3950X for gaming: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X review

AMD Ryzen 9 3950X review

(Image credit: Future)

Back in July, AMD launched a massive 7nm offensive in the CPU world. I called the Ryzen 9 3900X «the most compelling enthusiast CPU from AMD in the past 15 years,» and it’s on our best CPU for gaming list. What can AMD do for an encore? More cores, more threads, potentially higher clockspeeds, naturally. I’ve had the Ryzen 9 3950X in house for testing for the past week or so, and it really impresses in some areas, though it’s not quite as awesome in other respects.

Let’s start with the best use case, which is basically anything in the content creation realm. With 33 percent more cores than the 3900X and similar clockspeeds, it’s usually 25-30 percent faster. If you do video editing, 3D rendering, or any other task that can benefit from a 32-thread processor, you’ll love the 3950X. For tasks that don’t scale well to 16 cores, though, you’re better off with a less expensive part. That’s pretty much what I’ve been saying about all the current HEDT (High-End Desktop) processors since Ryzen 3000 arrived, but even though the 3950X is nominally a consumer CPU—it runs in the same socket AM4 motherboards as the other Ryzen CPUs—it costs a lot more. It’s an HEDT CPU for a mainstream socket.

(Image credit: Future)

AMD’s current lineup of Ryzen 3000 processors is seriously potent. They’re not always the best choice for a gaming-centric build, but the difference in gaming performance between the affordable Ryzen 5 3600 and the more expensive Ryzen 9 3900X is relatively small. Ryzen 9 3950X is priced 50 percent higher than the 3900X, which might not seem like that big of a deal for 33 percent more cores, but like all of Intel’s K-series and X-series CPUs it doesn’t include a cooler in the box. AMD also recommends liquid cooling to get the most out of the 3950X, which is an additional $100-$200 more than the base price (depending on your cooler).

That recommendation did make me wonder just how necessary liquid cooling is, and I’ve got testing results for the 3950X running with both a Wraith Prism cooler as well as an extremely capable NZXT Kraken X62. You might be surprised how little difference there is in performance between the two at stock settings, though. The X62 dropped the maximum temperature by 10-15C, depending on the workload, but only ended up being about 1-2 percent faster.

AMD has doubled down on its successful chiplet strategy from the Threadripper series.

Fundamentally, the Ryzen 3950X is the same Ryzen 3000 and Zen 2 architecture as the existing third generation parts. Besides improvements to the underlying architecture, AMD also doubled down on its successful chiplet strategy from the Threadripper series. The 3900X and 3950X both feature two 8-core chiplets in the package (though one core on each of the four CCX—core complex or CPU complex—is disabled on the 3900X), whereas the 3800X, 3700X, 3600X, and 3600 all use a single 8-core chiplet.

The key is that there’s also a cIOD (IO die) in the package that houses the memory controllers and other functionality, linked to one or two CCDs via AMD’s Infinity Fabric. The cIOD is fabricated on 12nm tech, but it doesn’t really need to be on 7nm right now. The important bit is that it provides relatively uniform memory access latencies to the CCDs, which means there shouldn’t be any latency penalties with the 12-core and 16-core models compared to the 6-core and 8-core offerings.

(Image credit: MSI)

All of that is well and good, but there’s one other element to AMD’s Ryzen CPUs I need to discuss before getting to the results. As part of the motherboard firmware, AMD has a package of logic functionality called AGESA (AMD Generic Encapsulated Software Architecture). This microcode handles things like memory training, infinity fabric details, and more. The very first Ryzen CPUs (back in 2017) had some serious teething problems at launch that were mostly cleared up with BIOS updates that included newer AGESA code.

For this review, AMD provided AGESA 1.0.0.4 firmware that was required to properly run Ryzen 9 3950X. But changing firmware on a motherboard has the potential to affect other aspects of performance as well, and right now, with test results initially limited to a single motherboard, I’m seeing slightly lower performance in some benchmarks than I expect.

I’m pretty sure the AGESA update, or maybe just the MSI implementation of it, has affected gaming performance in a negative way. That or drivers and game updates have changed since I last tested a Ryzen CPU (which was only two weeks ago with the Ryzen 5 3600). For now, I’m not posting this as a scored review, as I want to verify performance with another motherboard.

