AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D vs 9900X3D: What’s the difference?

At CES 2025, AMD announced two new top-tier CPUs, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Ryzen 9 9900X3D. This reveal comes only a few months after the impressive Ryzen 9 9800X3D flagship debuted. Such rapid fire CPU launches are giving PC gamers a lot of options for their 2025 builds, and either one of these new chips will no doubt be a superb choice to combine with a 5090 or 5080 Those planning to build a no-holds-barred machine should start shopping now.

But before you do that, let’s compare the specs of the new AMD X3D processors, including power consumption and cooling requirements, so you can see which one suits your needs best.

Below you'll find the specs of the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Ryzen 9 9900X3D. We've also included the aforementioned Ryzen 9 9800X3D for a spot of additional context.

Of course, as these have only just been announced, there are no independent benchmarks to look at right now, but the specs do allow for some educated guesses as to the performance comparisons.

Unsurprisingly, AMD's new top-dog has the highest TDP, cache size, turbo frequency, core, and thread count, which heavily suggests that it will be the new gaming CPU of choice for those to whom price is truly no object. Even the new middle-child, the 9900X3D, has been given what seems to be a generous upgrade in the short time since the 9800X3D was released.

Given the benefits of AMD's 3D V-Cache technology, a 40MB and 36MB increase in cache capacity over the 9800X3D (for the 9950X3D and 9900X3D, respectively) should translate into higher performance. Given that you're here, it's a safe bet that you're into gaming, and a large cache, particularly one of AMD's 3D V ones does have a reliably impressive benefit to gaming performance.

This is valuable especially to those who like games with a lot of complex stuff going on, like Cities: Skylines, Manor Lords, Civilization VII, or Anno 1800. These sort of real-time strategy games are heavier on the CPU over the GPU, even more so if you crank the settings for a more detailed simulation.

At time of writing, we don't have any pricing information, but one can expect significant price increases, which hopefully corresponds with the performance increases. Then again if you're after the newest, most powerful CPUs right at release, you've probably already mentally prepared to part with an amount of cash already.

With great performance, comes great heat and power consumption. Luckily, we have you covered for both here at CORSAIR. Luckier still is that the new 9950X3D and 9900X3D do not require any new cooler compatibility concerns as any AM5 cooler will work fine. The TITAN 360 RX RGB is a great choice here, so is the NAUTILUS 360 RS for those who care not for RGB lighting and would like to save a buck or two.

Powering the 9950X3D or 9900X3D is a bit more of an involved process, especially the former with it's considerable 170W TDP. This is especially true if you're planning to pair it with a worthy GPU, such as the new Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 or 5080. We'd recommend something with 1000 watts as a minimum to be safe and a touch future proof, too.

The RM1000x and RM1200x SHIFT are great choices here. Both are totally compatible with the newest NVIDIA GPUs and have enough capacity for a complete system with the latest components. Our PSU Calculator can help with this, too.