The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 price is finally revealed, and it's higher than we feared

The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 price is now official. The new flagship AMD CPU that takes its already powerful, 16-core monster, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, and adds a second 3D V-Cache die will set you back a cool $899, making it AMD's most expensive AM5 gaming CPU to date.

This hefty price tag means the 9950X3D2 is $200 more expensive than the 9950X3D, despite AMD admitting during its 9950X3D announcement video that it likely won't be much faster than that chip in games. Instead, the 9950X3D and 9850X3D are set to remain the two best gaming CPU choices for most. However, if you're after a CPU that's incredibly capable at a wide variety of tasks, and want the bragging rights of such a monster of a chip, now you know how much you'll have to pay to get one.

In terms of specs, the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition - to give it its full name - is the ultimate possible version of a Ryzen X3D CPU based on the company's current technology. It takes the maximum of two eight-core CPU dies that currently fit in an AM5 Ryzen CPU package then puts a 64MB cache die underneath each of those CPU core dies, giving every core access to a massive, ultra-fast supply of data.

In contrast, up until this chip, AMD had only ever added one extra cache die to its X3D CPUs, which it did for two reasons. The first is cost. The extra cache die itself, and the extra work needed to precisely place the CPU die on top of the cache, mean its X3D processors are already inherently much pricier than its non-X3D chips that don't include this cache die. Adding a second cache die would add as much again.

The other reason is the one alluded to earlier, which is that adding a cache die to both eight-core dies simply doesn't bring that much extra performance. For gaming and other applications that tend to use fwere than eight cores, the one cache die for one set of eight cores is plenty to speed up performance, assuming the game and Windows correctly assign the game to run on the faster X3D cores. For applications that do use more than eight cores, there is some performance uplift, as shown below, but it's not huge.

Part of the reason for this is that the second cache die doesn't really further improve performance for cores that already have access to X3D: there's no cumulative effect here. A core either has access to the extra cache and the extra speed it provides, or it doesn't.

Regardless, the new CPU should still be mighty fast in a wide variety of situations, and is likely to be the chip to buy if you simply want the best of the best. Just don't swap a 9800X3D, 9850X3D, or 9950X3D for it on your gaming PC, as you probably won't notice any difference.