Performance in non-gaming tasks is great, and gaming performance isn’t bad… but my current numbers are worse than the 3900X and 3700X, and basically tied with the 3600X and 3600. That doesn’t make any sense, considering it’s supposed to have equal or higher clockspeeds than those parts, plus more cores.

Not that gamers should really be considering the 3950X. It costs $749 just for the CPU, which is more than an RTX 2080 Super that would be far more beneficial for gaming purposes. There really aren’t any tasks where the 3900X or 3700X are insufficient and the 3950X is required. The 3950X will be faster at multithreaded tasks, and it’s great for content creation duties, but outside of professional work it’s not really necessary.

Ryzen 9 3950X testbed

Ryzen 9 3900X
NZXT Kraken X62
MSI MEG X570 Godlike
16GB G.Skill DDR4-3200 CL14
Corsair Force MP600 2TB
EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 G3
Adata XPG Battlecruiser

You can see my testbed at the right, which is largely the same as in previous Ryzen 3000 reviews. The main difference is that AMD also sent along a Kraken X62 liquid cooler, because air cooling isn’t ‘recommended’—and I stuffed everything into Adata’s new XPG Battlecruiser case. I tested previously with DDR4-3200 CL14 memory and DDR4-3600 CL16 memory, and overall the CL14 RAM performed best. It’s possible to manually tweak the memory timings to further improve performance, but I try to provide a realistic view of «out of box» performance.

Overclocking is a bit of an afterthought for the 3950X. You can probably do 4.1-4.3GHz on all 16 cores with the right cooling and some luck from the silicon lottery, but you’ll give up maximum singlethreaded performance in doing so. At stock, I saw all-core clockspeeds hover in the 3900-4000 MHz range, depending on the workload, and games would routinely run at 4200-4300 MHz. Enabling Precision Boost Overdrive might boost performance a bit as well, and I’ll look at that a bit more on some other motherboards.

(Image credit: Future)

Ryzen 9 3950X gaming performance

This isn’t really a gaming CPU, though it can obviously be used for games. Right now, I’m aware of only one game that consistently shows scaling beyond 8-core CPUs: Ashes of the Singularity. That’s partly because the game was purpose built to put a heavier load on the CPU at higher quality settings. In most other games, the 8-core/8-thread i7-9700K is just as fast as the i9-9900K, sometimes even beating it as it doesn’t have to deal with the partitioning of resources that Hyper-Threading entails.

With more cores and threads but the same TDP as the 3900X, average clockspeeds may actually be lower in some workloads, and AGESA updates have just as often reduced performance while improving stability in my experience. That’s all a preface to the charts that show the 3950X trailing the other third generation Ryzen parts.

All the gaming benchmarks are run multiple times, using the best result, to ensure consistency of performance. I use an RTX 2080 Ti and run at 1080p ultra (generally the highest possible settings, outside of MSAA and SSAA) to better show differences in CPU performance. If you’re wondering what performance looks like at 1440p or 4K, just check out any of my recent performance analysis articles—basically, the CPU becomes less important at higher resolutions, and similarly, the CPU is less of a factor with slower graphics cards.

Minimum fps is calculated as the average fps for the bottom three percent of frametimes—find the 97 percentile frametime, and sum up all frametimes above that, dividing by the number of frames. This provides a more useful metric than pure minimum fps or pure 97 percentile.

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You can hopefully see why I’m a bit perplexed with the gaming performance of the 3950X. It’s not horrible by any stretch, but there’s no good reason for it to fall behind the 3700X and 3900X. Clockspeeds looked okay during testing, and it has more than twice as many cores.

Are a few games getting confused simply by having too many cores and threads available? It wouldn’t be the first time. Perhaps the games are just scheduling work in a less than optimal fashion, but then why doesn’t that also happen with the 3900X? Which is why I worry about AGESA or driver updates, or even game patches, as the real cause of the performance changes and need to do some additional testing.

Why not just retest everything? Because there aren’t enough hours in the week to get all of that done for every new CPU launch. But I’ll be updating the charts at some point, once the Black Friday deals are past.

