Take the Ryzen 7 9800x3D. It’s an 8 core CPU that is not priced too high and an amazing gaming CPU. It’s not exactly demolishing cinebench or shader comp. In gaming it will pump out amazing frame-rates and is commonly viewed as the best gaming CPU. Now look at the Ryzen 9 9950x3D. It has dual CCDs or 16 cores. It will “park” one for gaming and the clocks are higher than the 9800x3D. So it’s typically better silicon and it exceeds the prior generations 32 core threadripper in productivity. When you first load a game, it does shaders pretty quickly. If you run VMs or demanding software, this is what you will want to own. It’s truly the best gaming CPU, especially if you know how to assign to each CCD. So if you’re only gaming, the 9800x3D will do all you need. If you are doing any heavy work loads, the 9950x3D is a halo product like the 5090. So the Ryzen 9 is double the core count with higher frequency, better overclocks and just much more capable outside of gaming. It’s just going to cost significantly more for only a handful more frames. Outside the X3D CPUs there still is the higher core count and superior performance outside of gaming when you go from the Ryzen 7 to Ryzen 9. This is where the line tends to blur between enterprise and consumer product offerings. I disagree with those saying it’s power efficient as mine pulls 230w. My GPU hits 609w at its peak. You toss efficiency out the window when you buy these products. Assuming you use expo, PBO and push your hardware. More on reddit.com

i mean best bang for buck is like the 9600x 7800x3d is if you want a top of the line chip without being wasteful pretty much More on reddit.com

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GENERALLY (which means that it's not ALWAYS true) AMD's CPU's that are released more or less concurrently with Core i chips are better performance, better iGP, better efficiency, and cheaper. So, with the caveat that exceptions will exist, yes, unless you're getting pre-4000 series Ryzen the Ryzen will deliver a superior value to the Core i CPU of comparable generation. More on reddit.com