Amazon UK has a banger of a CPU deal for gamers right now, with AMD’s mighty Ryzen 7 9800X3D going for just £339.99. That’s a record low according to price trackers, and a good £28.98 cheaper than its previous lowest ever dip just last month. Given that this acclaimed CPU launched for £449.99, you’re getting a substantial discount on the original MSRP here.
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
£372.00 £339.99
“There’s little doubt that Ryzen 7 9800X3D is the best gaming processor on the market.” – Read our review.
While the 9800X3D has since been bettered by AMD’s Ryzen 7 9850X3D, which we now consider to be the best CPU for gaming, the only difference between these two chips is clock speed. The new chip can boost up to 5.5GHz, while the 9800X3D hits 5.2GHz out of the box. Crucially, though, the older CPU has the same cache structure.
This means there’s a colossal helping of extra L3 cache, thanks to a whole 64MB slice of the stuff sitting under its 8-core chiplet, which AMD calls 3D V-Cache. That’s what really makes this CPU so great for gaming, as it substantially reduces the chance of cache misses, which would require your PC to page its slower system memory to get data. That, in turn, means your CPU has a steady stream of data that enables it to focus on setting up frames for your GPU without interruption.
In our tests, we’ve found this extra cache has a significant impact on gaming, as you can see in our graph for Cyberpunk 2077 above. Not only is the 9800X3D substantially quicker than its predecessor, the 7800X3D, thanks to its new architecture and faster clock speed, but it’s also way ahead of any non-X3D chips. Even Intel’s hot and power-hungry Core i9-14900K is a good 27fps behind here, and that’s with the same GPU.
There is a word of warning, though, which is that, like all AMD AM5 chips, the 9800X3D only supports DDR5 RAM, which is painfully expensive right now. This could well be a part of the reason why it’s had a reduction in price.
If you already own an AM5 system, though, this chip is a perfect drop-in replacement to upgrade from an old Ryzen 5 7600X, or you could use your old memory from a DDR5 Intel Raptor Lake system if you have one.
If you need a new board, check out our guide to buying the best motherboard, where we take you through our favourite models to suit all budgets.
