Amazon UK has just slashed the price of AMD’s fastest 8-core gaming CPU, with the Ryzen 7 9850X3D now sitting at just £339.99 – £110 below the launch MSRP of £449.99. Amazingly, that means it’s currently £20 cheaper than its predecessor, the 9800X3D, despite offering a faster clock speed, with price trackers saying this is the lowest ever price for this chip at Amazon UK.
AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D
£379.99 £339.99
“The Ryzen 7 9850X3D is the new prime cut of gaming silicon for enthusiasts.“ – Read our review.
That extra clock frequency is the main reason to choose the Ryzen 7 9850X3D, as it can boost to up to 5.6GHz. That gives it a healthy 400MHz advantage over the 9800X3D’s 5.2GHz, and an even bigger 600MHz bonus over the 7800X3D.
That means you have a double-whammy when it comes to gaming performance. Not only do you have that super-fast 5.6GHz boost clock, but you also have a massive helping of L3 cache, thanks to AMD’s 3D V-Cache tech. This means AMD has put a whole 64MB chip full of cache below this CPU’s 8-core chiplet, giving it a total L3 cache allocation of 96MB.
Add the two together and you have a beast of a CPU when it comes to frame rates, which is why this chip is listed as the best CPU for gaming on our buying guide. As you can see in the graph above, the 9800X3D is already a good cut above its Zen 4 predecessors in games such as Final Fantasy XIV, but the 9850X3D is even faster.
The difference isn’t always massive – in Cyberpunk 2077, for example, the 9850X3D was only 1fps quicker than the 9800X3D. However, when the new chip is £20 cheaper than the older one, it’s a no brainer. The extra clock speed makes it quicker at work tasks than the 9800X3D as well, with a Cinebench 24 single-core score of 142, compared with 133 on the 9800X3D.
This CPU can get hotter than its predecessor when it’s running at full pelt, though, so you want to make sure it has as much thermal headroom as possible so it can hit those boost clocks. Check out our guide to buying the best CPU cooler to see our top picks here.
Unsurprisingly, Amazon says this deal is selling fast, so if you’re thinking of buying a 9850X3D, I’d recommend grabbing it sooner rather than later while it’s on offer.
