Review: AMD’s Ryzen 7 9850X3D is a little faster and a lot more power-hungry

AMD has released three distinct generations of its 3D V-Cache technology, which initially appeared in the Ryzen 7 5800X3D in 2022. The kernel of the idea has remained the same throughout AMD’s efforts: take an existing desktop processor design and graft 64MB of additional L3 cache onto it.

This approach disproportionately helps apps that benefit from more cache, particularly games, and the size of the boost that 3D V-Cache gives to game performance has always been enough to offset any downsides these chips have come with. And in the four years since the 5800X3D was released, AMD has steadily chipped away at those disadvantages, adding more CPU cores, improving power consumption and temperatures, and re-adding the typical Ryzen range of overclocking controls.

AMD’s new Ryzen 7 9850X3D, which launches for $499 starting tomorrow, is the very definition of a mild upgrade. It’s the year-old Ryzen 7 9800X3D but with an extra 400 MHz of turbo boost speed. That’s it. That’s the chip.

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