuned firmware for voltage and power delivery is available.
To that end, if Ryzen 7 9850X3D really arrives, we can expect a fine-tuned variant of the existing architecture — same 8 cores/16 threads and a large stacked L3 cache — but with enhanced boosting behavior and higher peak clock speeds when cooling allows. This would likely yield higher single-threaded performance and slightly improved responsiveness in workloads that care about latency or light-threaded bursts (e.g. gaming, UI tasks, light editing).
On the flip side, because higher clocks adds thermal density, sustained multicore workloads will require a more potent cooling system. That means while occasional bursts and quick tasks improve, heavy-duty throughput under long loads likely remains similar to the current model.
In general, it looks like the upgrade targets feel and real-world responsiveness rather than raw parallel compute, otherwise the CPU would move to a 12-core Ryzen 9 league that has different rules both in marketing terms of performance and actual consumer expectation.
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