"The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is extremely powerful in games, which makes it easier to recommend than other recent processors like the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K or Ryzen 9 9900X. Especially if you’re building a rig with a powerful graphics card, the 9800X3D is going to be the best way to get the most performance out of whichever GPU you pair it with."

While AMD’s first Zen 5 CPUs disappointed everyone in gaming, the latest X3D versions have more than made up for that. The 9800X3D became the best gaming CPU last year, and now the 9950X3D greatly improves creator workloads while mostly maintaining that stellar gaming performance.

AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D | $599.99 at Newegg If you don't quite have the budget for the new flagship, the 9900X3D still gets you the 3D V-cache boost over the original Ryzen 9000 top dog, but comes in $100 cheaper. This CPU sports 12 cores and 24 threads, so you're still getting a lot of horsepower to gallop with.