Our picks below will show you the best CPU for gaming. Of course, when shopping for the best CPU for gaming, you’ll want to balance performance and features with your budget. You can also see how all of these processors stack up in our CPU benchmarks hierarchy, and for detailed help on picking the best processor, you can check out our 2024 CPU Buying Guide. And if you’re on the fence about which CPU maker to go with, our AMD vs. Intel article dives deep into the topic and comes up with a winner.

AMD’s Ryzen 7 9800X3D is now the fastest gaming chip on the planet, and it isn’t even close — the fastest AMD CPU for gaming is a whopping 35% faster in 1080p gaming than Intel’s competing flagship Core Ultra 9 285K, and 30% faster than Intel’s previous-gen flagship, the Core i9-14900K. This chip has been hard to find, but it’s definitely worth continuing to look for.

The 9800X3D is on the pricey side with a $480 MSRP, and its limited availability often finds it selling for far higher pricing, but this chip delivers the pinnacle of gaming performance. AMD’s previous-gen Ryzen 7 7800X3D is still a great buy for gaming, and we expect to see good sales on it now that it is officially a last-gen product, but it does lag the 9800X3D by 15% in gaming. However, AMD has also improved the 9800X3D’s performance in applications, giving it another advantage over the prior-gen model. The X3D chips do come with trade-offs in application performance, so do your research before you buy, but it delivers the best gaming performance overall, and we don’t expect a faster chip for gaming for several months. If you need more threaded heft, look to the X3D Ryzen 7 and 9 versions listed below.

AMD’s standard Ryzen 9000 models made a somewhat underwhelming debut due to lackluster gen-on-gen gaming performance improvements, but recent firmware and operating system tweaks that improved performance, not to mention some price cuts, have made them far more competitive. As such, we’ve added the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X to our list for their strong level of gaming performance at their price points.

Here’s the shortlist of our buying recommendations — use the ‘More’ links to jump to a more detailed description of each processor and its alternatives:

Best CPU for Gaming in 2025 at a glance (more info below):

If you need more heft in heavy workloads, AMD’s $489 16-core 32-thread Ryzen 9 7950X3D brings 3D V-Cache-powered gaming performance to a workstation-class processor for the highest-end systems. AMD’s 12-core 24-thread $327 Ryzen 7 7900X3D represents the next step down the ladder, but it also delivers on the gaming front. However, we expect AMD to launch 9000 series versions of these chips next year.

The list below is for the best CPUs for gaming, while our list of best CPUs for workstations is for those who frequently tackle high-end content creation or professional work, while the best budget CPUs can help you find a cheap chip. Processors benefit from the best thermal paste, so check out our guide if you’re shopping for a new processor. But if you’re after the best CPU for gaming, you’re in the right place.

Best CPU for Gaming Benchmarks

We rank all the Intel and AMD processors based on our in-depth CPU benchmarks hierarchy. You can see some of those numbers in the charts above, including CPU overclock performance results (marked as PBO for AMD processors). We’re currently retesting all of these processors with the Nvidia RTX 5090, but we’re largely seeing the same trends as outlined above.

This group of results comprises only the chips that have passed through our newest test suite. Additionally, the tables in our CPU benchmark hierarchy include rankings based on past CPU benchmarks and breakdowns of single- and multi-threaded performance in productivity applications across a broad spate of processors. Finally, be aware that the pricing in the charts above can fluctuate.