While AMD’s first Zen 5 CPUs disappointed everyone in gaming, the latest X3D versions have more than made up for that. The 9800X3D became the best gaming CPU last year, and now the 9950X3D greatly improves creator workloads while mostly maintaining that stellar gaming performance.

AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3D is probably the best CPU you can buy if you're trying to put together a fast gaming PC, thanks to its eight Zen 5 CPU cores and extra helping of 3D V-Cache. You don't really need more CPU cores than this to play games, and most games benefit from the extra cache more than they do from a bit of extra clock speed.

"The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is extremely powerful in games, which makes it easier to recommend than other recent processors like the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K or Ryzen 9 9900X. Especially if you’re building a rig with a powerful graphics card, the 9800X3D is going to be the best way to get the most performance out of whichever GPU you pair it with."