PC Gamer Hardware Awards: The greatest gaming CPU of 2025

It’s been a comparatively quiet 12 months for brand new gaming CPUs, as AMD and Intel launched the majority of their newest processors again in 2024. Ryzen 9000-series chips first appeared in the summertime, with the Core Ultra 200S vary making an look a couple of months later in October.

Since then, retailers’ listings have largely been stuffed with non-overclockable or low-power variations, however AMD did drop a couple of niceties for us in 2025. Admittedly, most of them weren’t a lot of a shock, because the Ryzen 9 9950X3D was anticipated proper from the launch of Zen 5.