Overall, the Ryzen 9 3950X delivers good gaming performance but not chart-topping results. It’s almost a four way tie between the various Ryzen 3000 parts, with the biggest gap being less than 10 percent from the 3600 to the 3900X. As for Intel, the i9-9900K is about 11 percent faster and the limited edition 5GHz i9-9900KS is 14 percent faster. For pure gaming, Intel is still in the lead, and the 3950X doesn’t even have lower pricing as a benefit… unless you include the Core i9-9980XE, which costs substantially more and still delivers worse overall gaming performance.

Ryzen 9 3950X application performance

I hope it’s clear that gaming performance isn’t the primary purpose of the 3950X. It can run games, but it does best when dealing with more difficult workloads that scale with core and thread counts, with clockspeed being less of a factor. That brings me to the second part of the performance overview. Check out the 3950X application performance:

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Compared to the 3900X, the 3950X is up to 33 percent faster in heavily threaded workloads. Overall, however, it’s only 17 percent faster in multithreaded testing. That’s partly because of the AES performance, which is oddly low, and y-cruncher likes the AVX512 capabilities of Intel’s HEDT parts. Regardless, even with several different 3D rendering engines, video encoding, and cryptographic workloads, scaling beyond a 12-core/24-thread processor is difficult.

Looking at Intel’s CPUs, the competition isn’t even close. The 3900X already beats the 9900K and 9900KS in multithreaded performance (though a few tasks like VeraCrypt AES favor Intel’s CPUs). The 3950X meanwhile ends up 44 percent faster in the overall metric against the 9900K, and 38 percent faster than the 9900KS. With twice as many cores and threads, that’s hardly surprising.

Intel knows it’s behind on the core and lithography battles.

What about Intel’s big bad 18-core/36-thread i9-9980XE? It does manage to hang onto the overall multithreaded performance crown, but by no means is it a clean sweep. It’s 12 percent faster in my aggregate multithreaded performance result, but the 3950X does claim wins in Cinebench, POV-Ray, Blender, and Handbrake. It also leads in PCMark 10 results, which aren’t quite as multithreaded friendly. And it does all this while using substantially less power—I measured a bit more than 300W at the outlet with the 9980XE doing H.265 encoding, compared to 240W with the 3950X.

Intel knows it’s behind on the core and lithography battles, though, which is why it has a revised Core i9-10980XE launching soon. It will be a bit faster than the 9980XE, but probably with even higher power use since it’s basically still the same 14nm++ Skylake-X architecture. At least the price has been chopped in half, which is still $250 more than the 3950X, but if you want more performance and are willing to pay for it, Cascade Lake-X might be worth a look. Maybe.

Except AMD also has third gen Threadripper coming on November 25. Given the platform and architectural changes, I can’t see Intel’s lineup standing a chance against Threadripper in multithreaded workloads, but we’ll see how that plays out in about 10 more days.

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(Image credit: Future)(Image credit: Future)

Ryzen 9 3950X is a multithreaded powerhouse

I’ve always said that AMD isn’t in the business of selling inexpensive processors. Back in the FX era, that was all AMD really had on the CPU side, but now that AMD has competitive and even performance leading parts, prices are going up. Now it’s Intel dropping prices on its three or four year old 14nm technology to stay relevant, while we wait for 10nm or 7nm desktop Intel solutions.

First, let me once again state the obvious: the Ryzen 9 3950X is not a CPU built primarily for gaming. Most gamers have a tough time justifying even a $300-$400 processor, never mind an $800 chip. You’re better off with a $400 CPU and an $800 graphics card rather than an $800 CPU and a $400 graphics card if you’re mostly interested in gaming. And even if you’re willing to spend that much money, right now it looks like performance in games is generally slightly worse than the 3900X.

If you’re doing CPU-assisted video encoding of a livestream while you game, and you want to do it all on a single PC, the 3950X might be the right choice. But then I’d argue a second modest PC with an encoding and capture card would work better. Or use NVENC GPU assisted encoding that looks better than x264 fast CPU encoding and barely impacts performance.

