The fastest gaming CPU now has a very, very, very, very, very, very, very slightly faster replacement

The Ryzen 7 9850X3D is a mid-gen tune-up

In what has become CPU tradition, AMD have announced a new fastest-ever gaming processor to replace their last fastest-ever gaming processor. The newcomer, detailed at CES 2026, is the Ryzen 7 9850X3D, which actually shares the same architecture, socket, core and thread counts, and power usage rating as the erstwhile big dog, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D. It’s mainly a quicker maximum boost clock, up from 5.2GHz to 5.6GHz, that grants it a performance edge.

And cor, what a fine edge it is. By AMD’s reckoning, the Ryzen 7 9850X3D averages 27% better framerate results in games than Intel’s best offering, the Core Ultra 9 285K. The Ryzen 7 9800X3D? 24% better. Destroyed in seconds.

The 9850X3D is out in Q1 2026, i.e. between January and March. There’s no pricing info yet, so we don’t know much extra that 3% will cost ya, though it’s probably worth noting that CPUs have seemingly been spared from the stock disaster currently engulfing RAM and SSDs (and threatening to drag in graphics cards while it’s at it). As such, any big bump over the Ryzen 7 9800X3D’s $479 launch price would be, at best, extremely cheeky. Here be specs, in any case:

AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D specs

• Architecture: Zen 5
• Socket: AM5
• Cores: 8
• Threads: 16
• Base clock: 4.7GHz
• Max boost clock: 5.6GHz
• L1 cache: 640KB
• L2 cache: 8MB
• L3 cache: 96MB
• TDP: 120W
• Max temp: 95°c

Speaking of the 9800X3D, any healthy computer-owning mind should keep a guard up around superlatives, but I’ve got one in the RPS Test Rig and it kinda is the fastest gaming CPU. Or, at least, it was. Now that there’s a newer version, I’ve naturally had to spend the morning berating it for its idleness and incompetence, which is why this post is only going live several hours after AMD’s announcement.