AMD Ryzen 9 Pro 9965X3D Breaks Cover Revealing Specs

Well, well, well. It turns out AMD does have another Ryzen 9000X3D processor on the way besides the one it didn't announce at its CES 2025 keynote. "Yeah Zak," you're thinking. "It's the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2." That chip is probably still on the way, but it's not the topic of today's post. Instead, we're looking at something Mr. Gray spotted over at NBD Data, everyone's favorite shipping log service.


It's exactly as it appears: shipping logs for the AMD Ryzen 9 Pro 9965X3D. Well, what is that? Put simply, we don't actually know. However, based on the data, we can make some pretty educated conjectures.

The logs mention 16-core desktop CPUs and 170W. Those are both new for the desktop Ryzen PRO family. The current Ryzen PRO 9000 processors top out with the Ryzen 9 PRO 9945, which has twelve CPU cores, tops out at just 5.4 GHz, has a base clock of only 3.4 GHz, and a "default TDP" of 65W, which is AMD's way of saying that it will limit the power (and thus performance) of the CPU to stay under that value.

We don't have specs on the Ryzen 9 PRO 9965X3D, but based on the model number we can assume that it will be higher-performance than the Ryzen 9 PRO 9945. That's not hard to imagine, because based on the shipping log entry, it also has a 170W power limit—nearly triple that of the 9945 and identical to the standard Ryzen 9 9950X3D desktop CPU.

So, case closed; it's a Ryzen 9 9950X3D? Well, maybe. It's a little odd that AMD would give it a higher model number if it isn't going to be higher performance, but it would hardly be the first time; the Ryzen 7 PRO 9745 has a lower boost clock than the Ryzen 7 9700X, for example. It'll also likely include AMD's Platform Secure Boot (PSB) feature, which pops a fuse in the CPU the first time it is installed in a vendor mainboard that supports PSB. Once that fuse is popped, the chip will no longer boot in any other vendor's systems.


That makes these parts unattractive for resale, yet the "X3D" nature of this chip is curious. Very few professional and business tasks actively benefit from 3D V-Cache. As the name implies, it's well-suited for 3D games, and generally not necessary or even harmful (versus a non-X3D model with a higher CPU clock) for many professional workloads outside of the HPC arena. For the executive who simply demands the fastest desktop PC possible, this part may suffice, perhaps; there's no other 16-core Zen 5 processor with PSB and the other PRO features, so this ultimately becomes the best option.

AMD hasn't announced this CPU and we haven't heard a whisper about it through the grapevine. Most likely, it will be a small production run as a low-volume product. It would be interesting to get our hands on one and see how it compares in professional tasks versus a standard Ryzen 9 9950X, though.