AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D might cost more than expected
AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3D is most likely right around the corner, and early listings of the CPU give us a glimpse of the kind of pricing we can expect.
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Jacob Roach / Digital Trends
The increasing number of leaks centered around the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D tell us one thing — AMD’s best processor for gaming is right around the corner. And today, the first listings of the CPU emerged, giving us an idea of the kind of pricing we could expect. While they’re a bit all over the place, they’re all showing us one thing: a price increase. Meanwhile, leaked benchmarks reveal a high boost clock speed.
It might feel like it’s a bit early for the 9800X3D to appear in the wild, but murmurs around the CPU all say that AMD will be announcing the chip this week — one day after Intel’s Core Ultra 200-S release. With the 9800X3D reported to have a release date in the first week of November, we’re now seeing a few retailers jumping the gun and listing the CPU early.
ShopBLTAs 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.
Users on Anandtech forumsAccording 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.
Monica is a computing writer at Digital Trends, focusing on PC hardware. Since joining the team in 2021, Monica has written…
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