Meet the AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D, a new budget gaming CPU with a big catch

AMD has just quietly launched a new budget gaming CPU with 3D V-cache, and you won't need a brand new Socket AM5 motherboard to run it either. The new AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D has six cores and is based on the aging Zen 3 architecture, with lower clock speeds than the 5600X3D, but that huge extra helping of cache is still likely to make it a decent gaming chip. Is there a catch? Why, of course there is.

As we found in our AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D review, that massive 64MB slice of cache can have a significant impact on gaming performance, making this eight-core chip the best gaming CPU you can buy right now, and this new AMD CPU could end up being a great budget upgrade option for owners of older Socket AM4 systems. In fact, even if your motherboard is a first-gen Ryzen model from 2017, there's still a good chance you'll be able to update the BIOS and install this new CPU.

There is one red flag, however, which is that AMD has launched this CPU on the quiet, and there's a clue to the reason on the website, which only lists the regional availability as "LATAM." This suggests that the CPU will only be available in Latin America.

We've reached out to AMD for clarification, but this wouldn't be the first time AMD has launched a new X3D CPU with limited regional availability either, with the Ryzen 5 7600X3D only available in the US at one retailer, for example, and AMD also adopted this strategy with its US-only Ryzen 5 5600X3D launch.

These are the Ryzen 5 5500X3D specifications:

The new CPU is now listed on AMD's website, as spotted by MEGAsizeGPU in a post on X (formerly Twitter), where you can find details of the specs. The Ryzen 5 5500X3D has the same amount of cache as the 5600X3D, giving it a huge 96MB total of L3 cache, and it also has the same six cores, with 12 threads via SMT. Where the 5500X3D significantly differs from the 5600X3D is when it comes to clock speed, with both the base clock and boost clock being a good 300MHz slower than the 5600X3D, at 3GHz and 4.3GHz, respectively.

That's already a low starting point, given that the new Ryzen 7 9800X3D can boost to 5.2GHz, and the 5600X3D's boost clock is also already below the 4.5GHz of the eight-core Ryzen 7 5800X3D. Even so, if the price is right, this could still be a tempting upgrade for owners of AM4 motherboards, as the large cache really helps gaming performance, particularly when it comes to minimum frame rates, as it reduces the frequency with which the CPU has to call the system memory.

There's no word on price yet either, but it's likely to be reasonably priced with these specs - we'd expect the AMD Ryzen 5 5500X3D price to be around $199 if it launched in the US, but this is pure speculation.

In the meantime, if you're thinking it's time for an upgrade, check out our guide to the best gaming motherboard to support your new chip, as well as our tutorial on how to install a CPU, which guides you through the whole process.

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