AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and 9950X review: Not the best for gaming, but great for everything else

Note: This review was first published on 14 August 2024.

In a rather unusual move, AMD staggered the launch of its new Ryzen 9000 series processors to two parts after a minor delay. The entry-to-mid tiers Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X processors were launched on 8 August and you can read about my review of both processors here (spoiler: they are great!). AMD saved their best for last, with the flagships Ryzen 9 9900X and Ryzen 9 9950X that we are reviewing today available at retail from 15 August onwards.

On specifications alone, you might think that the Ryzen 9000 series seem like a relatively modest upgrade over the previous generation Ryzen 7000 series, yet there are some genuine generational beneath-the-hood advancements that create healthy uplifts with regards to real-world performance. To learn more about the Zen 5 architecture that powers the four Ryzen 9000 series processors here, I highly recommend you first read my deep-dive feature here. It also explains how AMD has made the new Ryzen its most power efficient CPUs yet.

Like the 9600X and 9700X, both the Ryzen 9 9900X and 9950X have a lower launch price compared to their 7000 series direct predecessors. The Ryzen 9 9900X also has a lower TDP than the previous-gen Ryzen 9 7900X, although curiously the Ryzen 9 9950X’s TDP remains unchanged from the Ryzen 9 7950X that it is replacing. These processors work on any AMD motherboard with an AM5 socket, including the existing X670 series with a BIOS update. Motherboard makers such as ASUS/ROG and Gigabyte will be launching the next-gen flagship X870E later this month, which comes with newer tech and features such as USB 4 and Wi-Fi 7.

The 9900X and 9950X are both AMD’s designated flagship CPUs of this generation and both are based on the same Zen 5 architecture and built with TSMC’s 4nm process – and both include a separate I/O die that is fabricated using TSMC’s 6nm process. So, between the 9900X and 9950X, what difference does the “50” make?

Well, for starters the 9950X has 16 cores and 32 threads while the 9900X only has 12 cores and 24 threads. Naturally if you are doing a lot of multi-taskings and very heavy content creation workloads, having more cores should provide more performance uplifts. But the biggest difference between the two is the cache, which allows the CPU to store the most necessary information on board to reduce the time and energy it takes to access it. The 9950X has a higher L2 cache at 16MB (versus 12MB on the 9900X), with the L3 cache remaining the same as the 9900X at 64MB. In theory, this should give the 9950X better performance in apps and even games (remember AMD’s V-Cache aka X3D technology?) that are cache-hungry.

But these extra core and cache does add up to the 9950X’s TDP (or power requirement), which is 50W higher than the 9900X. Considering how AMD has managed to lower TDP levels gen-on-gen across all Ryzen 9000 series CPUs below it, I’m surprised and curious that the 9950X is the only processor whose TDP remains the same as its predecessor, the 7950X.

Performance benchmarks

Our CPU test rig comes with the following specifications, with motherboards used being the only different components used.

• ROG Crosshair X670E Hero (AMD) / ROG Strix Z790-F Gaming WiFi II motherboard (Intel)
• Samsung 980 Pro 1TB SSD
• Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 memory
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition
• Windows 11 OS

We have also determined in our Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X review that those processors surpass their last-gen predecessors in gaming, and so for this review we will only all four Ryzen 9000 series processors against the last-gen flagship Ryzen 9 7950X, Ryzen 7 7800X3D and Intel’s Core i9-14900K.

For the Intel Core i9-14900K processor, bear in mind that the CPU was benchmarked using the latest motherboard firmware that has placed a power limit on the CPU. Due to the ongoing 13th and 14th Gen “elevated operating voltage” issue, this is a necessary precaution but also impacts the processor’s performance (you can read about it here).

Gaming performance

The Ryzen 7 7800X3D is still the top dog when it comes to pure gaming performance, especially with cache-loving games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, besting even the 9950X, which in turn outperformed the 7950X3D in other games at 1080p (there’s a technical reason why AMD made the 7800X3D better than the 7950X3D when it comes to gaming; read here). But what’s more incredible here is how the 9700X, for a mid-tier processor, is clearly ahead of the rest of the Ryzen 9000 series processors.

I’ve said it many times before: At higher resolutions, the choice of graphics card has a more significant impact on frame rates than the CPU. While the Ryzen 7 9700X is the fastest non-X3D AMD processors we've tested for 1080p gaming, its performances will diminish at higher resolutions like 1440p, and more so at 4K, where performances of all the top-end CPUs in my tests are almost on par with each other – separated only by very marginal differences. If you’re looking for a processor just for gaming, the smart money is on either the 9600X or 9700X and using the extra money for a good graphics card.

Productivity and Content Creation performance

The Ryzen 9 9950X has supplanted the Intel Core i9-14900K as the fastest processor for encoding a 4.5GB video in our HandBrake test, as we rightly predicted in our 9600X/9700X review. The 9900X, with a lesser core count than the older 7950X, was half a minute slower than the latter too. Simply put, the more cores, the better for such workloads.

SYSmark 30 is a great benchmark as it measures and compares system performance using real-world applications and workloads – such as office suite-style applications, tasks like web browsing, file compression, and application installation, and photo and video editing applications, including multitasking.

And it’s here that the 9900X and 9950X show good generational uplifts in performance compared to the Ryzen 9 7950X. It’s all the more impressive with the 9900X, when you consider it has lesser cores and also a lower TDP.

Power and thermal efficiency

I’ve already talked about how AMD has built the Zen 5 architecture focusing on power efficiency (read about it here), and we can clearly just how much better the Ryzen 9000 series processors are. Comparing the 7950X and the 9950X for instance, the newer processor not only outperforms its direct predecessor in Cinebench R23 but also runs cooler and with lesser power required.

As we can see in the charts above, where I measured the power and temperature of each processor while running Cinebench R23 (Multi Core), the 9900X’s power shot up to its PPT (Package Power Tracking) limit of 162W while the 9950X hit 200W. It’s interesting to note that while all the processors above hit the limits of their PPT in this test, the 9950X didn’t. Its PPT limit is 230W, so there’s great overclocking potential with it.

All in all, it's quite amazing how AMD has engineered the Ryzen 9000 series processors to be so great at power efficiency. It will be interesting to see how Intel’s upcoming Arrow Lake processors will compare here.

Final thoughts

There really is no debate. Both the Ryzen 9 9900X and 9590X are worthy flagships of the Ryzen 9000 series. Plaudits have to be given to AMD for not only making the Ryzen 9000 series processors better in every sense over the Ryzen 7000s and Intel’s current best (and that’s saying a lot given their current issues), but also with a lower launch SRP.

But if I have to pick one out of the two, then the 9950X has to be my processor of choice. It is today’s best processor for anyone who wants to prioritise heavy creative workloads and gaming. It certainly is not a gaming-focused processor, because there are far more suitable Ryzen processors for that in the economic and performance sense (see chart below). Plus, it will be such a terrible waste of cores if you’re building a 9950X-powered rig just for games.

Which brings me to my next point: should you upgrade to the 9900X or 9950X?

If you’re already using a Ryzen 7000 series equivalent processor, there are little reasons to do that since the generational uplift in performance while good, isn’t ground-breaking. For content creators, such as those who game and stream at the same time, and are on Ryzen 5000 equivalents or older CPUs, the benefits to upgrade are much higher as they will not only get the most uplift in performance and power efficiency, but also a more future-proof AM5 platform (AMD is committed to supporting the AM5 socket through 2027) that comes with better tech and features.

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