Until recently, AMD's most powerful consumer CPU was the Ryzen 9 3950X. But if you want to save a few bucks (and build your PC now rather than wait for Zen 3 inventory to normalize), the Ryzen 9 3950X is an attractive option at its current discounted price.

Newegg currently has it for $694.99 when you apply coupon code 93XQC55 at checkout. As an added bonus, you'll be eligible for AMD's "Equipped to Win" game promotion and receive a code to download Far Cry 6, which will be released next year. For some odd reason, this game promotion is only valid for purchases of the Ryzen 3000 series and does not apply to the Ryzen 5000 series.

This is not a huge savings, but if you need or want 16 cores and 32 threads of computing muscle, it doesn't get any cheaper than the Ryzen 9 3950X. Also, with this discount, it's over $100 cheaper than the 16-core/32-thread Ryzen 9 5950X. whether you want to wait to add Benjamin to your Zen 3 parts is up to you, but if you want to build or upgrade now, I would guess the Ryzen 9 3950X There's no doubt about it.

While both are great for gaming, I wouldn't necessarily recommend them exclusively for gaming. Rather, they are among the best CPUs for tasks that combine gaming with serious streaming or that make liberal use of all cores and threads (such as video encoding and other content creation workloads).

Incidentally, the Ryzen 9 3950X is even cheaper at Ant Online, where it can be purchased for $679.99. However, it is unclear whether this listing qualifies for Far Cry 6 freebies. In theory, AMD lists Ant Online as a participating retailer, but there is another product page that mentions Far Cry 6, which lists it at $759.99.

Update: Ant Online clarified in an email that "customers who purchase the 3950X from us will receive a code for Far Cry 6." In addition, the distributor updated the latter's product page to specifically mention the promotion and reflect a price of $679.99 (instead of $759.99).