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Earlier this week, we shared our list of the best gaming desktop GPUs on the market and included all three major players, AMD, Intel, and Nvidia, for our recommendations. Instead of selecting the best cards across different price points, our approach involved taking into account the desired refresh rate or the framerate output a user is targeting. This ensures our picks remain consistent as prices are often volatile.
After GPUs, we move on to CPUs and in this new piece, we are looking at what the best gaming processors on the desktop are. Once again we will be using the refresh rate or FPS output as the measuring stick.
Best gaming CPU for 240-360 Hz
Although there are some gaming monitors out there which have refresh rate higher than 360 Hz, getting so many frames in a game outside of some lightweight titles like Counter-Strike 2, is extremely hard.
Hence we are maxing out our list at only 360 Hz. For this level of performance, AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3D is a great pick, if not, the best one. X3D processors have always been more powerful than others, thanks to their large amount of L3 cache. While not every game may benefit from 3D V-cache, many indeed do. This octa-core 16 thread SKU is based on the latest Zen 5 architecture.
The 9950X3D is also nearly as good at gaming as the 9800X3D and additionally provides the extra value of being a much better processor at multi-threaded tasks. So if you are also using your system for other intensive tasks outside of gaming, like rendering, say, the 9950X3D is the more expensive but better alternative.
Speaking of alternatives, the previous gen Zen 4-based 7800X3D is also an outstanding choice for high refresh rate gaming. The chip is nearly as good as the 9800X3D when it comes to games, but is way cheaper, making it the much better value pick by far.
- Get the Ryzen 7 9800X3D on Amazon US || Newegg US || Amazon UK
- Get the Ryzen 7 7 7800X3D on Amazon US || Newegg US || Amazon UK
- Get the Ryzen 9 9950X3D on Amazon US || Newegg US || Amazon UK
Best gaming CPU for 120-180 Hz
Next in line, we have the 120-180 FPS terrritory and the best option for this range is the hexa-core AMD Ryzen 5 9600X. This is of course based on the same Zen 5 design as the previous X3D CPUs, but it is a lot more affordable but still gives over 80% of the performance. It is also fairly power efficient too as with most other Ryzen SKUs.
Best gaming CPU for 60-75 Hz
This is the category which does not require much horsepower, but is the most common refresh rate at which most people game. In fact many AAA games do not even require more than 60-70 fps to provide an extremely smooth, playable experience.
In this segment, the Intel Core i3-12100F is a very good choice for well under $100. 12th Gen Intel desktop CPUs, especially low TDP ones like this, are highly stable, unlike some 13th and 14th generation parts.
In terms of framerate output, the 12100F punches well above its weight. Another advantage is that it supports both PCIe 5.0 and DDR5/DDR4 memory, so if you get a good quality LGA1700 motherboard you will be able to upgrade to a more powerful 14th gen processor in the future.
Best AI / ML CPU
In terms of modern productivity tasks, AI-based workloads have picked up a lot of steam lately. As such, just going with a powerful multi-core processor is often not the best way forward. Although it works, having dedicated hardware to accelerate AI performance is generally much better in terms of efficiency. This dedicated chip is the NPU (Neural Processing Unit) and unfortunately, AMD's high-end Ryzen desktop CPUs do not pack one (only Ryzen 8000G series APUs have it).
Intel on the other hand features NPUs on almost all of its Core Ultra series 2 SKUs. As such, the Core Ultra 9 285K is an excellent pick for someone who wants to run AI tasks. The on-board NPU on the 285K is not a very powerful one but it still benefits greatly. Users can also leverage the integrated UHD graphics.
And there you have it. These are our picks for the best CPUs for gaming across the various available refresh rates. We have made our picks from both the Red and Blue camps, as all of them offer some pretty compelling options across their whole range of products. We have also added what we feel is the best overall AI processor currently available on desktops.
Let us know in the comments below if you agree with our picks.
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