Performance figures emerge for the Ryzen 7 9800X3D ahead of release and it's already beginning to make me regret buying a 7800X3D a couple of weeks ago

1 day ago 22

(Image credit: Future)

Post Prime Day, I happened to spot a deal on a gaming PC that just felt a little too good not to grab. Coming with a Ryzen 7 7800X3D and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super, I'm very happy with its performance in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and the litany of mid-'00s RPGs I've been nostalgic for. While I don't regret my purchase, recently leaked Ryzen 7 9800X3D benchmarks suggest the reliable 7800X3D will be knocked off the top as the best gaming CPU.

As pointed out by Igor's Lab, noting leaked Geekbench stats, the CPU manages to achieve a single-core score of 3339 and a multicore score of 18658 in Geekbench 6.3.0. These scores work out to be around 25% better than the previous model.

These Geekbench results were first logged on October 26 and used the Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero motherboard, alongside 32 GB of DDR5 RAM.

German website Benchlife.info also reports that the Ryzen 7 9800X3D would have a clock of 4.7 GHz and a boosted clock of 5.2 GHz, which matches those found in Geekbench. It's a touch slower than the Ryzen 7 9700X, at 5.5 GHz, though that's not a major concern for gaming.

X3D chips are specifically and pointedly good for gaming, due to the huge amount of extra cache stored close to the cores. In our Ryzen 7 7800X3D review last year, we loved its gaming performance, power efficiency, and heat dissipation, but noted that it is comparably weak in broader productivity uses.

The boost seen in these Geekbench stats for the 9800X3D are, notably, not indicative of the full performance of the chip, especially if you use it for mostly gaming, but a healthy boost in productivity stats is great to see.

The chip itself launches on November 7, and we will be doing our full benchmarks and analysis then, so make sure to keep an eye out for those before you commit to the purchase. However, I really don't expect myself to be too jealous of the new chip, not because I think it won't live up to the hype, but because it can be quite tough to get these new processors bang on launch, and for the price I'm looking to pay.

Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.

Even if you aren't looking to make the upgrade to a Ryzen 79800X3D when it launches, the new chip coming out might just make older processors a little more budget-friendly in time for Black Friday. With the new set of Intel CPUs out now, the X3D refresh coming soon, and the RTX 50 series likely to be announced next year, now is a very exciting time to be a PC gamer.

James is a more recent PC gaming convert, often admiring graphics cards, cases, and motherboards from afar. It was not until 2019, after just finishing a degree in law and media, that they decided to throw out the last few years of education, build their PC, and start writing about gaming instead. In that time, he has covered the latest doodads, contraptions, and gismos, and loved every second of it. Hey, it’s better than writing case briefs.