Incredibly, the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X costs $100 less than it did during its unveiling a few months ago, down from $699 to a much more reasonable price of $579. This puts it on par with the Intel Core i9 13900K, so both processors are ready for a big flagship showdown.
It's truly a battle for the title of best gaming processor, as these processors offer the best that AMD and Intel have to offer at the moment. While processors with huge core counts aren't for everyone, and gaming rarely requires more than six, these multi-core monsters are ideal for video encoding, streaming, rendering, and all sorts of tasks that can take full advantage of a processor's large number of cores.
Features
| base frequency | 4.5GHz |
| Maximum Gain Frequency | 5.7GHz |
| Core | It was 4 |
| Production process | 5nm |
| Number of Cores | 16 |
| Number of threads | 32 |
| GPU | AMD Radeon Graphics |
| L3 cache | 64MB |
| L2 cache | 16MB |
| Memory controller | Dual-channel DDR5, up to 5,200MHz |
| Packaging | AMD socket AM5 |
| Thermal Design Power (TDP) | 170w |
The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X has the same 16 cores (and 32 threads via SMT) as the previous Ryzen 9 5950X, and is also based on two complex dies (CCDs) with eight cores each. It also has a much higher TDP of 170W compared to the Ryzen 105 9X's 5950W.
Overclocking the latter provided a huge boost in multi-threaded performance, so it looks like AMD has increased the available power to boost frequencies.
Indeed, the peak frequency of the Ryzen 9 7950X is 5,7 GHz, compared to 4,9 GHz for the older processor. Even if both processors were processing the same number of instructions per clock (IPC) at stock speeds, such a boost would provide a significant jump in performance, but AMD also claims a 13 percent IPC boost.
Under the hood is the L2 cache, which has doubled in size to 16MB (1MB per core), which should reduce latency and improve performance. The chips also integrate Radeon RDNA2 graphics, although AMD says it's only powerful enough for displays, not games.
The indicated clock speeds are also not just theoretical. During testing, we observed peak overclocking frequencies of all cores up to 5,2 GHz, which is significantly higher than its predecessor, and the overclocking frequency of a single core reached 5,7 GHz. Moreover, if you are concerned about heat and power consumption, AMD has introduced a feature called Eco Mode. It allows you to reduce the thermal design power (TDP) from the standard 170 W to 105 or even 65 W.
This is very good, since the Ryzen 9 7950X is a pretty hot processor out of the box. Its core temperature regularly rose to 90°C under a multi-threaded load, even with our own water cooling loop connected to it, so manual overclocking is best avoided. However, when using Eco mode, this temperature is reduced significantly, mainly due to a decrease in the acceleration frequency. It drops to 4,7-4,9 GHz for all cores at 105 W and 3,6-3,8 GHz at 65 W.
Ryzen 9 7950X Benchmarks
Even at 65W, the Ryzen 9 7950X's multi-threaded Cinebench score of 29 was still faster than the Intel Core i821 9KS and AMD Ryzen 12900 9X, and at significantly lower temperatures.
In the 105W profile, the 7950X scored 31 points, which is still a far cry from the monstrous 165 points achieved by the processor at stock speed, but unfortunately the latter score is also beaten by the Core i38 422K, which managed to pass the 9 point mark. There's nothing special about that, though—the 13900X is still very powerful, despite having eight fewer cores than the 40K.
Our own RealBench tests were also a close race, with the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X winning with an overall score of 495 versus 461 for the Core i486 267K. Most notably, the single-threaded power of AMD's Zen 9 architecture was demonstrated in our GIMP image editing benchmark, where four of AMD's latest processors outperformed the Core i13900 4K.
The Intel chip had an advantage in our Handbrake multi-threaded video encoding benchmark, but the difference was negligible. Again, it's so small that it's safe to recommend the 13900K or 7950X for heavy multi-threaded workloads.
However, the Core i9-13900K beat the Ryzen 9 7950X in our gaming tests, and AMD's top-end processor failed to achieve a significant advantage over the cheaper Ryzen 7000-series processors in games. The Ryzen 9 7950X was also noticeably slower than the Ryzen 7 7700X in Watch Dogs: Legion.
Ryzen 9 7950X Power Consumption
However, where the Ryzen 9 7950X really has an advantage over the Core i9 13900K is in power consumption. Its peak consumption of 376 W for the entire test system was much lower than the 546 W for the Intel processor under load. In terms of performance per watt, the Ryzen 9 7950X is the clear winner, especially when the performance difference between the two processors is so small.
Ryzen 9 7950X price
Thanks to recent competition from Intel, the price of the Ryzen 9 7950X has dropped significantly in the weeks since it hit the market. The AMD Ryzen 9 7950 costs $579, which makes it expensive, but the price isn't unreasonable for the sheer amount of multi-threaded power on offer.
However, don't forget that you will have to consider other costs when choosing this processor. To get started, you will need a new Socket AM5 motherboard, as well as DDR5 memory. This is an area where Intel has an advantage as its latest 13th generation processors can use older DDR4 memory as well as DDR5. However, this is unlikely to be an important factor for you if you are going to spend that much money on a processor.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that the Ryzen 9 7950X is more competitively priced and is a real competitor to the Core i9 13900K. Both chips trade blows in content creation programs, while the Intel processor is slightly faster in games. To be honest, there isn't much to choose between these two processors in terms of performance.
However, the power consumption of the AMD chip is significantly lower, and it also has the advantage of energy-saving Eco modes that further reduce power consumption and provide fantastic performance per watt.
Of course, this expensive 16-core beast is still a processor that most of us can only dream of. However, if you need a processor primarily for content creation, with a bit of casual gaming on the side, and if power efficiency is important to you, the Ryzen 9 7950X is a stunning example of what the Zen 4 architecture can do.
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