Last week AMD launched its Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X desktop processors and this week it’s the turn of the Ryzen 9 9950X and Ryzen 9900X. You can see my review of the Ryzen 9 9900X in my other article today linked to below, but today it’s all about the new 16-core flagship and whether it’s ability to tap into more power will mean it fares better than the Zen 5 CPUs that have already launched.
AMD’s Ryzen 9 9950X
Those processors were the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X, which launched last week and it has to be said that they weren’t quite what we’d been expecting. Outside of games they showed promise and proved to be efficient in multi-threaded workloads, drawing less power for more performance than their equivalents in the Ryzen 7000 series.
However, their mostly incremental performance increases were also mirrored in games. In short, they’re a rare generation of Ryzen CPUs that didn’t make a strong case for upgrading to from the previous generation. In fact the case was non-existent.
This was partly due to those CPUs being limited to 65W TDPs, but the CPU we’re looking at today – the Ryzen 9 9950X has a TDP of 170W. The question is will this translate into better performance? You can see details on the best memory, coolers and tips for building a Ryzen 9000 system in my previous article linked to above.
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X specifications
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X pricing
The pricing that was leaked a few weeks ago has been correct and is also true for the Ryzen 9 9900X which has a launch price of $499. However, whether due to a later adjustment or just plain wrong, the Ryzen 9 9950X is only $50 cheaper than the Ryzen 9 7950X at $649, rather than the $100 lower price leak of $599. Confirmed pricing for the UK is £610 for the 9950X and £459 for the 9900X.
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X test system
I used an Asus ROG Strix X670E-E Gaming WiFi, 32GB of Kingston DDR5 6000 memory and an Nvidia RTX4090 graphics card to test the AMD CPUs, with a fresh install of Windows 11 with the latest updates and drivers. My test system uses a liquid cooling loop and I used a be quiet! Dark Power 12 1000W power supply.
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X Microsoft Flight Simulator performance
The Ryzen 9000 series performed well in Flight Simulator and offered noticeable benefits over the Ryzen 7000 models, except for the Ryzen 7 7800X3D which was still ahead, although both managed to beat the likes of the Ryzen 9 7950X3D and Core i9-14900K.
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X Counter Strike 2 performance
Counter Strike 2 is a very easy game to run smoothly so we have some very high frame rates here. The Ryzen 7 7800X3D was still top in terms of minimum frame rates but the Ryzen 9 CPUs did give it a run for its money and offered a noticeable boost over other Ryzen 7000 models.
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X Assassin’s Creed: Mirage performance
The Ryzen 9 CPUs only offered small boosts in performance over the Ryzen 7000 series in Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, again with both Ryzen 7000 X3D CPUs being slightly faster too.
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X Cyberpunk 2077 performance
It was another win for 3D V-Cache in Cyberpunk 2077 with the 7900X3D and 7950X3D both beating the new Ryzen 9 models with meagre boosts over the other Ryzen 7000 high-end models.
AMD’s Ryzen 9 9950X and Ryzen 9 9900X
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X Lightroom and Photoshop performance
Performance in both benchmarks is good for all Ryzen 9 CPUs in popular photo editing software Lightroom and Photoshop, with cores seeming not to count that much, but the Zen 5 architecture edging out a small lead over the Ryzen 7000 series.
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X Davinci Resolve performance
More cores are better in Davinci Resolve but both the Ryzen 9 9900X and 9950X did well, if a little behind the more core-laden Intel CPUs and the Ryzen 9 7950X3D with its 3D V-Cache and 16 cores proving an effective combo.
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X Premiere Pro performance
Premiere Pro finally has a new king of the hill in the Ryzen 9 9950X, but again, it doesn’t offer much more performance over the Ryzen 9 7950X or Core i9-14900K
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X HandBrake performance
AMD’s HandBrake figures over Intel were eyebrow raising but I couldn’t seem to replicate them in the time I had. The default settings with a 4K H.264 video file still saw the Ryzen 9 9950X come top with the lowest encode time but the Core i9-14900K was only just behind.
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X Cinebench performance
Cinebench is a free, consistent benchmark that’s useful for at a glance single and lightly-threaded performance analysis and the single core test does show all Ryzen 9000 CPUs performing well, which explains the good results in some lightly threaded applications such as photo editing. Below that the multi-core score sees both CPUs gain over their predecessors, but again, not by huge amounts.
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X power consumption
Both Ryzen 9 models differ little from their predecessors in system power consumption, with the 9950X drawing a bit more and the 9900X around 30W less – nothing really to write home about.
Should you buy the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X?
We’re in a better place with the Ryzen 9 9950X than with the Ryzen 5 and 7 models last week, but the situation is still far from a typical Ryzen launch. At best, they begin to justify choosing them over their Ryzen 7000 counterparts, but only if the price difference isn’t huge and there’s enough of a performance gap, which there often isn’t.
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X
Right now the Ryzen 9 7950X is just $520 on Newegg, which means the Ryzen 9 9950X at $650 is significantly more expensive and only in a few tests did it even get close to warrant spending $130 more. The Ryzen 9 7950X3D is just $525 and 7800X3D just $366 and still offer similar or better performance in games. The low price of the 7000 series means that the often meagre performance gains make it hard to recommend overall, except for a few select situations.