Until a few days ago, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D was the fastest gaming CPU in the world. It was comfortably ahead of every other chip on the market — the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, Intel's fastest CPUs, and even AMD's latest non-X3D processors. A lead of around 20% over the Core Ultra 9 285K is significant, but even that was dwarfed by the new Ryzen 7 9800X3D, which created a 30% performance gulf compared to Intel's latest flagship.

Even if you compare the 9800X3D to Intel's Core i9-14900K, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D still beats it by around 25%. It's been a long time since the CPU market was this lopsided in favor of a single CPU. The Ryzen 3D V-Cache paved the way for AMD's gaming dominance back in 2022, but only now has that journey culminated into a truly stark performance advantage over the competition's fastest chip.

No gaming CPU has been this dominant since 2018

You have to think back to the 9900K

To the uninitiated, a 30% lead in gaming performance might not seem earth-shattering. However, it's one of those results that underscores the dire condition of one of the two heavyweight chipmakers. Intel has been struggling for a while now. What started with a disappointing Raptor Lake refresh was replaced by fundamental instability issues affecting the 13th and 14th Gen CPUs, and then reared its head with the regressive Core Ultra "Arrow Lake" CPUs.

It's hard to comprehend that the company that dominated the competition for multiple generations is now becoming a shadow of its former self. Intel's flagship chips were historically the fastest CPUs for gaming, with AMD struggling to get itself on the benchmark charts. Things started to look better with the new Zen architecture in 2017, but Intel was still miles ahead.

Consider this: back in 2018, Intel's then flagship, the Core i9-9900K, was as much as 30% faster than AMD's fastest processor, the Ryzen 7 2700X. The Intel chip consumed tons of power, just like now, but no one who wanted peak performance thought of AMD at the time. AMD kept at it, improving performance with Zen 2 and Zen 3, and with the launch of the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, it finally came within touching distance of Intel's Core i9-12900KS (running DDR5 RAM).

The Intel chip was still around 4% faster than the 5800X3D (and the Core i9-12900K was 2-3% faster), but the AMD X3D processor managed this feat with DDR4 RAM. Apples to apples, with both the 5800X3D and 12900K running DDR4 RAM, the AMD CPU was around 5% faster. Games loved AMD's 3D V-Cache, and the company finally achieved a decisive lead over Intel, as the Ryzen 7 7800X3D delivered around 13-15% more FPS than the Core i9-14900K.

And now, after some under-the-hood innovation around the 3D V-Cache placement, AMD has dealt a knockout blow to Intel, delivering over 30% better performance (on average) than the Core Ultra 9 285K. We all expected AMD to come out on top again with the 9800X3D, but the results we're seeing were unheard of in recent years.

Why hasn't Intel come up with its own 3D V-Cache?

It's harder than it sounds

It's logical to wonder why Intel hasn't launched its own gaming-focused CPUs with its own version of 3D V-Cache. Is it that hard to copy-paste AMD's formula, especially after we've seen three generations of X3D CPUs and two major iterations of 3D V-Cache? Well, as it turns out, it is quite hard for Intel to do that, at least with its current microarchitecture.

For years, Intel's focus has been on increasing clock speeds to maximize gaming performance. Testing done by some reputed tech publications has shown that an increase in L3 cache on Intel's 14th Gen CPUs (as we go from the 14600K to 14700K and 14900K) doesn't yield any performance benefits. The only major impact is seen from the increase in the core count and clock speed.

This testing disabled all the E-cores and additional P-cores, locking each of the three processors to the same clock speed for a like-to-like comparison. Hence, it seems reasonable to conclude that at least on Intel's current crop of CPUs, it won't pay dividends to just stack a bunch of L3 cache and hope for the best. Even the latest Arrow Lake CPUs saw a big architectural change, but any version of 3D V-Cache was still missing.

Intel's CEO indicated last year that the company has plans to introduce "3D silicon" in future CPUs, but there's no word when that will see the light of day. Intel might not have it ready even for its Nova Lake CPUs in 2026, considering the lack of rumors or leaks about it.

The future looks bright red

When will Intel surpass AMD in gaming?

It doesn't look very promising for Intel right now. The future could always see Intel turn the tables on AMD, but it would have to be a more distant future than what Intel hopes for at the moment. Reports of Intel's 13th- and 14th-gen CPU crashing issues were still fresh in our memory, and now the new Core Ultra chips have also suffered from some instability problems at launch.

Intel has promised fixes for the poor gaming performance of the Core Ultra CPUs, but we don't know how big of a performance improvement they'll bring. Besides, Team Blue also needs to deal with rumors of the company splitting into two, and work on its next desktop CPU lineup. Reports indicate Intel doesn't have any new desktop CPUs lined up for 2025, with Nova Lake rumored to launch only in 2026.

Intel is in a state of flux right now. It shut down its 20A node in preparation for 18A, which it plans to manufacture in-house, in contrast to its current partnership for Arrow Lake with TSMC. In order to beat or even catch AMD in gaming performance, Intel not only needs to succeed with its next-gen architecture, but also come up with an answer to the Ryzen 3D V-Cache. With so many legacy challenges to deal with, I think AMD will remain on top (at least in gaming) for the next 4 years.

The gaming CPU wars continue

AMD might have won the last one or two battles for the crown of the best gaming CPU, but the war rages on. Intel might struggle for a few more years to come up with something truly sensational, but we also don't know if AMD can continue its upward trend. The Ryzen 7 9800X3D was only able to beat the 7800X3D by around 10% — does it mean we'll see shrinking percentage improvements with Zen 6 and onward?

It's all conjecture at the moment, but one thing's for certain: a lack of competition is good for no one. We all need Intel to bounce back, otherwise AMD left unchecked can lead to all sorts of problems for consumers. Just like years of complacency led Intel down a path of minor gen-on-gen gains and the era of multiple 10nm nodes, a similar fate might befall AMD if Intel doesn't get its act together soon.