The legend appears to be real. AMD’s mythical, unreleased flagship gaming processor—the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2—has been spotted in a performance benchmark, providing the first concrete look at a CPU designed to be the undisputed champion for gamers and creators. The chip, featuring an unprecedented dual stacks of 3D V-Cache for a total of 192MB of L3 cache, was listed on Geekbench running on a high-end Gigabyte overclocking motherboard.
This leak confirms that AMD is actively testing the chip in partner labs, strongly suggesting a formal launch is on the horizon, despite its conspicuous absence from the company’s CES 2026 announcements.
The Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 Benchmark Details: Confirming the Specs
The Geekbench entry lists the processor running on a GIGABYTE X870 AORUS Tachyon ICE motherboard with fast DDR5-8000 memory. The data confirms the long-rumored specifications: a 16-core, 32-thread Zen 5 chip with a base clock of 4.30 GHz and a peak boost up to 5.65 GHz.
Most crucially, the software correctly identifies “96 MB x2 L3 cache,” aligning perfectly with the “X3D2” designation that signifies two separate stacks of AMD’s performance-boosting 3D V-Cache. This gives the CPU a combined L3 cache pool of 192MB, which is three times the amount available on a standard Ryzen 9 9950X and 50% more than the already-capacious 128MB in the regular 9950X3D.
Performance Snapshot and What It Means
In this run, the engineering sample scored 3,553 points in single-core and 24,340 points in multi-core tests. This shows a solid improvement over an older, lower-scoring leak of the same chip and outperforms the standard 9950X3D in multi-threaded workload.
While synthetic benchmarks only tell part of the story, the massive cache is specifically engineered to accelerate gaming performance and certain professional applications that thrive on fast data access. By placing a second vault of cache on the processor, AMD is targeting users who demand the absolute highest frame rates and smoothest performance in cache-sensitive tasks, potentially creating a new tier of ultra-enthusiast desktop computing.
Also, Read
- AMD Battles Memory Shortage, Vows to Keep Radeon GPU Prices Near MSRP in 2026
- AMD Ryzen 9 PRO 9965X3D Spotted – A 16-Core Workstation CPU with 3D V-Cache Incoming
- NVIDIA’s RTX 50 Strategy – Prioritizing High-End Cards in Each Memory Tier Amid Shortages
The Path to Launch: “Stay Tuned”
AMD did not announce this CPU at its major CES keynote, choosing instead to launch the 8-core Ryzen 7 9850X3D. However, when pressed by media afterwards, AMD officials simply said to “stay tuned,” a clear indication the product exists and is planned for a dedicated launch later in 2026.
The fact that it is now being tested on a retail-ready overclocking motherboard from a major partner like Gigabyte is the strongest signal yet that AMD is in the final stages of preparation. For PC builders waiting for the ultimate weapon to pair with the fastest GPUs, the wait for the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 may soon be over.
Source: geekbench