We’re just three days away from the official launch of the AMD Ryzen 9000X3D range, with the 9800X3D expected to be the flagship product of the new gaming CPU range. As we get ever closer to that launch, leaks of official images and performance data are arriving at a steady rate, with the latest leak reportedly showing AMD’s official figures for the expected performance of the new chip.
With this processor firmly expected to be the new best gaming CPU option you can buy, hype has been huge in the lead-up to its launch, with rife speculation about its performance. We’ve already seen Intel admit its own upcoming Core Ultra 200 CPUs won’t beat it, and seen several other AMD 9800X3D benchmark leaks, but today’s leak is reportedly of AMD‘s own official figures, and it also includes several other key details about the new chip.
The source of this information is regular tech news/leaks site, Videocardz.com, which claims it has received AMD’s apparent official launch documentation. In this information, we can see that AMD claims the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is the “world’s fastest gaming processor” and that it includes “next generation” 3D V-Cache – a fact mentioned in another leak about the 9800X3D box art, yesterday.
The documentation then goes on to point out that the 9800X3D has a 16% IPC (instructions per clock) increase. It doesn’t specify what that increase is being compared to, but the reasonable inference is that it means the 7800X3D. It also claims the 9800X3D offers an 8% “generational boost” in game performance and a 15% multi-threaded content creation performance increase.
These figures would represent a decent performance increase in the grand scheme of things, though a significantly lower increase than we saw for gamers upgrading from a 5800X3D to the 7800X3D. However, that upgrade also came with a change from DDR4 to DDR5 RAM, and generally such large leaps aren’t typical.
The leak also elaborates a little on what AMD means by a next generation of 3D V-Cache. It details that the extra L3 cache die that’s sandwiched onto the CPU die allows for better thermal performance and higher clock speeds compared to previous implementations. Specifically, this reportedly results in an official peak clock speed of 5.2GHz, up from the 5GHz peak of the 7800X3D. It also makes clear that the extra cache die has the same 64MB capacity as previous X3D chips, making for a 96MB total of L3 cache.
Other details mentioned are the expected support for AM5 motherboards and coolers, with no need to change either to use the new chips – motherboard BIOS update notwithstanding – and support for DDR5 memory.
All told, this latest leak just adds to the general sense that the 9800X3D will be a fantastic gaming CPU, and one that will perhaps be even better as an all-around CPU than previous X3D chips as well. Assuming the leak, and the many previous ones, turns out to be true. All that remains to be seen – other than how we find this chip’s performance in our own testing – is just how much AMD will charge for this CPU. If it costs any more than $50 over the 7800X3D then it won’t look like great value.
To get yourself primed for this potentially exciting CPU upgrade, check out our best CPU cooler guide to equip your system with a cooler that’ll keep this chip cool and your system quiet.