AMD Ryzen 9800X3D leak shows it runs at 5.6GHz on all cores – could this be the CPU that takes out Intel in PC gaming?

When you buy through links in our articles, Future and its distribution partners may earn a commission.

AMD’s Ryzen 7 9800X3D has impressive potential to be tuned to astonishing levels of performance, or that’s the latest rumor (among many) surrounding the soon-to-be-released Zen 5 processor.

Wccftech discovered that on the Anandtech forums, Igor Kavinski leaked some benchmark scores for the Ryzen 9800X3D. They come complete with CPU-Z clock speed details and notes on the processor configuration used to achieve the revealing boost clock shown – that is, just over 5.6GHz across all eight cores.

The Ryzen 9800X3D (likely a pre-release engineering sample chip) was turbocharged to these levels using Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) and Curve Optimizer (CO), plus a series of other manual CPU tweaks by Kavinski. We can guess that the cooler used was also a cutting-edge effort, which explains the arrival of 5.6 GHz, which is quite notable across all processor cores.

To put that into perspective, the 9800X3D’s supposed all-core boost is 5.2GHz out of the box (without tuning), although it’s still much faster than the 7800X3D (at 4.8GHz).

Returning to the benchmarks shown, one is from Cinebench R23 and the Ryzen 9800X3D also does well here, with a score of 2,261 in single-core and 25,258 in multi-core. As Wccftech points out, for the latter, the Ryzen 7800X3D typically sits between 18,000 and 19,000, so this would seem to indicate that this (heavily amplified) 9800X3D could be a good 30% faster when it comes to non-gaming performance.

As for gaming, a Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail benchmark is displayed here, showing a score of 62,360 (but the GPU the 9800X3D was paired with is not shared). We don’t have comparisons for the 7800X3D there, but the general reaction to the result is that it’s again impressive – as you’d expect from the update that’s happened here.

Analysis: Trying to guess the true generational rise

Clearly, we need to keep in mind that not every Ryzen 9800X3D buyer will go as far as Kavinski did here – many won’t – and there are unknowns like the cooling configuration and how sophisticated it was. So benchmark leaks need to be interpreted with a healthy dose of skepticism, but just seeing that all-core boost has reached this level is promising.

Looking at the gains here, we can anticipate (read: guess) that out of the box – with standard cooling and no CPU tuning – we could see the 9800X3D be around 10%, or possibly even 15%, faster than the 7800X3D for games. And much more than that for everyday use away from PC gaming – as this isn’t the only leak that suggests the X3D’s overall performance has been seriously improved with Zen 5. Mainly because AMD appears to have resolved the issue of clock speeds will be retained by that 3D V-Cache with the 9800X3D (and by extension the other X3D chips for Zen 5 when they arrive later).

We can certainly be broadly optimistic about a decent increase in performance, both in gaming and overall, given that we’re (supposedly) getting a big boost in clock speeds in addition to the generational gains for the Zen 5 X3D at the top. (Although some other leaks have described a darker situation – a spill that you need to take with a grain of salt, in our opinion).

Whatever the final generational performance boost, the other vital part of the equation will be price – will the 9800X3D sell for $449 (in the US, and commensurate with that elsewhere), as its predecessor did? Or will AMD charge a little less than that? The latter is probably going too far with optimism, but the point remains: any performance increase we get from the 9800X3D will need to be viewed through the lens of MSRP, naturally.

AMD has confirmed that the Ryzen 9000X3D will arrive on November 7, 2024 – all rumors point to this being just the Ryzen 9800X3D CPU, with a possible reveal in just a few days. The 9800X3D is obviously highly anticipated as the successor to the popular 7800X3D (which has now practically disappeared from the shelves), with the hope that it will eliminate some of the bad taste that the Ryzen 9000 launch has. left (in the mouths of PC gamers, at least).

You may also like