Where AMD’s Ryzen 9 3950X shines is in the prosumer space. If you’re doing serious work but don’t quite have a blank check to go out and buy a $5,000-$10,000 workstation, you can get roughly the same level of performance with the 3950X and save a few thousand. It’s also generally a more efficient CPU than any of the workstation or HEDT parts, because the AM4 platform keeps things sensible.

AMD deserves major props for making the CPU space a lot more interesting over the past three years.

AMD also deserves major props for making the CPU space a lot more interesting over the past three years. It’s the polar opposite of the Bulldozer line of FX CPUs: excellent overall performance, a great value, efficient, and way more cores than anything Intel was traditionally willing to offer. Intel sat back delivering 4-core/8-thread desktop CPUs as its top mainstream solution from 2010 all the way to 2017, and only Ryzen changed that. Now, in less than three years, we’ve gone from 4-core to 8-core to 16-core processors on a mainstream platform.

And if you want to go HEDT, AMD has 32-core chips waiting in the wings, and it probably won’t stop there. AMD has a great CPU portfolio right now, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Intel adopt something like AMD’s chiplet strategy in future products. The 3950X would have been a far more costly product if AMD had tried to build the whole thing out of a single monolithic die.

Where do we go from here? I’m not sure. Lithography advancements are slowing down, so TSMC’s 7nm will probably remain state of the art for at least another two years before we shift to 5nm, and it looks as though Intel’s 7nm is still two years away. Clockspeeds aren’t scaling very fast either. AMD is busily building more cores into its CPUs, hoping the multithreaded applications will come, but the 3950X is arguably well ahead of what most people need. Many of us have hit a plateau in terms of how much CPU power we need, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

We’re still years away from most people wanting, let alone needing, 16-core processors at home. Heck, outside of playing the latest PC games, I can still do 95 percent of my work on a laptop from 2014. But while my laptop is fine for typing articles and minor image editing, it chokes on more complex tasks like video editing. If that’s the type of work you do on your PC, give the 3950X some serious consideration.

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Jarred’s love of computers dates back to the dark ages when his dad brought home a DOS 2. 3 PC and he left his C-64 behind. He eventually built his first custom PC in 1990 with a 286 12MHz, only to discover it was already woefully outdated when Wing Commander was released a few months later. He holds a BS in Computer Science from Brigham Young University and has been working as a tech journalist since 2004, writing for AnandTech, Maximum PC, and PC Gamer. From the first S3 Virge ‘3D decelerators’ to today’s GPUs, Jarred keeps up with all the latest graphics trends and is the one to ask about game performance.

Should I buy an AMD Ryzen 9 3950X?

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With the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X launching just next month, you’re probably wondering if you should purchase the existing Ryzen 9 3950X . After all, it’s likely to be going cheap once the next-gen Zen 3 chips arrive, right?

Not so fast. While Black Friday is approaching, and AMD is known to slap a deal on its products for the occasion, we’re not yet sure whether the tippy top of the Ryzen 3000 range, the Ryzen 9 3950X, will be included. Usually the stock of these high-end CPUs is all dried up by the time their replacement rolls around.

There is a chance that we’ll see a great deal on this fantastic 16-core chip, however, and in case of that eventuality here’s a breakdown of the Ryzen 9 3950X, what it offers, and how much you should pay for it.

What is the Ryzen 9 3950X?

AMD Ryzen 9 3950X specs

Cores: 16
Threads: 32
Base clock: 3.5GHz
Max boost clock: 4.7GHz
Socket: AM4
TDP: 105 W
Cooler: None
Launch price: $749

The AMD Ryzen 9 3950X is the very best Ryzen desktop processor AMD was able to muster out of the Zen 2 architecture. Above it, you have the Ryzen Threadripper chips, but we’re counting those as HEDT and a little beyond what most PC gamers will be after.

With 16 cores and 32 threads, it’s quite a beast too. This is not only the highest threaded CPU of the Ryzen 3000 series—the Egyptian cotton of the CPU world—it’s also the joint highest clocked at 4.7GHz, alongside the slightly newer 12-core Ryzen 9 3900XT. This makes it great for productivity, creative tasks, and, most importantly, gaming.

