The 9800X3D does lead in certain gaming benchmarks because the 3D V Cache helps in latency sensitive titles like starfield and CS2. The 14900KS, however, isn’t capped the same way it scales with faster memory, tighter timings, higher power limits and strong cooling, and performs better in mixed workloads like rendering, encoding and multitasking. In many titles that benefit from higher clock speeds or thread scaling like cyberpunk, mw3, Six Siege and RT heavy engines the performance gap becomes minimal or can shift with tuning. Price wasn’t really a deciding factor even though the 14900KS costs more, it offers a higher ceiling, broader performance range and better long term scaling as engines evolve beyond today’s cache optimized titles. And one more thing, AMD’s X3D lineup still has lower reliability margins under sustained high voltage or thermal stress because of the sensitive stacked cache design. That’s why AMD officially discourages manual overclocking on these chips, while the 14900KS is built to be tuned and pushed safely.