How does the 9900X stack up among CPUs? Mid-range or high-end?

The 9900X is definitely on the high-end side of things. It performs strongly, especially for productivity tasks. However, it's not the best choice if gaming is your primary focus, so it might not give you the best value for solely gaming purposes.

From what I've seen, the 9900X is about 10-15% less effective for gaming compared to models like the X3D. If a game is well-optimized, you should have no trouble. Your GPU will largely dictate performance as well.

It really comes down to what you’re using it for! If gaming is your main goal, you might have overspent a bit since it doesn't excel there as much as some others. But if you're into heavy multitasking or applications that leverage multi-threading, then the 9900X shines.

I’d say it ranks among the top CPUs for productivity, just behind the absolute best from AMD and Intel. For gaming, it's comparable to other CPUs in the 9000X series but might not be the best investment if gaming is your only focus. It'll run most games fine though, just perhaps not the absolute best option out there.