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The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is reportedly going to be announced very soon, according to the latest word on the rumor mill. If this latest leak is correct, then AMD is apparently planning to spoiler the Intel Arrow Lake launch by announcing the 9800X3D the day after the CPUs are released, but it also looks as though there’s a big catch with this new chip.
If that rumored release window does indeed turn out to be the case, then the Intel Arrow Lake launch is going to be hit hard. Even Intel admits that, in all likeliness, the 9800X3D will beat the Core Ultra 9 285K when it comes to gaming performance, and it now looks as though there won’t be a honeymoon period for Intel’s new chips when they come out, leaving AMD to pick up the best gaming CPU medal almost straight away.
This latest rumor comes from tech leaker wjm47196 on the Chiphell forums, who says the Ryzen 7 9800X3D release date is October 25, with availability coming in the first week of November. Of course, none of this has been officially confirmed by AMD, so take it with a pinch of salt for now, but this leaker has previously offered reliable information about AMD CPUs. Back in May, for example, wjm47196 correctly stated that the AMD Ryzen 9000 lineup would feature chips with six, eight, 12, and 16 cores, based on a single type of Zen 5 core, months before the CPUs were finally released.
The potential release date isn’t the only nugget of information in this leak either. In the same post, wjm47196 also claims that the CPU frequency is “quite high,” bolstering previous rumors that the 9800X3D clock speed is faster than that of the 7800X3D.
Previous leaks of 9800X3D benchmarks have also shown that the new chip is up to 13% faster than the 7800X3D in game tests, and substantially quicker than the old chip in Cinebench, all of which point to a higher clock speed.
There’s a word of warning in wjm47196’s post, though, which brings us back to the catch we mentioned earlier. In the post, wjm47196 says the Ryzen 7 9800X3D price “will not be cheap.” The Ryzen 7 7800X3D launched at a price of $449, later dropping to around the $399 point. Unlike the 7900X3D and 7950X3D, the 7800X3D has held on to its price strongly, thanks to huge demand for the chip.
This latest leak suggests its successor could be more expensive, perhaps because AMD knows that a highly-clocked eight-core X3D CPU will be more appealing to gamers than a 16-core CPU with potential latency issues. As such, we’d predict the Ryzen 7 9800X3D price could be $499, particularly if there’s no convincing competition from Arrow Lake.
If you’re thinking about putting together a new rig when AMD’s new CPU comes out, check out our guide on how to build a gaming PC, where we take you through every step of the process.