The launch of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D feels very close — and it might disappoint

We may not talk about feelings much when discussing the best processors, but a mountain of leaks and rumors have been swirling about AMD’s upcoming Ryzen 7 9800X3D — and they’re becoming too big to ignore. The most recent development is a post on the Chiphell forum (via Wccftech) that claims the processor will be announced on October 25, with a release in the first week of November.

On its own, this isn’t anything too exciting. We see claims about hardware launches all the time, but the past two weeks have been riddled with murmurs about what is undoubtedly AMD’s most-anticipated CPU this generation. Just a few days ago, a leaked slide from an internal MSI presentation pitted the Ryzen 7 9800X3D against last-gen’s Ryzen 7 7800X3D, and showed anywhere from a 2% to 13% improvement. The slides were originally shared by HardwareLuxx, but the post was removed, suggesting the images were probably real (VideoCardz has the images archived).

As if that wasn’t enough, a couple of weeks ago, YouTube channel Moore’s Law is Dead shared a slide from what looked like an AMD presentation showing the box design of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D. The design showed off mirrors an official AMD promotional item given to retailers around the launch of the Ryzen 9 9950X, adding some legitimacy. None of this is confirmed, but as someone who’s sat in on plenty of AMD presentations, the slide at least looks authentic.

All signs point to the Ryzen 7 9800X3D launching soon, be it in the next two weeks or the next two months — and that’s even ignoring the dwindling stock of the wildly popular Ryzen 7 7800X3D. Although release date rumors are rosy, performance and price expectations are anything but. The aforementioned MSI slide shows only a minor gain over the Ryzen 7 7800X3D in games, which is a tough sell given the rumored price of the CPU.

It will have an MSRP of $499.

— Sebastian Castellanos (@Sebasti66855537) October 15, 2024

Hardware leaker and tipster Sebastian Castellanos says that the Ryzen 7 9800X3D will come in at $499, which is $50 more than the list price of the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. Moreover, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D was widely available for just over $300 a month ago — before it strangely went out of stock at retailers. If the Ryzen 7 9800X3D comes with a price increase and only a minor bump in performance, it may not go over well.

We still don’t have anything official from AMD yet, though. If the launch of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is close — and it certainly seem that way — we should have all of the details before long. It’s worth noting that the rumored launch date is just a day after Intel’s Arrow Lake CPUs go on sale, suggesting that AMD might try to grab the limelight from Intel.