I’m over all the grifting from Government and Corporations.  Unregulated capitalism is not making me feel great again.  What happened to the days when product creation meant something good and innovative … now it’s grifting, corruption, consumer manipulation, and insider trading?  $900 (probably $1500 retail) for zero gain.  

I used to think voting with my wallet mattered, but it doesn’t (and yes I do have a lot of AMD stock, but this IS not why I invested in them, time to dump it).  The entire PC industry has shifted into something not worth investing in … please no lectures on “satisfy shareholders” … I’m a share holder, this is NOT why I invested in AMD.  I invested in AMD because of innovation and because they brought competition to the market giving consumers a choice.

Oh well, time to move on I guess … just hate to see a PC hobby go the way side of greed and corruption.

 

Edited April 21Apr 21 by SayAgain

Well the AMD 9950X3D2 has been available online for 4 hours now and still plenty in stock … that should send a message to AMD (which they probably expected and don’t care).

It's not a gaming chip - if anything it's an HEDT chip for folks that don't have the I/O demands of ThreadRipper. I'm not sure why all the outrage.

Cheers

Because it’s a desktop chip that shows zero improvement over the 9950X3D but costs $200 more … and, it uses more power to achieve no benefit.  The surprise is the price tag, it would make more sense to simply drop the 9950X3D and replace it with the 9950X3D2 at the same price ($700 not $900).

Given that this is day 2 of it being on sale retail and is still “in stock”, it looks like there isn’t much demand.

My take, AMD couldn’t care less about the PC anymore, it’s not a big money maker for them.  AMD are working with Microsoft on the next generation XBOX and that is going to be their focus going forward … consoles and AI.  This is about the only move that would make any sense for AMD to release this CPU at $900 to further push the market away from PCs and towards consoles.

I think the death of the PC is actually real this time around:

• PC component makers (from fans to cases to PSU etc.) indicated 70% drop in sales
• Micron departure from the RAM market
• AI hype and focus shift (AMD, nVidia, etc.)
• New GPUs now being pushed out to maybe 2028
• Apple killing the Mac Pro
• Intel financial bailout with no new actual innovation
• Tariff wars increasing component costs
• Many sims/games shifting to “Streaming” (the dumb client)
• Affordability

I get why Steve B. (GN) is so word not allowed off, these companies have effectively killed is primary content, so sure he has a BIAS, but that doesn’t change the facts of what is and has happened … removing choice has always been a objective of large corporations … less choice = larger profit margins.

 

 

Edited April 23Apr 23 by SayAgain

Tomshardware posted a benchmark of the 9950X3D2 in MSFS24. It puts it on par with the 9850X3D.

Personally, I don’t trust their benchmarks as the 9950X3D performs 20% below the 9800X3D and they cite core assignment issues as the main reason for the poor performance of the 9950X3D in their benchmarks:

“Although the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 doesn’t claim any lead over the Ryzen 9 9950X3D in most games, it leads by 23.8% in Flight Simulator 2024, keeping up with the Ryzen 7 models. The base Ryzen 9 9950X3D experienced core parking issues in this game, even after we triple-checked that the correct packages were installed. It was utilizing the non-X3D CCD, even on a fresh Windows image, which helps explain the big uplift we’re seeing here.”

I’ve spent a lot of time reading through user reviews in the last couple of weeks and just ordered a new system with the 9950X3D as a result (coming from the 13900KF). Virtually nobody else seems to have those core assignment issues with it and general consensus seems to be that the 9950X3D should achieve very similar FPS to the 9800X3D/9850X3D and offer a slight edge in smoothness in demanding situations. So in reality, I would expect the 9950X3D to sit right alongside the Top 3, meaning the 9950X3D2 should perform the same, thus not offering any tangible upside over the X3D in MSFS24. For a minute there I was worried I should have gone with the X3D2 instead, but reading why they show such a big gap in performance put my mind at ease somewhat.

Will be interesting to see some hands on experiences with the X3D2 in MSFS24 over the coming weeks though.

I stopped using Tom’s hardware for any information as it’s usually wrong and or skewed testing. 

On 4/23/2026 at 11:14 AM, SayAgain said:

Because it’s a desktop chip that shows zero improvement over the 9950X3D but costs $200 more … and, it uses more power to achieve no benefit.  The surprise is the price tag, it would make more sense to simply drop the 9950X3D and replace it with the 9950X3D2 at the same price ($700 not $900).

It's an HEDT chip for people who don't next the extra PCIe lanes or ECC support (and therefore is actually VERY AFFORDABLE for those people considering ThreadRipper just for the core count).

You're not the target market. Your outrage is likely caused by that mistake.

Why am I not a target market?

What workloads do you have that require high core count? Are you running a render farm or doing video editing/encoding/compression at volume?

Cheers

Yes, I do video composition, upscaling with various methods/models, 3D animation, music composition, software development, and a few other core intensive tasks on my Threadripper PC (AMD 9975WX on ASUS WRX90-SE SAGE motherboard and two 5090s and several Gen5 M.2).