The Ryzen 9 3950X fits the same AM4 socket as all AMD Ryzen chips to date, and runs with a 105W TDP. There’s no cooler included in the box to keep that under control, so you’ll want to make sure you’ve got a decent liquid cooler or chunky air cooler ready at hand.

What are the alternatives to the Ryzen 9 3950X?

There’s no direct comparison to the Ryzen 9 3950X right now. The closest you’ll find from Intel is the Core i9 10980XE, or Core i9 10940X X-Series, which offer high core counts upwards of the usual S-series chips. These are HEDT chips, however, and as such are quite expensive. The platforms necessitated by these heavyweight chips can also be rather pricey. Otherwise you’re looking at the 10-core Core i9 10900K if you want the best of Chipzilla’s gaming performance, which currently stands as the best around.

But perhaps not for long. AMD has announced the Ryzen 9 5950X, a CPU that looks similar to its predecessor on the surface, but hides a secret weapon: Zen 3. The next-gen architecture is promising a rather hefty bump in instructions per clock (IPC), and gaming performance is reportedly through the roof too. We’ll have more to say about these chips soon, so if you can hold off until November 5, when the Ryzen 5000 will become available, we recommend you do.

Although one thing to note is that the Ryzen 5000 series is $50 more expensive than the Ryzen 3000 series, and that goes all the way down the stack. So if you’re already thinking the Ryzen 9 3950X is pushing your budget, the Ryzen 9 5950X will only be even more of a stretch.

Reduced Price

Intel Core i9-10900K

£625

£379.59

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Intel Core i9-10980XE

£1,076.98

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Should I buy the AMD Ryzen 9 3950X and at what price?

AMD Ryzen 9 3950X pricing has remained fairly steady all year, and right now it’s available for $710 (£620). That’s a pretty great deal for a 16-core chip anyways, especially in the UK. I’m not expecting much of a discount on that price for Black Friday, but you never know.

With the Ryzen 9 5950X launching for $799, a $100 discount on the Zen 2 16-core chip isn’t a bad deal by any means. If you want the best gaming performance, however, it looks like you’ll want to save up for the newer Zen 3 chip.

The best AMD Ryzen 9 3950X deals today…

£413.90

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Jacob earned his first byline writing for his own tech blog from his hometown in Wales in 2017. From there, he graduated to professionally breaking things as hardware writer at PCGamesN, where he would later win command of the kit cupboard as hardware editor. Nowadays, as senior hardware editor at PC Gamer, he spends his days reporting on the latest developments in the technology and gaming industry. When he’s not writing about GPUs and CPUs, however, you’ll find him trying to get as far away from the modern world as possible by wild camping.

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games didn’t work out again

Blogs

14 Nov 2019, 21:21
Zelot Post rewarded

In games everything is very bad again. What to do…

recommendations

Tests of the new top Ryzen 9 3950X desktop processor are constantly appearing on the Internet. However, all of them only slightly open the veil, not demonstrating real performance indicators. The tomshardware experts have already got their hands on the new processor and are ready to show what it can do. nine0003

This time around, the desktop processor will compete with such monsters as the Threadripper 2990WX and Core i9-9980XE, which belong to the class of high-performance processors. Let’s see if the new AMD chip can compete with them on an equal footing.

Well, AMD processors have always shown good results in synthetic tests. The main intrigue was whether the new leader from the camp of the reds will be able to reach the level of the best gaming processor Intel Core i9-9900K.

recommendations

Ryzen 9 3950X is a mixed bag. On the one hand, he raised the bar for productivity in work tasks to a height inaccessible to competitors. On the other hand, again disappointment. Millions of buyers have been waiting for a breakthrough in gaming from AMD. However, this is clearly not going to happen in the current generation. So, to the question of whether this processor is universal, everyone must give their own answer. More information here. nine0003

This material was written by a site visitor and has been rewarded.

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Overview AMD Ryzen 9 3950X : GameZ=

Back in July, AMD launched a massive offensive against 7nm processors. I called the Ryzen 9 3900X «AMD’s most compelling enthusiast processor of the last 15 years» and it makes our list of the best processors for gaming. What can AMD do for an encore? More cores, more threads, of course, potentially higher clock speeds. I had Ryzen 93950X for testing in the last week or so, and it’s really impressive in some areas, although it’s not as good in other ways.

