A cheaper AMD Ryzen 5 9600X3D CPU is on its way

AMD’s Ryzen X3D series is the hot ticket for PC gamers thanks to the 3D V-cache, which boosts performance for games and other media applications. There are affordable options out there in the series, but if you want an AM5 version on the latest socket, you’ll be paying a premium, but if you wait a bit, there’s a new and cheaper variant coming, according to AMD.

The new chip is the Ryzen 5 9600X3D, presumably a boosted V-cache version of the 6-core Ryzen 5 9600X (which currently goes for about $180 USD). It’ll be less powerful but more affordable than the next-up CPU in the X3D series, the popular Ryzen 7 9800X3D, priced at a whopping $470 today. The Ryzen 5 7600X3D, if you’re wondering, is going for $300.

The info comes straight from AMD itself… though perhaps not intentionally so. The unannounced chip showed up in a compatibility list for the latest SI (OpenGL) driver for the AI Pro R9700, an industrial graphics card that doesn’t really interest consumer-level PC gamers. It’s somewhat ironic, then, that this is the mechanism through which the new chip is first confirmed.

Tom’s Hardware quotes social media rumors that say the 9600X3D will be delivered first to system integrators, for sale in pre-built desktop PCs, before being sold directly to buyers at retail. The latter is pinned to the end of the third quarter or the beginning of the fourth, in time for the 2025 holiday season. I wouldn’t go so far as to guess on that…but it makes sense, given that sales of the current X3D chips seem to be quite healthy, and AMD had no reason to rush a more affordable AM5 variant to market. We’ll just have to wait and see.