Hey everyone! I'm looking to upgrade my CPU from an i7 4790k since it's bottlenecking my FPS even with my 7900XTX. I'm deciding between the 9700X, the 9800X3D, and the 9900X3D. I've noticed that the 9900X3D is a bit rarer but it's actually $15 cheaper than the 9800X3D right now. After watching a bunch of comparison videos, I saw that the 9700X lags about 20 FPS behind the 9800X3D in both average and 1% lows, which is similar to the FPS boost seen across graphics card generations.
The 9900X3D averages about the same FPS as the 9800X3D but has a noticeable 30 FPS boost in 1% lows for games like Horizon Zero Dawn, to a dip of 20 FPS for titles like RDR2. Plus, it's 60% faster in Cinebench compared to the 9800X3D.
So my questions are: which CPU should I go for? Is the 9900X3D more future-proof? Also, when my graphics card starts struggling below 60 FPS, will the X3D still give me a boost? Could it possibly help me skip a generation of graphics cards if it adds those extra 20 FPS? Lastly, are games even utilizing all 8 cores of the 9800X3D now, or are they just relying on 6 cores like I heard? If they do start using all 8 in the future, wouldn't that make the 9800X3D significantly better than the 9900X3D? Thanks for the help!
1 Answer
If you're mainly gaming, I'd lean towards the 9700X for most scenarios. But, if you play competitive esports at 1080p with a really fast monitor, then the 9800X3D could be the better option. On the other hand, the 9900X3D is close to the 9800X3D performance-wise and is more beneficial if you also do productivity tasks like video editing.
But I game at 1440p and I'm looking at the 9900X3D because it's a 6+6 core setup and it has the X3D cache!