AMD Tipped to Launch Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU In November

AMD launched its Zen 5-based Ryzen 9000 series CPUs in August, and Intel announced its Core Ultra 200 series platform yesterday. Therefore, the only shoe left to drop in the CPU world for upgraders to consider is AMD’s Zen 5 X3D CPUs. Although AMD typically waits about six months to launch these so they don’t steal sales from its non-X3D chips, there’s now a rumor AMD wants to kick sand in Intel’s face and launch the Ryzen 9000 X3D immediately. It will be faster in games than Intel’s just-announced Core Ultra 200 series chips, too, according to Intel.

The latest rumor about the 9800X3D launch is based on now-deleted comments from an AMD employee on Chinese social site Bilibili. This person allegedly stated AMD would bring the Ryzen 7 9800X3D to market in the first week of November. According to Videocardz, the company might even announce the CPU on Oct. 25, one day after Intel’s Core Ultra 200 series CPUs go on sale. If that’s the case, it means AMD has drastically altered its launch plans for Ryzen 9000 X3D.

AMD has good reason to do this: Intel’s Core Ultra 200 launch showed it can only offer “parity” with the current Core i9-14900K in gaming. AMD’s current Ryzen 7 7800X3D is already faster in gaming than that CPU, so AMD could really bring the hammer down on Intel by launching the 9800X3D right now when the gaming community is seemingly unsatisfied with the gaming performance of both Zen 5 and Core Ultra 200.

There’s good reason to believe AMD’s Zen 5 X3D chips will dominate in gaming once again too. Intel’s own Robert Hallock, who used to work for AMD but is now the technical director for Intel’s client CPUs, admitted its Core Ultra 200 chips will be slower than AMD’s Ryzen 7000X3D CPUs. In a Q&A for Core Ultra 200 with the media, he was asked about its performance compared to the Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, which was not included in the benchmark slides. Hallock admitted the Ryzen 7 7800X3D is faster by about 5% but stated he still feels good about the Core Ultra 200 because of its generational gains and overall performance.

Adding fuel to this rumor’s believability is that an alleged Ryzen 7 9800X3D has already been spotted running Cinebench via HXL on X (formerly Twitter). The screenshot shows an all-core clock frequency of 5.2GHz, which is 400MHz higher than the 7800X3D. It seems possible this chip will extend AMD’s lead in gaming even further since Intel is punting this round, so it has every reason in the world to launch it now, even though it will likely kill sales of its non-X3D CPUs.