Recent price cuts have made this chip an even greater deal for a mere $160, catapulting it to the top of our list of recommendations. If you're looking for the hands-down best CPU for gaming with a more accessible price point, the Alder Lake six-core 12-thread Core i5-12400 is your chip. Also, its $449 price point is a bit higher than we typically recommend for most gaming-centric builds. So you'll need to be aware of the pros and cons before buying this specific chip. However, the 58000X3D isn't as fast as comparable chips in other types of single- and multi-threaded work beyond gaming. Instead, AMD's new Ryzen 7 5800X3D joins our list of Best CPUs for gaming, taking the title as the fastest gaming CPU on the market in addition to being the best AMD CPU for gaming.Īs you can see in the gaming performance album below, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D lives up to AMD's claim that 3D V-Cache delivers an increase in gaming performance equivalent to what we would normally only see from a new microarchitecture. Intel recently launched the Core i9-12900KS, but its price-and-power-be-damned approach to attempting to stay at the top of our gaming performance charts isn't worth the premium. Intel article dives deep into the topic and comes up with a winner. You can also see how all of these processors stack up in our CPU Benchmarks Hierarchy. But for detailed help on picking the best processor for your gaming rig, you can check out our 2022 CPU Buying Guide. And if you're on the fence about which CPU company to go with, our AMD vs. Our tips and picks below will help you choose the best CPU for gaming.
When shopping for the best gaming CPU, you'll want to balance performance and features with your PC budget.