Conclusion
Overall, we can see solid improvement in the Ryzen 5000 over the earlier 3000 series. The Ryzen 9 5900X’s improvements are evident in most applications we saw. It’s been a year since the Ryzen 9 5900X was launched, and with new BIOS updaters, AGESA updates, and driver updates it is operating at its full potential today. This is a different context than it would have been a year ago.
AMD has done a wonderful job at removing some of the internal latencies that caused issues with the older generations of Ryzen processors in certain applications. Going to a higher core count CCDs is a godsend on that front. AMD claims a 19% performance uplift over previous generations. This was accomplished by unifying the CCX/CCD complexes and doubling the L3 cache over the earlier generation. On top of that, AMD did increase the base and boost clock speeds slightly over the previous generation.
Final Points
Ultimately, the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X is an excellent CPU with solid availability at this point. Its availability for a very long time was awful, with price gouging making them cost-prohibitive. Today, AMD has reduced the price of the 5000 series in order to make the series more enticing in light of recent releases. At present, the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X costs around $480 on Amazon.com.
The AMD Ryzen 9 5900X is certainly a bargain compared to its introductory price and represents a solid upgrade for anyone who already has an AM4 system. It’s a great upgrade from the Ryzen 9 3900X. And of course, you can still use the vastly cheaper and far more available DDR4 RAM with it. Additionally, if you are gaming at GPU limited resolutions, it may be a compelling option over Intel’s offerings as well given board maturity, memory prices, and ultimately, the similar performance you’d get going either direction.