AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition review: Tons of cache for tons of dollars

AMD is releasing its Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition processor on April 22. The processor will cost $899, though this could go up or down based on supply and demand.

To recap, it’s a version of the existing 16-core Ryzen 9 9950X3D (MSRP $699, street price around $660) where both of the processor’s 8-core Zen 5 CPU chiplets have 64MB of extra L3 cache stacked beneath them. Normally, one of the chiplets has extra cache and one does not. This gives the CPU a whopping 208MB of cache, a number that is very large. But you don’t need a large CPU review to understand the differences between this chip and the regular 9950X3D that we reviewed over a year ago.

In our general-purpose CPU benchmarks, video encoding tests, and gaming tests, the 9950X3D2 is consistently just a smidge faster than the regular 9950X3D. Despite its 200 W ...