AMD Ryzen 9 3900X review: Finally, some competition for Intel's Core i9-9900K
Should you ever spend $500 on a gaming CPU? Personally, I think you’d be mad to spend that kind of money on a processor, especially when Intel’s Core i7-9700K offers such incredible gaming performance for about two thirds of the cost. If you are one of these so-called power users with $500-odd to spare on getting the absolute bestest best gaming CPU money can buy, however, then your choices have literally just doubled with the introduction of AMD’s new Ryzen 9 3900X.
Priced at $499, AMD are positioning this chip as their Intel Core i9-9900K killer, which at time of writing is just a bit cheaper at £485 / $490. The Ryzen 9 3900X, however, is quite a bit beefier in the old specs department – and comes with a decent cooler bundled in the box, which its Intel rival does not. Packing 12 cores and 24 threads as opposed to Intel’s rather piddly-sounding 8-core-16-thread offering, the Ryzen 9 3900X is an absolute speed machine when it comes to general desktop performance. Its gaming prowess, however? That’s a whole other story.