I wasn’t expecting it to appear before Christmas, given all the availability warnings, but it actually appeared the weekend before, so that was a proper win and led to a very happy boy on Christmas Day. As to performance, yes there’s a fair bit of that. We don’t have a gpu card just yet but fps figure for Fortnite was just about playable; with tweaking the graphics settings it’s up to a more acceptable 70fps. Horrible graunching noise clipping it into place on the x670e tomahawk board but thankfully it fired up first time in a new build… once I’d updated the bios. Before updating the bios it wouldn’t even think about booting, so make sure to flash the latest beta bios if you want to avoid the sweaty terror. Seems to run reasonably cool, using a thermalright phantom spirit 120. Boot time is about 20 secs with a gen5 ssd in slot 1. No issue working with our two 16gb Corsair cl30 ram modules. Very happy except for that gouging price that AMD has set.

The productivity side does lack compared to the base 9000 series and the 14th intel and 15th, and the price is a little expensive for a lil silicon slab ($669 CAD + tax shipping = around $755 CAD).

but (BIG BUT),

This chip absolutely blows everything out of the water when it comes to gaming performance, there is about 8 - 15% average performance increase from its predecessor which was ALREADY KILLER CPU WITHOUT A COMPETITOR.

Currently the only argument between this chip and the 7800x3d is just the availability, there are more 7800x3ds out there for purchase but the price is base $800 CAD, and if you were lucky enough to snag an 9800x3d for msrp, you will never get that same price anywhere again (unless amd somehow pumps this chip out).

The thermals are way better after its architecture change, it does draw more power though, this allow us for a higher clock in games without throttle, and not to mention, the performance average difference between the new intel chip is a joke.

IMO currently there is no GPU that can max out this chip right now, we might see even more performance gaps when the new RTX 50 series come out.

Switch from an i7 13700k to the 9800x3d and x870e platform and it's been painless. Didn't notice a huge difference in most games at 4k. Though, there were noticeable improvements even at native 4k... like in Baldur's Gate 3 with almost 40 consistent FPS higher in the lower city with a 4090.

I prefer having the option to drop in the next AM5 x3d CPU as a simple upgrade, since this platform has longer legs than my z790 platform did. Idle temps are about 15 degrees hotter than my 13700k with an NH D15 G2. Gaming temps are similar albeit with lower wattage on the 9800x3d.

As a side grade it was more expensive than it was worth since I don't notice a difference in everyday use for the most part. I did the switch because I wanted a platform with more longevity and CPU headroom since I am planning to get a 5090. If you are doing a new build though, I can say the CPU is excellent.

Overall pretty happy with this upgrade, I had a 11900k which has lower base clock speed, 20 MB Cache only vs 104 for the 9800x3D.

Some numbers with my newly built system (5600MTS 2x32GB Kingston + 2x2TB NVME Kingston + x670E Asus + PNY 4090, XMP enabled (5600), No Manual/AI Overclock, stock bios)

Escape from Tarkov: (Streets because it's the most demanding map)
11900K + RTX 4090 -> 43 FPS 4k, max quality
9800x3D + RTX 4090 -> 77 FPS 4k, max quality

Ark Survival Ascended: (Abberation and Scorched tested in single player and modded server)
11900K + RTX 4090 -> 50-60 FPS 4k, max quality, FG enabled
9800x3D + RTX 4090 -> 90-120 FPS 4k, max quality, FG enabled (results edited after more tests)

Call of Duty Modern Warfare II
9800x3D + RTX 4090 -> 130-135 FPS 4k, max quality, FG enabled