1.Price, availability, and specs2.Ryzen 9 9900X3.Ryzen 9 9950X4.The competition5.Should you buy?
Here’s what I found in my testing.
This review was made possible by a review sample provided by AMD.
The 9900X or 9950X don’t have boxed air coolers, but AMD strongly encourages aftermarket AIO liquid coolers anyway.
The company did not see the contents of the review before publishing.
That’s another $50 drop from theRyzen 7000 Seriesequivalent, which matched its price with its5000 Seriespredecessor.
Is the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X good for creators?
X870E motherboards will launch later in 2024, but the 9900X and 9950X ran fine with my B650-A board.
It’s a beast.
The most important specification of the Ryzen 9 9950X to remember is its massive 170Wbase TDP.
That’s significantly higher than Intel’s 125W Core i9-14900K and only matched by previous-gen desktop chips from AMD.
It’s a more powerful chip, but that power doesn’t come out of thin air.
AMD’s Ryzen 9 9900X scores are at the top of my usual burst and sustained stress testing.
If you absolutely must have the best performance, the Ryzen 9 9950X will deliver.
Ryzen 9 9900X and 9950X: Should you buy?
Geekbench 6 tests CPU burst performance in its benchmark.
Cinebench 2024’s CPU test runs for longer to determinte sustained stress performance.
Blender 4.2.0 has a dedicated benchmark mode to rank CPU rendering performance.
Geekbench 6 tests CPU burst performance in its benchmark.
Cinebench 2024’s CPU test runs for longer to determinte sustained stress performance.
Intel’s 14th Gen Core i9 chip is the top competitor if you’re comfortable applying microcode patches.
Ranked by single-core performance, here’s how each competing chip differs in base TDP.
It runs hot, but the 170W 9950X’s performance is unmatched if you pair it with a capable AIO liquid cooler.
