CPUs to buy instead of the Ryzen 9950X3D

The AMD Ryzen 9950X3D is the best all-round processor in the world. It's the top of the pile for gaming and it's competitive with the best of the best for productivity. But it is expensive, and even then it's so popular it's out of stock almost everywhere at the time of writing. You don't have to wait for that to change, though. There are some excellent alternative CPUs worth considering.

Here are some CPUs to buy instead of the 9950X3D.

Best for gaming

Ryzen 9800X3D

If you're predominantly looking for a new CPU for gaming, the 9800X3D is arguably a better buy over the 9950X3D, anyway. It's much cheaper, has comparable gaming performance -- and even beats the 9950X3D in some games -- and uses less power. You do miss out on the sky-high productivity performance, but it's not like it's bad. Eight Zen 5 cores with 3D V-Cache (with overclocking, if you want to go down that route) are still very quick for a whole range of tasks.

Gaming is where this chip really excels though, and outside of the 9950X3D, there's nothing that can compete with it. Save yourself some money and grab a more powerful graphics card. Your FPS will thank you.

Best for productivity

Intel Core Ultra 9 285K

The Intel Core Ultra 9 285K isn't an amazing CPU for gaming, but it's very impressive for productivity workloads. Video editing? A cinch. Blender rendering? Crazy fast. Video transcoding? Over in an instant. With 24 cores, there's nothing that can quite match the 285K when it comes to most demanding workloads. It's just very unimpressive at gaming, so this isn't a CPU for working in the day and gaming in your off hours. There are better options for that below.

But for pure working, the 285K is an excellent choice. It's far more efficient than its predecessors, and has support for advanced features like Thunderbolt 5 and Wi-Fi 7.

Best AMD CPU for productivity

AMD Ryzen 9950X

If you want a high performing CPU for work but don't want to jump camps to Intel, the AMD 9950X is an equally great option. It has 16 full-size Zen 5 cores, giving it fantastic multi-threaded performance -- and it's pretty nippy for games too. It won't keep up with any recent generation X3D options, but it's still a cutting-edge, flagship CPU. It's plenty fast.

But it's in demanding professional workloads where this CPU really stretches its legs. It can compete with the Intel 285K just about everywhere and it has a future upgrade path, as AMD will continue to support the AM5 socket for at least one more generation, possibly two.

The best equivalent

AMD Ryzen 7950X3D

If you want that do-it-all feel from your CPU, with cutting-edge gaming performance and plenty of high-performance cores for professional workloads, then the only real alternative to the new king, is the last-gen king: The 7950X3D.

This CPU still has 16 cores, though they're the slower Zen 4 type with lower clock speeds due to first-generation V-Cache. But it's still 16 cores and you still get that V-Cache, so this CPU is in the running for one of the fastest gaming CPUs in the world, and its productivity performance can keep up with some of the much newer alterantives.

It's still expensive, but this is a processor that's blazing fast in almost any setting and it's pretty efficient, too.