The price for the AMD Ryzen 9850X3D – the world's fastest gaming CPU on Windows 11 – has been revealed.

At CES 2026, AMD announced a range of new mobile products, including the Ryzen 400 Series processors and several powerful Max+ APUs. While these APUs focus heavily on productivity and AI performance, AMD also drew attention by introducing a new desktop processor, which the company confidently claims is the 'world's fastest gaming CPU'.

 

AMD announces release date and pricing for Ryzen 7 9850X3D.

Just a few weeks later, AMD announced the official release date for this CPU: January 29th, along with a price of $499.

The Ryzen 7 9850X3D has a very similar configuration to its predecessor, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D. This chip still boasts 8 cores and 16 threads, a 120W TDP, and a total cache size of 104MB. The biggest difference lies in the clock speed, with AMD increasing it by 400 MHz, resulting in a slight performance advantage and also the reason for the approximately $20 higher price.

In terms of basic specifications, the Ryzen 7 9850X3D has a base clock speed of 4.7 GHz, a maximum boost clock speed of 5.6 GHz, 104MB of cache memory, and a TDP of 120W, with a suggested retail price of $499.

Since the difference is almost entirely in clock speed, don't expect the Ryzen 7 9850X3D to deliver a huge performance jump over the Ryzen 7 9800X3D. Benchmarks published by AMD itself show improvements mainly in some e-sports titles and older games like GTA V or Far Cry 6.

One notable point is that AMD's new generation X3D CPUs now support overclocking. This means that if you get a good chip, you can push the performance of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D close to that of the 9850X3D, despite the lower price.

The Ryzen 7 9850X3D uses the AM5 socket, making it compatible with current AM5 motherboards and DDR5 memory. However, if you're using an older motherboard, you may need to update your UEFI/BIOS before installing the new CPU after its release date of January 29th. If you're not overly concerned about clock speeds exceeding 400 MHz, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D at $469 remains a very worthwhile option.

 

AMD claims the Ryzen 9850X3D is the world's fastest gaming CPU on Windows 11.

AMD's X3D CPUs are already renowned for their massive L3 cache capacity. When the operating system can effectively utilize this vertically stacked cache, overall performance – especially in games – can be significantly improved.

Compared to the Ryzen 9800X3D, the new Ryzen 9850X3D boasts a higher boost clock speed, reaching a maximum of 5.6 GHz, while the 9800X3D only goes up to 5.2 GHz. AMD did not announce the base clock speed during the press conference, but stated that users can expect up to 27% higher average gaming performance compared to the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K – the flagship mainstream desktop chip from AMD as of 2025.

 

The remaining core specifications of the Ryzen 9850X3D are virtually unchanged from the 9800X3D, suggesting it's more of a refresh than a groundbreaking upgrade. Even so, AMD is likely to continue its success with the 9850X3D, similar to what it achieved with the 9800X3D, 9950X3D, and most previous processors using 3D V-Cache technology.

According to benchmark charts published by AMD, the Ryzen 9850X3D demonstrates a significant performance gap over the Core Ultra 9 285K in many CPU-intensive games such as Baldur's Gate 3, Counter-Strike 2, Hogwarts Legacy, and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2. All tests were conducted on Windows 11 version 24H2.

Besides gaming, AMD also shared some productivity benchmark results. The company frankly admitted that the Ryzen 9850X3D performed significantly worse than the Ultra 9 285K in V-Ray – a professional CPU rendering and modeling software. However, in many other tests, AMD's new chip still competed quite well with its Intel counterpart.

The Ryzen 9850X3D is expected to be available this quarter.