00:00It would be super easy to turn around and say the best CPU for gaming is just the latest AMD
00:04chip.
00:04The red team has just released the new Ryzen 7 9850X3D, an 8-core, 16-thread chip that delivers
00:10the highest gaming performance you'll find. But it is not the best CPU for our PC gamers.
00:16That's because the actual best gaming chip is still its older sibling, 9800X3D.
00:21It's basically exactly the same processor as AMD's newbie, just a bit cheaper and less power-hungry.
00:26All AMD has done with the new one is overclock it out of the box.
00:30The 9800X3D is still an 8-core, 16-thread chip with a full 96MB of lovely L3 cache and a
00:37still pretty tasty 5.2GHz boot clock.
00:40It's all the chip you need for PC gaming because despite having a much higher clock speed,
00:44the 5.6GHz 9850X3D doesn't really do anything for you in games that the extra cache hasn't already delivered.
00:51At best, it's like 2% higher frame rates, but only if you play at lower resolutions and you have
00:57a super high-end GPU.
00:59I mean, who even are you?
01:00The kicker for this new chip, though, is that to get those extra few frames per second,
01:04you're having to expend another 43% more power to get there,
01:08totally killing the efficiency wins of the Zen 5 architecture for basically nothing.
01:12Granted, it's not the core thread count of the 9950X3D or the Core Ultra 9 from Intel, the 285K,
01:19but they're far more expensive chips and the 9800X3D is easily good enough for most needs
01:24unless you're a dedicated workstation workaholic.
01:26So, yes, this one's easy.
01:28The best overall CPU for gaming is still the Ryzen 7 9800X3D.
01:32But if you do require more raw processing power or have a more limited budget
01:35or actually still want to stick with your old AM4 board,
01:38we have a load of other PC Gamer chip recommendations for you, too.
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