AMD’s unreleased Ryzen 9 5900X3D had 128MB of cache
Gaming Hardware · Saturday, October 3, 2026 · 7 sources

AMD’s unreleased Ryzen 9 5900X3D had 128MB of cache

A rare engineering sample of AMD’s 12-core Ryzen 9 5900X3D has surfaced online, revealing 128MB of L3 cache in a processor the company never sold. The configuration paired extra cache on one chiplet with a standard second chiplet, offering a glimpse of the design choices behind AMD’s gaming CPUs.

Bottom line — AMD ultimately released the eight-core Ryzen 7 5800X3D, not this 12-core prototype.

Go deeper 5

  1. Screenshots shared by a Chiphell user show 128MB of L3 cache, split between 96MB on one chiplet and 32MB on the other, according to VideoCardz.

  2. The sample reportedly would not boot with a recent motherboard BIOS; an older BIOS using SMU firmware 56.70.0 worked, VideoCardz reports.

  3. Tom’s Hardware says AMD had also shown 12-core and 16-core Zen 3 prototypes with 192MB of L3 cache, achieved by adding 3D V-Cache to both chiplets.

  4. At Computex 2021, AMD demonstrated a 12-core prototype that it said delivered up to 15% better average gaming performance than a standard Ryzen 9 5900X at the same 4GHz frequency, Tom’s Hardware reports.

  5. Tom’s Hardware says AMD settled on a single-cache-chiplet design for the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, avoiding cross-chiplet latency that can hinder gaming.

Read the reporting 7

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Last generated: Oct 3, 1:42 PM UTC by wreetco

dstld. Your daily news summary designed to surface the news that matters from a European perspective. Curated by humans, summarized by AI - always with links back to the original reporting.

Links · Contact
Popular topics · WorldEuropeGamesAI
Last generated: Oct 3, 1:42 PM UTC by wreetco