Conclusion
The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X reviewed, in today’s review, we have reviewed the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X CPU, based on AMD’s new Zen 4 architecture, AM5 platform, and priced at $699 MSRP. We ran it through its paces in synthetic benchmarks, and gaming at 4K, 1440p and 1080p. The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X is AMD’s 16-core/32-thread flagship CPU in the Zen 4 family. This sits at the top of the SKUs and provides an enthusiast experience for content creation, production, and gaming. This 16-core monster is based on AMD’s new AM5 platform, supporting DDR5 and PCIe 5.0. The CPU can boost up to 5.7GHz and replaces the previous generation Ryzen 9 5950X CPU. Also, do not miss our Ryzen 9 7900X and Ryzen 5 7600X reviews.
Performance
Starting with the system benchmarks, and PCMark 10 we found the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X almost topped the charts, it offered an uplift of 14% over the Ryzen 9 5950X in this overall system benchmark. It was only a slight increase over the Ryzen 9 7900X, however. It was just under 2% slower than the Intel Core i9-13900K. We saw bigger differences in Microsoft Office, however, where the 7950X was 22% faster than the 5950X, allowing for faster office application work. We didn’t see the extra cores really making a difference, however, over the 7900X. The 7950X was just under the 13900K in performance.
In Geekbench, where we looked closer at the multi-core and single-core performance uplifts this is where the Ryzen 9 7950X shined. Compared to the 5950X, the 7950X was 71% faster than the previous generation it was replacing, which is huge. Compared to the 7900X, the 7950X was 19% faster. The 7950X was 7% slower than the 13900K. Single-core performance was also strong, coming in at 30% faster than the Ryzen 9 5950X. It was even slightly faster than the 13900K.
In AIDA64 CPU testing, the results were interesting. In CPU PhotoWorxx, we saw a massive benefit with the Intel Raptor Lake CPUs. However, the Ryzen 9 7950X was a whopping 97% faster than the previous generation Ryzen 9 5950X CPU. The core difference didn’t matter as far as the comparison with the 7900X goes. Where the Ryzen 9 7950X really shined against even the Raptor Lake CPUs was in encryption and FPU performance. In CPU AES the Ryzen 9 7950X dominated the scene and was 45% faster than the previous 5950X CPU. It was also 28% faster than the Intel Core i9-13900K. In CPU SHA3 the 7950X was 66% faster than the 5950X and 13% faster than the 13900K. The Ryzen 9 7950X also shined in the FPU tests, Julia and Mandel. It was 36% faster than the 5950X and 36% faster than the 13900K in Julia. It was 26% faster than the 5950X and 34% faster than the 13900K in Mandel.
The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X was also a very strong performer when it comes to rendering, especially Blender and V-RAY. In Cinebench the 7950X was 50% faster than the previous generation 5950X. In Single-Core it was 27% faster than the 5950X. In Blender and V-RAY though it really opened up. The 7950X was 52% faster than the 5950X and 31% faster than the 7900X and also faster than the 13900K in every rendered scene. In V-RAY the 7950X was 51% faster than the 5950X and 31% faster than the 7900X and 9% faster than the 13900K. We also saw good performance in video encoding, beating the previous generation 5950X by 55%.
Power and Temp
In terms of power utilization, the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X does consume about 100 more Watts than the previous generation Ryzen 9 5950X when all cores are maxed out. That power is put to use in providing a 50%+ performance uplift. Also, compared to the 7900X the 7900X adds about 35 more Watts for the extra 4-cores/8-threads. We saw performance uplifts of about 30% with the extra cores, so that’s a pretty good performance per Watt improvement. At the end of the day, the Ryzen 9 7950X is a lot more power efficient compared to the Intel Core i9-13900K which exceeds the 7950X by another 100W and doesn’t offer much more performance.
In regards to the temperature of 95c, AMD ensures us that the CPU is meant to run this way. It’s designed to run and utilize all the thermal headroom it has without throttling, and therefore it utilizes your coolers abilities to maximize frequency and performance. This is a safe operating temperature for the CPU, and while it is warmer than the 5959X, it is the normal behavior of this new CPU and is designed to run this way. We do recommend a 280mm at the least and probably would aim to shoot for a 360mm AIO with this CPU to maintain great performance at the money you are spending.
Final Points
The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X is a very strong uplift in performance versus the previous generation Ryzen 9 5950X it is replacing. The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X is a very strong CPU in multi-core performance, single-core performance, encryption, FPU performance, rendering performance, video encoding performance, and gaming. You will likely see a 50%+ improvement versus the previous generation Ryzen 9 5950X in multi-threaded applications when the CPU is working its best. We experienced up to 30% better single-core/thread performance over the previous generation Ryzen 9 5950X CPU. In addition, the additional cores/threads of the 7950X versus the 7900X can allow between a 20-30% uplift in performance in multi-threaded applications. Otherwise, the two have similar single-core/thread performance for gaming.