Ryzen 7 9800X3D vs. Ryzen 5 9600X Gaming Performance Review

Gaming performance shows clear gains with the 9800X3D compared to cheaper Ryzen CPUs across multiple modern titles.

Hardware by Godrics01 on Jan 17, 2026

Most people in today's market are striving to save as much money as they can to get the 32GB of RAM they have always wanted. That makes me think about an essential question concerning which CPU to buy. Is the Ryzen 7 9800X3D truly as excellent as people say, or can we get away with getting a cheaper processor?

Most benchmark videos show it with an RTX 5090, which makes the difference clear. But what if we use something more realistic, like an RTX 5070 Ti? Can CPUs that cost less, like the Ryzen 5 9600X, which costs around $250 less, nevertheless give you a great gaming experience?

Ryzen 7 9800X3D, Ryzen 5 9600X, Gaming Performance Review, NoobFeed

Comparison of Stalker 2's Performance

We began with Stalker 2, and the results were unexpected from the very beginning. When we spawned outside the city, we got about 130 fps in the open fields. Moving closer to the city didn't really hurt performance. Ryzen 7 9800X3D was still roughly 20–25 fps faster than the Ryzen 5 9600X at both 1440p Epic Native and 1080p Epic Native.

If you have this CPU with a GPU like the RTX 5070 or RTX 5070 Ti, you can play the game at both resolutions without any problems. Even at the highest settings, you can tell that the CPUs are different.

Battlefield 6 and Cache Advantage

RTX 5070 Ti has 16GB of fast GDDR7 memory, while the 9800 X3D has 96 MB of L3 cache. Battlefield 6 has a lot of resources to work with because of that. At 1440p Overkill settings, we witnessed a performance boost of about 20 fps.

Some people say that maxed-out settings just test the GPU, yet the figures show there are differences. It was easy to see the extra frames because the frame rate wasn't yet in the 144 Hz range. The 20 fps boost was still present at 1080p, though less obvious, especially on a 1440p panel.

Doom: The Dark Ages

Doom: The Dark Ages had one of the biggest gains. Ryzen 7 9800X3D gave about 60 more fps at 1440p Ultra Nightmare. The extra $250 suddenly seemed worth something.

At 1080p, the frame rate stayed above 200 fps on high settings. With this configuration, playing games in 4K is even possible.

Results for Arc Raiders

Arc Raiders did the same thing. 9800X3D gave you about 20 more fps at both 1440p Epic and 1080p Epic than the Ryzen 5 9600X. The change was steady and easy to see.

Black Myth: Wukong in Movie Settings

With Black Myth: Wukong, we first got close to 90 fps at 1440p Very High settings. We took things a step further by turning on the Cinematic preset, which has warnings for every option. The game ran close to 60 fps at 1440p, even with these crazy graphics.

It worked even better at 1080p. The game ran well and looked great at the same time.

Optimization for Marvel Rivals

We struggled to hit 120 fps in Marvel Rivals at 1440p on the highest settings. Around 70fps didn't feel good enough for competitive play. By reducing the settings to a mix of High and Ultra, the auto-optimize option boosted performance to roughly 100 fps.

We may get similar performance at 1080p with Epic settings. But Marvel Rivals didn't do as well as the other games.

How well Fortnite works

Ryzen 7 9800X3D revealed how powerful it was when Fortnite finally loaded. It could almost double the frame rate at 1440p Medium. It also gave almost twice as many fps at 1080p as the Ryzen 5 9600X.

Ryzen 7 9800X3D, Ryzen 5 9600X, Gaming Performance Review, NoobFeed

Counter-Strike 2 CPU A Benchmark

The best test for a CPU was Counter-Strike 2. At 1440p Medium, the 9800X3D got roughly 60 more fps than the Ryzen 5 9600X, while at 1080p Medium, it got about 100 more fps. The results from Fortnite and CS2 made it evident how the X3D design helps games that use a lot of CPU.

Final Thoughts

You get what you pay for in general. Ryzen 7 9800X3D is a good deal if you have an extra $250 and already have 32GB of DDR5 RAM. It makes your computer run faster for the price.

Ryzen 5 9600X is still a good choice if you want to save money. It doesn't have any problems or lag in any of the games we tried. It just gives you fewer frames.

Ryzen 7500F is another option for people just starting out. Ryzen 7 7800X3D is a good medium ground. It costs roughly $300, which is $100 more than the 9600X and $150 less than the 9800X3D. It's hard to go wrong with any of these CPUs because they all work well.

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