AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D benchmarks: Dragon's Dogma 2, Baldur's Gate 3, Starfield.

Our Ryzen 9000 reviews last summer heralded the debut of our new DF benchmarking system, based on performance capture from CapFrameX and bespoke game integrations. It's a pretty cool system that now supports 11 titles - including three RPGs which have emerged as some of the most CPU-demanding titles in recent times.

You're more than welcome to scroll on, but it's worth noting that our benchmark results are presented a little differently to what you might be used to elsewhere on the internet. On mobile browsers, you'll get a basic overview, with metadata from the PresentMon-based capture of each CPU generating simple bar charts with average frame-rate and lowest one per cent measurements for easy comparisons.

On a desktop-style browser, you'll get a fancier arrangement: an interactive bar chart with average frame-rates and highest/lowest one percent scores, with the option to click to swap between absolute and percentage measurements. You can also see live frame metrics when you hit play on the embedded YouTube video.

Dragon's Dogma 2

Dragon's Dogma 2 is a great game that can run surprisingly poorly in some areas both on PC and console, with cities being noticeably more taxing than smaller settlements and rural locations. DLSS performance mode helps keep this title CPU-limited, but you'll see similar degrees of CPU bottlenecking even on less aggressive settings. We see performance parity here between the 9800X3D and 9950X3D, with around 32 percent higher frame-rates on the X3D versus the standard 9950X.

Baldur's Gate 3

Another fantasy RPG, another game that runs brilliantly in the wilderness and the one-horse towns... and slows down considerably once you hit the big city. We're again using a bespoke game integration for our route through Baldur's Gate, again we see the 9950X3D and 9800X3D perform more or less identically through the bulk of the run. Nothing else really comes close here, with the last-gen 7800X3D being the best of the rest - but 9950X3D still holding a 25 percent advantage in this CPU-bound scenario.

Starfield

Our third fly-through is in a slightly more exotic but no less demanding location of Akila City from Starfield. This title sometimes shows lower core count CPUs to outperform their bigger brothers, and so it is here with the 9800X3D leading the 9950X3D by a paltry 3.7 percent margin. Only the 14900K and 285K are within 10 percent of the 9950X3D here, with the star of this review holding onto a comfortable second place.

AMD Ryzen 7 9950X3D analysis

• Introduction, test rig and content creation benchmarks
• Gaming benchmarks: Dragon's Dogma 2, Baldur's Gate 3, Starfield [this page]
• Gaming benchmarks: Flight Simulator 2020, F1 24, Forza Horizon 5
• Gaming benchmarks: Counter-Strike 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Crysis 3 Remastered
• Gaming benchmarks: Far Cry 6, Hitman World of Assassination
• Power analysis: Counter-Strike 2, Far Cry 6, Forza Horizon 5
• AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D: the Digital Foundry verdict