Let’s start with the best use case, which is basically anything in content creation. With 33 percent more cores than the 3900X and a similar clock speed, it’s typically 25-30 percent faster. If you’re into video editing, 3D rendering, or any other task that can benefit from a 32-thread processor, you’ll love 3950X. However, for tasks that don’t scale well to 16 cores, you’re better off with a less expensive part. This is pretty much what I’ve been saying about all current HEDT (High-End Desktop) processors since the introduction of the Ryzen 3000, but even though the 3950X is nominally a consumer processor, it runs on the same socket AM4 motherboards. like other Ryzen processors. — it costs a lot more. This is the HEDT processor for the main socket.

AMD’s current Ryzen 3000 processor lineup is very powerful. They’re not always the best choice for a gaming build, but the difference in gaming performance between the affordable Ryzen 5 3600 and the more expensive Ryzen 93900X is relatively small. The Ryzen 9 3950X costs 50 percent more than the 3900X, which might not seem like a big deal for 33 percent more cores, but like all Intel K and X-series processors, it doesn’t include a cooler in the box. AMD also recommends liquid cooling to get the most out of the 3950X, which is $100-$200 more than the base price (depending on your cooler).

This recommendation got me thinking about the need for liquid cooling and I have test results 3950X that works with both the Wraith Prism cooler and the extremely powerful NZXT Kraken X62. However, you might be surprised at how little performance difference there is between the two at stock settings. The X62 reduced the maximum temperature by 10-15°C, depending on the load, but ended up being faster by about 1-2 percent.

AMD has doubled down on its successful Threadripper chiplet strategy.

Ryzen 3950X is essentially the same Ryzen 3000 and Zen 2 architecture as existing 3rd generation components. In addition to core architecture improvements, AMD has also doubled down on its successful Threadripper chiplet strategy. and 3900X and 3950X have two 8-core chiplets in the package (although one core on each of the four CCXs — core or CPU complex — is disabled on the 3900X), while the 3800X, 3700X, 3600X and 3600 all use a single 8-core chiplet .

The key point is that the package also has a cIOD (Input/Output Crystal), which houses memory controllers and other functions connected to one or two CCDs via AMD Infinity Fabric. The CIOD is made on a 12nm process, but there is no need for 7nm right now. The important point is that it provides relatively uniform memory access latency for CCDs, meaning there shouldn’t be any latency penalties with the 12-core and 16-core models compared to the 6- and 8-core offerings. nine0003

All this is good, but there is one more element of AMD Ryzen processors that I need to discuss before moving on to the results. As part of the motherboard firmware, AMD has a package of logic functions called AGESA (AMD Common Encapsulated Software Architecture). This microcode handles things like memory training, infinite fabric details, and more. The very first Ryzen processors (back in 2017) had some major startup issues that were mostly fixed with BIOS updates that included the newer AGESA code. nine0003

For this review, AMD provided the AGESA 1.0.0.4 firmware required for the Ryzen 9 3950X to function properly. But changing motherboard firmware can affect other aspects of performance as well, and right now, with benchmark results initially limited to a single motherboard, I’m seeing slightly lower performance in some tests than I expected.

I’m pretty sure that the AGESA update, or maybe MSI’s implementation of it, had a negative effect on gaming performance. That or driver and game updates have changed since I last tested a Ryzen processor (it was just two weeks ago with a Ryzen 5 3600). I am not posting this as an evaluation review at the moment as I want to test performance with a different motherboard. nine. same or higher clock speed than those parts, plus more cores.

Not that gamers should really consider the 3950X. It costs $749 for the processor alone, which is more than the RTX 2080 Super, which would be much more value for gaming purposes. In fact, there are no tasks in which 3900X or 3700X is not enough and 3950X is required. The 3950X will be faster than the in multi-threaded tasks and is great for content creation tasks, but outside of professional work this is not much needed.

