The packaging for the new AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D has just been leaked, and if it’s genuine, it shows that both AMD and Intel are donning their goth outfits for the next generation of gaming CPU launches. The new 9800X3D is expected to be released imminently, and will pick up from where the acclaimed Ryzen 7 7800X3D left off, possibly with a higher clock speed.
The latter is currently the best gaming CPU you can buy, thanks to its use of AMD 3D V-cache, which we’ve found can significantly boost frame rates in games. However, with reported Ryzen 7 7800X3D stock shortages, a replacement is already sorely needed.
This latest rumor comes from tech YouTuber Moore’s Law is Dead, who claims to have been leaked the packaging and marketing materials for the new CPU. While Moore’s Law is Dead isn’t always the most accurate source of tech leaks, the marketing shown in the video below is definitely in AMD’s usual style for text and imagery, and the box art looks right too.
If this is genuine, it shows AMD adopting a similar strategy with the Intel Arrow Lake box art, with black playing a prominent part in the color scheme, as with the boxes for its other Zen 5 CPUs. The last Ryzen 7000 X3D chips all came in gray and orange boxes, but this new box appears to be swapping that for black, orange, and silver. Black is, erm, the new black, you could say.
Moore’s Law is Dead also makes several other claims about the marketing materials for the new CPU. One is that there are repeated references to it having 104MB of cache. That’s not surprising, though, if you add up the L2 cache (8 x 1MB), L3 cache (32MB), and 3D V-cache (64MB), you also come to same the total of 104MB on the Ryzen 7 7800X3D.
The leaked image also describes the 9800X3D as the “ultimate processor for elite gaming,” and Moore’s Law is Dead says there are also references to it being “designed for increased frequencies.” Could this mean that the 9800X3D has a fast clock speed, unlike the 7800X3D, which only boosts to 5GHz?
I hope so. The low clock speed is the one downside of the 7800X3D, and it’s always seemed odd that this well-optimized gaming CPU, which doesn’t have the inter-core cache latency issues of the Ryzen 9 7900X3D and 7950X3D, only had a comparably weak clock speed. Upping the frequency to a 5.7GHz boost clock could make it significantly quicker than the 7800X3D, particularly in games.
However, bear in mind that none of this has been officially confirmed by AMD, and that Moore’s Law is Dead doesn’t have the best reputation for accuracy, particularly after the YouTuber published a purported AMD Zen 5 slide, which later turned out to be a fake made by X (formerly Twitter) user Bionic Squash.
While you’re waiting for AMD’s next eight-core X3D gaming CPU to be released, you can also read up on the news about the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X3D, a six-core gaming CPU that’s rumored to be launching soon.