CES 2025: AMD
AMD has announced a few new products during CES today and there’s some really great items that gamers should get excited about.
I just recently upgraded my computer from an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D to an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, but we now have a new CPU that could be the one to get for top of the line gaming machines. The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D is being touted by AMD as the world’s best gaming CPU and has 16 Zen 5 CPU cores and 144MB of V-Cache with a max boost frequency of 5.7GHz. TDP on this one is 170W.
If you want to compare it to the current champ, the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, that CPU has 8 Zen 5 CPU cores with 96MB of V-Cache and a max boost frequency of 5.1GHz with a TDP of 120W. So as you can see, quite a big jump up if you were waiting to see what the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D would look like.
Depending on the game, there’s on average, an 8% uplift over the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, with Counter-Strike 2 being their biggest gainer as you can see from their graphs. As always, performance improvements will be dependent on the application or game, but you should see a good boost coming from the last generation or more if these performance reports hold true once reviewers get their hands on the product. AMD also showed off how much of an improvement they have with the 9950X3D over Intel’s Core i9 285K. Again, these numbers will need to be verified once the product is released, but it shows some great potential.
AMD’s also going to be putting forth an AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D as well with 12 Zen 5 CPU cores, 140MB of V-Cache, a max boost of 5.5GHz, and a TDP of 120W. That also sounds like a pretty nice CPU for gamers as well and for those who don’t want to spend as much on a CPU if the 9950X3D is out of their price range.
Both CPUs are expected in Q1 of 2025, no pricing was announced yet. With the Intel Core i9 285k being around $599.99 and the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X pricing at currently $569.99, that might give you some idea on what the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D can be priced at.
Laptop users aren’t going to be missing out as AMD will be launching three new mobile processors in the upcoming months. You can see the chart below, but the top of the line is the AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX3D with 16 cores. 144MB of cache, and a max boost of 5.4GHz at a TDP of 54W. The specs are similar to the 9950X3D, but at a much lower TDP. The other two CPUs will be more of the traditional CPU architecture so no X3D for them. All of them are slated for the first half of this year.
Graphic cards are always a hot topic and AMD is previewing their AMD RDNA 4 architecture today. Cards aren’t just for gaming and video as AI is now a big proponent of video card purchases it seems. I’ve been using a few with large VRAM capacity to test out my AI programs I’ve been developing.
Besides improving the compute units and ray tracing components, AMD emphasized the improvement on AI architecture to help better the performance and experience when using it for those types of applications. You can expect the cards to be built on a 4nm process when they become available.
AI upscaling has really taken off in the past few years and AMD’s introducing FidelityFX Super Resolution 4 or FSR4 with the new RDNA architecture. For those who do 4K gaming, this sounds promising. With Anti-Lag 2 reducing latency, AMD’s looking to deliver better graphic fidelity and better gaming performance with FSR 4.
Information is a little sparse for this one, but expect more soon as the AMD Radeon RX 9070 and Radeon RX 9070 XT will be launching in Q1 of 2025 from many board partners. Today was just an announcement on the architecture and some of the improvements they will be doing over the previous generation. AMD is also simplifying the naming of the graphics card so hopefully this will help ease the confusion of the naming scheme and clear up how the cards stack in terms of performance within their own lineup as well as compared to others.
Handheld gaming has been a big boom in the PC world with the release of the Steam Deck, Rog Ally, and others. Most use the AMD CPU/GPU architecture and I’m anxious to see if this next product will be something that maybe a future Steam Deck will utilize.
The AMD Ryzen Z2 series uses RDNA 3 graphics and it has three variations. The Z2 Extreme and Z2 are similar in that they both house 8 cores and feature 24MB of cache. Where they differ is that the Extreme version can boost slightly lower at 5.0GHz than the 5.1GHz of the Z2, but it makes up for it in being able to run at a higher cTDP of 15-35W versus the 15-30W of the non-Extreme version. And the Extreme Z2 has 16 graphics cores as opposed to the 12 graphics cores of the regular Z2.
The Z2 Go halves the cores with 4 as well as having 10MB of cache and boosting to a max of 4.3GHz. It does run between 15-30W cTDP and has the same amount of graphics cores at 12 with the Z2. All of these Z2 processors will be available in Q1 of 2025.
So there you have it for the gaming space coming out of AMD today. We got some nice announcements for some beefy CPUs, the next generation of video cards, and new CPUs for handhelds and mobile solutions. I’ll be talking with AMD tomorrow and seeing what’s to come up close in all of these areas so expect more coverage from me on AMD as CES 2025 continues.