But, I also have my other gaming PC based on AMD 9950X3D with one 5090.

These are both “High End Desktop” computers put for different use cases. 

The 9950X3D2 would not be a benefit for me in either use case.  For gaming the 9950X3D2 would have no benefit over my 9950X3D.  For video comps, upscaling with AI models, 3D animation, music composition etc. the 9950X3D2 lags far behind my 9975WX Pro.  So the 9950X3D2 doesn’t fit in either high end market.  

Now if AMD stopped making 9950X3D so as to sell for higher margin the 9950X3D2 that would make financial sense but not sure how well the consumer would receive such a decision … the 9950X3D2 is clearly not selling very well … every retailer shows them as “in stock”.

8 hours ago, SayAgain said:

For video comps, upscaling with AI models, 3D animation, music composition etc. the 9950X3D2 lags far behind my 9975WX Pro.  So the 9950X3D2 doesn’t fit in either high end market.

I am shocked that a 32-core, 64-thread CPU will outdo a 16-core, 32-thread CPU. Who would have guessed? 🙂

The point is not absolute performance; it's filling a niche above the 9950X3D and below ThreadRipper. Is the niche large enough to be viable? Maybe, maybe not. But it's not an exercise in grift as you make it out - it's half the size of your ThreadRipper but only $900 instead of $3900.

At that price/performance ratio, seems like a pretty good deal to me.

3 hours ago, Luke said:

it's filling a niche above the 9950X3D and below ThreadRipper

It must be a really really really small niche because they aren’t selling well.  

Sure, the 9950X3D2 is $3100 cheaper than my 9975WX Pro CPU … so from that perspective … but they are really two VERY different platforms/chipsets with Threadripper having 8 channel memory with ECC support and 128 lanes of PCIe Gen 5.  Both are “Desktop” form factors.

I used to use my 9950X3D for video comps and the like and it was a dog when working 4K to 8K video and 8K+ images … 9975WX Pro doesn’t even blink when I rapidly move around in a timeline, imports and rendered outputs are 10X faster … it’s more than just core count.  The 9950X3D2 wouldn’t be any different so I really don’t know what this niche is servicing?

The 9950X3D2 has shown no gain in PC games.

The 9950X3D2 for video comps would be about 2-5% gain maybe … wouldn’t be noticeable in those workflows.

 

 

Edited April 29Apr 29 by SayAgain

On 4/26/2026 at 9:14 AM, Speedbird193 said:

Tomshardware posted a benchmark of the 9950X3D2 in MSFS24. It puts it on par with the 9850X3D.

Personally, I don’t trust their benchmarks as the 9950X3D performs 20% below the 9800X3D and they cite core assignment issues as the main reason for the poor performance of the 9950X3D in their benchmarks:

“Although the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 doesn’t claim any lead over the Ryzen 9 9950X3D in most games, it leads by 23.8% in Flight Simulator 2024, keeping up with the Ryzen 7 models. The base Ryzen 9 9950X3D experienced core parking issues in this game, even after we triple-checked that the correct packages were installed. It was utilizing the non-X3D CCD, even on a fresh Windows image, which helps explain the big uplift we’re seeing here.”

I’ve spent a lot of time reading through user reviews in the last couple of weeks and just ordered a new system with the 9950X3D as a result (coming from the 13900KF). Virtually nobody else seems to have those core assignment issues with it and general consensus seems to be that the 9950X3D should achieve very similar FPS to the 9800X3D/9850X3D and offer a slight edge in smoothness in demanding situations. So in reality, I would expect the 9950X3D to sit right alongside the Top 3, meaning the 9950X3D2 should perform the same, thus not offering any tangible upside over the X3D in MSFS24. For a minute there I was worried I should have gone with the X3D2 instead, but reading why they show such a big gap in performance put my mind at ease somewhat.

Will be interesting to see some hands on experiences with the X3D2 in MSFS24 over the coming weeks though.

Yes but as mentioned, for some reason Toms could not solve the core parking issue with the 9950X3D in this test, shame, as it scored higher than the 9850X3D previously.

21 hours ago, PaulL01 said:

Yes but as mentioned, for some reason Toms could not solve the core parking issue with the 9950X3D in this test, shame, as it scored higher than the 9850X3D previously.

I just got my new PC with the 9950X3D. Core parking wasn’t working when I first ran the sim but it’s been flawless since then and no issues at all. Correctly parks the cores as intended each time - must be something their end.

18 hours ago, Speedbird193 said:

I just got my new PC with the 9950X3D. Core parking wasn’t working when I first ran the sim but it’s been flawless since then and no issues at all. Correctly parks the cores as intended each time - must be something their end.

Nice!
I decided to pass on the X3D2 and keep the 9950X3d as well, still yet to build.... have all parts, just need the time. MSI 870E Max Ace, Tuf 5090, MSI 1250GS PSU. Cheers!