Wednesday, February 5th 2025
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU Accounts for Almost 90% of "Zen 5" Sales, Rest of 9000 Series in Trouble
Based on the MindFactory sales data for January 2025, we have seen AMD push a significant share of sales and revenue at the German PC hardware store. However, an interesting observation lies in the details. AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU was the best-selling SKU at 8,390 units sold. An entire AM5 platform recorded sales of 18,410 units, which puts the eight-core X3D SKU on the top, with 46% of consumers on the AM5 platform going with this CPU. The rest of the AMD Ryzen 9000 series performed poorly, with other SKUs reaching only up to 3% of AM5 socket sales. This means that out of 100% "Zen 5" units sold, the leading Ryzen 7 9800X3D SKU captured 87% of sales. The AMD Ryzen 9000 series is performing exceptionally only due to its only available AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D SKU selling 46% of the AM5 volume.
Among standard Ryzen 9000 series SKUs, the Ryzen 7 9700X achieved 640 units in sales, while the Ryzen 5 9600X, Ryzen 9 9950X, and Ryzen 9 9900X recorded 250, 230, and 180 units respectively. These figures suggest significantly lower market penetration for non-X3D variants in the retail channel. The data points to a clear market preference for gaming-optimized processors, indicating AMD's strategic focus on X3D variants—despite their higher manufacturing costs and retail premiums—is likely to continue. While MindFactory's sales data represents just one retailer in the German market, the overwhelming consumer preference for the 9800X3D over standard Zen 5 SKUs signals that consumers are ready to pay a premium for more performance and that the X3D effect reflects positively on the sales.
Among standard Ryzen 9000 series SKUs, the Ryzen 7 9700X achieved 640 units in sales, while the Ryzen 5 9600X, Ryzen 9 9950X, and Ryzen 9 9900X recorded 250, 230, and 180 units respectively. These figures suggest significantly lower market penetration for non-X3D variants in the retail channel. The data points to a clear market preference for gaming-optimized processors, indicating AMD's strategic focus on X3D variants—despite their higher manufacturing costs and retail premiums—is likely to continue. While MindFactory's sales data represents just one retailer in the German market, the overwhelming consumer preference for the 9800X3D over standard Zen 5 SKUs signals that consumers are ready to pay a premium for more performance and that the X3D effect reflects positively on the sales.
73 Comments on AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU Accounts for Almost 90% of "Zen 5" Sales, Rest of 9000 Series in Trouble
People on the latest platforms aren't using 1080p or less, it's down right unusable when you've used 1440p, 4k or higher for any period of time...
So going to be GPU bottlenecked and 3d cpu then useless!
Current cores are behemoths that very little software is capable of utilizing fully.
They need to make a simple core that can go fast and keep going fast.
I would argue that the 9700X doesn't make any sense right now because you can get a 7900 for the same price, at least on my country
The 7900 might be one of the best choices right now on AM5
90% of people that are buying new CPUs are doing so for gaming purposes.
As proven, gamers are 90% of the PC ecosystem, the rest 10% are professional media creators, designers, engineers, and the rest that are not brainwashed to use an Apple Mac thinking that somehow those are better for those kind of things than a PC.
www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-ryzen-7-9800x3d/20.html
At 4k gaming, well according to TPU it's about 7% faster than my 5700x.
9800X3D: Best Processor for Gaming.
Rest of 9000 line: Only slightly better than the previous generation.
Though, in their defense, I admit that the 9800X3D was the most improved one compared to the previous generation (mostly because the 7800X3D had significantly lower clocks due to the 3D cache positioning).
I don't disagree that the 9800x3d is wild overkill for most gamers (mostly because of the price), but let's not pretend that CPU bottlenecks only occur in obscure niche case scenarios. They're actually pretty easy to find. Even some of the singleplayer games that show as GPU bound in review benchmarks can occasionally hit the CPU hard.
AMD execs, however...
Also, I don't want to play with BIOS, I'm plug and play guy. I can update the BIOS and that's enough for me
X3D is really most valuable for native high-refresh (not MFG) performance. If you're not playing competitive eSports titles at high-refresh then you are most likely going to crank up the graphics settings until you're GPU bottlenecked because that's what you bought your GPU for. I'll always aim for the prettiest looking game I can get whilst running at about 120fps. If frame-gen is viable, I'll aim to hit 120fps with frame-gen and crank up the resolution and graphics quality even further.
I am having a hard time justifying it.. I do play at 3840x2160..
Whilst still unconfirmed, there's a slim possibility that future Threadrippers might have an SKU with one of the four chiplets being an X3D chiplet, so that you can have a badass compute/workstation system that also games like the $8000 you paid for it. Asus either leaked it, or made a typo/copypasta by claiming "added 3D V-Cache support" in the notes for a TR5 BIOS update.Hold fire, man. That 4070Ti is going to be your bottleneck at 4K. By the time you've justified funds for a hypothetical 6070Ti or 5080 Super, the 9800X3D will be as old as your 5800X3D feels right now.
It's not the fastest CPU on the block any more, but you're not leaving much on the table with a 4070Ti unless you drop down to a 240Hz 1440p monitor and start playing a bunch of high-fps games.
There don't seem to be any Turin/Turin dense options with X3D yet, but maybe that's because Zen5 is still too new and it looks like the X3D Genoa-X variants lagged Genoa's launch by 9 months.
Since Intel suggested all PC users should update microcode with BIOS, most PC users didn't know how to update BIOS as they haven't any experiences or just understand basic uses about computer hardware. My current PC running Intel Core i5-13400 with latest microcode BIOS and still perfectly fine without any issues.
If that's the case, then the V-caches currently used for the 9800x3D are not useable for the ones in Genoa.kinda:
x.com/IanCutress/status/1844516247138193658
Given how those Epyc-X CPU mostly go to HPC scenarios, and those have a slower upgrade cadence, I guess they'll only release extra cache version every other generation.The extra cache is pretty amazing for HPC stuff, which is usually really memory bound.
Intel take note^^
How do you know they won't change it for the EYPC parts this is more profitable SKU than the desktop parts. To the point where they may make custom silicon for a big enough order they don't do that for a desktop part. I don't think you can compare what is done with desktop parts to enterprise products then say it will never be. Enterprise is what drives this whole ship not consumer products.
The V-cache EPYC parts, however, don't sell in such a high volume as the non-X3D ones, since their application are really niche.I agree that enterprise is what drives the ship, however I don't think AMD is that constrained on fab allocation when it comes to the X3D stacks, specially because they're on a different node altogether, and Genoa-X is not sold in such a high volume as the other SKUs.
That's just me guessing tho, I couldn't find proper numbers to back those off (nor to prove it's wrong either, fwiw).