It's possible that the first 3D V-Cache Zen 5 chips could arrive in time to ruin Intel's Arrow Lake celebration but, whenever they do appear, you can rest assured it won't come cheap

You'd be forgiven if you thought that Intel's Core Ultra200S series of desktop processors would be the only big news in the CPU world until CES 2025. Rumours suggest that AMD will try to sabotage the Arrow Lake bunfight with the Ryzen 7 X3D, which is the first 3D V-Cache equipped Zen 5 processor, in order to make PC gamers go Team Red.

I say rumour, but what I mean is a post on Chiphell’s forums (via user X Harukaze5719). Normally, I would ignore such ramblings. However, this is not the first time that I've heard of such a claim. AMD has been incredibly coy about it.

Intel's Arrow Lake line will be officially released on 24 October. We already know that its best model, the Core Ultra 9 285, won't have the same gaming performance as the current-gen Core i914900K. Intel has said that, but you'll need to wait until our review to find out the truth.

AMD's crown is not going to be thrown away, as we recommend that the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, even though it is sometimes better than the Core i9 14,900K, is the best gaming processor you can buy. It's been reported that Team Red will unveil the first Zen 5 processor with 3D V-Cache in the first week of November.

If the chip is ready to ship it makes sense. AMD already dominates the gaming market, so any chance to show off how much better they are than Intel is worth taking.

AMD can also set any price it wants for the Ryzen 7 95800X3D because Intel is not a gaming competitor. AMD knows that it will sell like hotcakes on a cold winter day. Zen 5 chips aren't selling well, mainly because the Zen 4 models, which aren't much slower, are a lot cheaper.

The Ryzen 7 7800X3D was launched in January 2023, but it wasn't available until April 2023. It was priced competitively, with an MSRP $450. Stocks are so low that I've seen retailers charge as much as $700 for a gaming processor.

If you take into account that the Ryzen 7 95700X, which is the basis for the 9800X3D, retails at a much lower price ($325 on Amazon), then the new contender could be launched for $399. I think it will be much higher than that. Perhaps $499 or even more, given that the Core Ultra 9 is $589 and Core Ultra 7 is $394.

If the 9800X3D is not significantly better than any of Zen 4 3D-V-Cache variants I don't think many people will upgrade from the Ryzen 7000 series chip, especially if they have one of the special processors with a lot of cache from that generation. You're better off sticking with the CPU you have and saving the money for a GPU upgrade.