You can see my test bench on the right, which is largely the same as previous Ryzen 3000 reviews. The main difference is that AMD also sent a Kraken X62 liquid cooler because air cooling is «not recommended» — and I stuffed everything into a new Adata XPG Battlecruiser case. I tested earlier with DDR4-3200 CL14 memory and DDR4-3600 CL16 memory, and overall CL14 RAM performed the best. It’s possible to manually tweak the memory timings to further improve performance, but I’m trying to provide a realistic idea of out-of-the-box performance. nine0003

Overclocking 3950X faded into the background. You can probably hit 4.1-4.3 GHz on all 16 cores with the right cooling and some silicon lottery luck, but in doing so, you’ll be giving up maximum single-threaded performance. In stock, I’ve seen all-core clocks hover in the 3900-4000MHz range, depending on workload, with games typically running at 4200-4300MHz. Enabling Precision Boost Overdrive can also improve performance a bit, and I’ll take a closer look at this on some other motherboards. nine0003

Ryzen 9 3950X gaming performance

This is not really a gaming processor, although it can obviously be used for gaming. So far, the only game I know of that consistently scales beyond 8-core processors is Ashes of the Singularity. This is partly because the game was specifically designed to increase CPU usage at higher quality settings. In most other games, the 8-core/8-thread i7-9700K is as fast as the i9-9900K, sometimes even surpassing it as it doesn’t have to deal with the resource sharing that Hyper-Threading entails.

With more cores and threads, but the same TDP as the 3900X, average clock speeds can be lower in some workloads, and AGESA updates just as often reduce performance, improving stability, in my experience. This is all preface to the charts that show the 3950X underperforming other 3rd Gen Ryzen parts. nine0003

All game tests are run multiple times to get the best result to ensure stable performance. I’m running an RTX 2080 Ti and using 1080p ultra (generally the highest settings other than MSAA and SSAA) to better show the differences in CPU performance. If you’re wondering what performance looks like at 1440p or 4K, just check out any of my recent performance analysis articles — in general, the CPU becomes less important at higher resolutions, and likewise the CPU plays less of a role with slower graphics cards. . nine0003

Minimum fps is calculated as the average fps for the bottom three percent of frame time — find the 97th percentile of frame time and sum all frame times above that divided by the number of frames. This is more useful than the net minimum fps or the net 97th percentile.

I hope you understand why I’m a little puzzled by the 3950X’s gaming performance. It’s not terrible, but there’s no reason to fall behind the 3700X and 3900X. Clock speeds looked okay during testing, and it has more than twice as many cores. nine0003

Do some games get confused by having too many cores and threads available? It won’t be the first time. Maybe gaming just doesn’t fit the optimal schedule, but then why doesn’t that happen with the 3900X as well? That’s why I’m worried about AGESA, driver updates or even game patches as this is the real reason for the performance change and I need to do more testing.

Why not just test everything again? Because there aren’t enough hours in the week to do all that every time a new processor is launched. But I will update the charts at some point as the Black Friday deals go through. nine0003

Overall, the Ryzen 9 3950X provides good gaming performance, but not the best results. There is almost a four-way relationship between the various parts of the Ryzen 3000, with the biggest gap being less than 10 percent from the 3600 to 3900X. As for Intel, the i9-9900K is about 11 percent faster, while the limited edition 5GHz i9-9900KS is 14 percent faster. In terms of pure gaming, Intel still leads the way and the 3950X doesn’t even have the lower price as an advantage…unless you include a Core i9-9980XE, which costs significantly more and still delivers worse overall gaming performance.

Application performance Ryzen 9 3950X

Hopefully it’s clear that gaming performance isn’t the 3950X’s main focus. It can run games, but it does best with more complex workloads that scale with cores and threads, with clock speed being a smaller factor. This brings me to the second part of the performance review. Evaluate application performance 3950X:

Compared to the 3900X, the 3950X is 33 percent faster in multi-threaded workloads. Overall, however, it’s only 17% faster in multi-threaded testing. This is partly due to AES performance being oddly slow, and y-cruncher loves the AVX512 capabilities of the Intel HEDT components. However, even with several different 3D rendering engines, video encoding, and cryptographic workloads, scaling beyond a 12-core/24-thread processor is difficult. nine0003

Looking at Intel processors, the competition isn’t even close. The 3900X already outperforms the 9900K and 9900KS in multi-threaded performance (although some tasks, such as VeraCrypt AES, favor Intel processors). Meanwhile, the 3950X ends up 44 percent faster overall than the 9900K and 38 percent faster than the 9900KS. With twice the number of cores and threads, this is not surprising.

Intel knows it’s behind in the core and lithography battles. nine0003

What about Intel’s big bad 18-core/36-thread i9-9980XE? It manages to hold onto the overall multi-threaded performance crown, but it’s by no means a clear win. That’s 12 percent faster in my cumulative multithreaded performance score, but the 3950X does win in Cinebench, POV-Ray, Blender, and Handbrake. It also leads the way in PCMark 10 results, which are not as thread-friendly. And all this happens with significantly less power consumption — I measured just over 300 watts on a socket with 9980XE encoding H.265 compared to 240W from 3950X.

However, Intel knows it is lagging behind in the core and litho battles, so an updated version of the Core i9-10980XE will be released soon. It will be slightly faster than the 9980XE but likely with even higher power consumption as it is basically still the same 14nm++ Skylake-X architecture. It’s at least halved in price, which is still $250 more than the 3950X, but if you want more performance and are willing to pay for it, Cascade Lake-X is worth a look. May be. nine0003

In addition, on November 25, AMD will have a third generation Threadripper. Given the platform and architectural changes, I don’t see Intel’s lineup having a chance against Threadripper in multi-threaded workloads, but we’ll see how that develops in about 10 more days.

Ryzen 9 3950X Powerful Multithreaded Processor

I’ve always said that AMD doesn’t sell cheap processors. In the FX era, that was all AMD really had on the CPU side, but now that AMD has competitive and even better-performing components, prices are on the rise. Now Intel is cutting prices on its three to four year old 14nm technology to stay relevant, while we wait for Intel’s 10nm or 7nm desktop solutions. nine0003

First, let me reiterate the obvious: The Ryzen 9 3950X is not a processor built primarily for gaming. Most gamers find it hard to justify even a $300-$400 processor, let alone an $800 chip. You’ll be better off with a $400 CPU and $800 GPU than with an $800 CPU and $400 GPU if you’re mainly interested in gaming. And even if you’re willing to spend that much money, right now it looks like overall gaming performance is a bit worse than the 3900X.

If you’re CPU-assisted live video encoding while gaming and want to do it all on one PC, the 3950X might be the right choice. But then I’d say a second humble PC with an encode and capture card would be better. Or use NVENC GPU encoding, which looks better than encoding with a fast x264 processor and has little to no performance impact.

Where the AMD Ryzen 9 3950X shines is in the professional consumer realm. If you’re doing some serious work but don’t have a blank check to go out and buy a $5k-$10k workstation, you can get about the same level of performance with 3950X and save a few thousand. Plus, it’s generally a more efficient processor than any workstation or HEDT components because the AM4 platform keeps it smart.

AMD deserves some serious effort to make the CPU space a lot more interesting over the last three years.

AMD also deserves some serious effort to make the CPU space a lot more interesting over the past three years. It’s the exact opposite of the FX Bulldozer line of processors: great overall performance, great price, efficiency, and way more cores than anything Intel has traditionally offered. Intel dropped shipping 4-core/8-thread desktop processors as a mainstream solution from 2010 to 2017, with only Ryzen changing that. Now, in less than three years, we have moved from 4-core processors to 8-core and 16-core processors on the mainstream platform. nine0003

And if you want to move to HEDT, AMD has 32-core chips waiting in the wings and probably won’t stop there. AMD has a great processor portfolio right now, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Intel implemented something like AMD’s chiplet strategy in future products. The 3950X would have been a much more expensive product if AMD had tried to assemble it all from one single die.

Where do we go from here? I’m not sure. Advances in lithography are slowing down, so TSMC’s 7nm technology will likely be state of the art for at least another two more years before we move to 5nm, and it looks like Intel’s 7nm is still two years away. Clock speeds don’t scale very quickly either. AMD is diligently building more cores into its processors, hoping that multi-threaded applications will appear, but 3950X is arguably way ahead of what most people need.