AMD’s new Ryzen X3D chips get February launch date

AMD is here for PC gamers, and it isn’t coming to lose. The company revealed a pair of new CPU variants at CES, updated versions of the gaming-friendly Ryzen 7 5800X3D based on the new Zen 4 architecture. The new Ryzen 7 7800X3D, Ryzen 9 7900X3D, and Ryzen 9 7950X3D will be launching on February 14th, just over a month from now.

That’s courtesy of Overclock3D.net, which spotted the new information on AMD.com. (The date, listed on each X3D entry, was yanked after reports like this surfaced.) Unfortunately, there wasn’t news on prices. Since the variant processors include AMD’s V-cache, the vertical die-stacking “special sauce” that gives the processors a gaming advantage, you can expect a premium over the vanilla Ryzen 9 7900X and Ryzen 9 7950X. Those non-X3D CPUs have retail prices of $549 and $699, respectively, though street prices have seen significant discounts.

According to promotional benchmarks from AMD, the top-of-the-line 7950X3D can beat Intel’s best Core i9 processor in both gaming and (thanks to that generous 24-core architecture) general productivity and media production tasks. It is, in short, a beast, and the cheaper 8- and 12-core variants should show similar performance gains.