AMD Confirms Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition Price Ahead Of April 22 Release

AMD has finally revealed the price of the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition, so let's not waste any time: it's $899 USD. That is, of course, the suggested price, and retailers are free to price it higher, but $899 is already a pretty stiff ask for a chip that by AMD's own admission offers single-digit performance improvements over extant chips that cost $225 less.

If you're unaware, AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition is a unique product that many have clamored for ever since AMD introduced the first 3D V-Cache processor, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D. AMD's high-core-count desktop CPUs, the Ryzen 9 family, are constructed using two "CCDs", small chiplets that exclusively contain the CPU cores and their associated cache. To date, each CCD has included a maximum of eight cores, and that gets you sixteen in a dual CCD configuration.


However, all 3D V-Cache processors to date have attached the 64MB slab of SRAM cache to just one of the CCDS in dual-chip CPUs. The Ryzen 9 7900X3D, 7950X3D, 9900X3D, and 9950X3D have a single CCD with six or eight cores and 3D V-Cache alongside a 'standard' CCD without. This makes scheduling on those chips occasionally tricky; do you want to schedule on a core with extra cache, or do you want to schedule on a core that clocks a bit higher?

So it goes that we have the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition, a Ryzen processor that sports 3D V-Cache on both of its CPU chiplets. This increases the L3 cache of the processor by a further 64MB, raising it from a total of 128MB on previous "Ryzen 9 X3D" processors all the way up to 192 MB, a frankly unheard-of amount of CPU cache on a desktop CPU. Even some Threadripper and EPYC parts don't have that much L3 cache.


AMD says some tasks, particularly certain massively multi-threaded tasks like Data Science and code compilation, see significant uplifts on the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 versus the Ryzen 9 9950X3D—as much as 13% in SPEC Workstation. Those results will need independent verification, of course, but what we can say for sure is that the single-CCD Ryzen 7 9850X3D will likely remain the all-around gaming performance champion. If you don't need the multi-core grunt of sixteen Zen 5 CPUs, you don't need a Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition.

Of course, while it may not be the absolute fastest in every workload, a chip like this is likely to crush any task you throw at it with impressive performance overall, so there's an argument for buying "the best". Frankly, $899 is actually a fair whack cheaper than we expected it to be; many commentators were claiming a price of $1000 or even higher. AMD may be feeling the heat from Intel's new Core Ultra 200 Plus processors, which don't come particularly close to "X3D" CPUs in gaming, but they do beat AMD in a lot of multi-core work. For around $300, the comparison isn't flattering.

We're keen to see how AMD's new chip performs and we're looking to get one on the bench soon. Assuming that happens, stay tuned for a full comparison against the Ryzen 9 9950X3D as well as the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus.