AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition tested: Gratuitous overkill with a price to match

Review Ever since AMD's cache-stacked Ryzen 7 5800X3D closed the gap with Intel in gaming, folks have wondered: if one V-Cache chiplet is good, surely two must be better. With the launch of the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Dual Edition (DE), we finally have our answer.

The part crams 16 Zen 5 cores and 208 MB of system cache into a single AM5 socket, arguably making it AMD’s first, true halo CPU. It’s positioned in much the same class as Intel’s KS family of enthusiast processors used to fill, delivering a no-compromises experience in any workload, bar none.

The flagship tops our charts, but the gains probably aren't as big as you'd hope, considering the eye-watering $899 MSRP. What performance uplift it does deliver doesn’t come cheap.

Today, Intel doesn't have anything in this performance class, not to mention price bracket, which means ...