The AMD Ryzen 9950X3D is the best all-round processor in the world. It's the top of the pile for gaming and it's competitive with the best of the best for productivity. But it is expensive, and even then it's so popular it's out of stock almost everywhere at the time of writing. You don't have to wait for that to change, though. There are some excellent alternative CPUs worth considering.
Here are some CPUs to buy instead of the 9950X3D.
If you're predominantly looking for a new CPU for gaming, the 9800X3D is arguably a better buy over the 9950X3D, anyway. It's much cheaper, has comparable gaming performance -- and even beats the 9950X3D in some games -- and uses less power. You do miss out on the sky-high productivity performance, but it's not like it's bad. Eight Zen 5 cores with 3D V-Cache (with overclocking, if you want to go down that route) are still very quick for a whole range of tasks.
Gaming is where this chip really excels though, and outside of the 9950X3D, there's nothing that can compete with it. Save yourself some money and grab a more powerful graphics card. Your FPS will thank you.
The Intel Core Ultra 9 285K isn't an amazing CPU for gaming, but it's very impressive for productivity workloads. Video editing? A cinch. Blender rendering? Crazy fast. Video transcoding? Over in an instant. With 24 cores, there's nothing that can quite match the 285K when it comes to most demanding workloads. It's just very unimpressive at gaming, so this isn't a CPU for working in the day and gaming in your off hours. There are better options for that below.
But for pure working, the 285K is an excellent choice. It's far more efficient than its predecessors, and has support for advanced features like Thunderbolt 5 and Wi-Fi 7.
If you want a high performing CPU for work but don't want to jump camps to Intel, the AMD 9950X is an equally great option. It has 16 full-size Zen 5 cores, giving it fantastic multi-threaded performance -- and it's pretty nippy for games too. It won't keep up with any recent generation X3D options, but it's still a cutting-edge, flagship CPU. It's plenty fast.
But it's in demanding professional workloads where this CPU really stretches its legs. It can compete with the Intel 285K just about everywhere and it has a future upgrade path, as AMD will continue to support the AM5 socket for at least one more generation, possibly two.
If you want that do-it-all feel from your CPU, with cutting-edge gaming performance and plenty of high-performance cores for professional workloads, then the only real alternative to the new king, is the last-gen king: The 7950X3D.
This CPU still has 16 cores, though they're the slower Zen 4 type with lower clock speeds due to first-generation V-Cache. But it's still 16 cores and you still get that V-Cache, so this CPU is in the running for one of the fastest gaming CPUs in the world, and its productivity performance can keep up with some of the much newer alterantives.
It's still expensive, but this is a processor that's blazing fast in almost any setting and it's pretty efficient, too.
Jon Martindale covers how to guides, best-of lists, and explainers to help everyone understand the hottest new hardware and software in desktops, laptops, and on the web. He's also written articles on how to make your PC more efficient for the summer, and how he fixed his backpain with an annoying pop-up app.
Although Jon covers a wide range of topics, his particular focus is on PC components and peripherals. He's also written gaming performance guides.
Jon also writers for Forbes, Lifewire, and Microcenter, has authored two novels, and provided back story and dialogue for a handful of games. He's an amateur game developer, and has made a few game prototypes in his spare time -- with a little help from ChatGPT. Jon's also an avid board gamer, getting in regular games of epic tabletop fare like Twilight Imperium and War of the Ring where he can. He's a father to two kids who recently discovered the joys of Pokémon, and keeps his aging French Bulldog cross busy on regular walks.
Speech-to-text apps have flooded the App Store, making it easier than ever to type on our Macs with just our voice. I have previously covered one such app called TypeWhisper. However, there has been a dearth of good text-to-speech models, and most of the good ones are locked behind a subscription.
Ollama, an open-source app that lets you run local AI models on your computer, wants to change that. It works on macOS, Windows, and Linux, and your prompts are never stored or used for training.
Did you think hitting delete on your AI chatbot conversation actually makes it disappear? Georgia Tech researchers just proved that's not entirely true. They have built a forensic tool called ORISA that can dig deleted conversations from your phone and even rebuild them into a working chatbot session you can keep talking to.
How can ORISA bring deleted AI conversations back?
Touchscreen laptops have been around for years. You can get them in all sizes and shapes. Just not from Apple. For years, the Cupertino giant has treated the idea of a touchscreen MacBook the way I treat a meeting that could have been an email: with open contempt. However, Wednesday looks like the day the company could finally change its mind.
The latest Apple invite puts the “Pro and Tell” showcase in Los Angeles at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on October 28, 2026. Instead of a regular live-streamed keynote, it is an invitation-only, hands-on event for a handful of press and creators (similar to what the company did for the MacBook Neo earlier this year).