Ryzen 9 7950X Destroys Intel in First (un)Official Review, 2x Faster Than 5950X
Sisoftware has given the first pre-launch review for AMD’s yet-to-launch Ryzen 9 7950X based on the Zen4 microarchitecture. This is not an official review, rather a collection of all the publicly available data. AMD’s Ryzen 7000 comes along with AMD’s new AM5 platform and added support for the AVX-512 ISA.
The Ryzen 9 7950X
AMD’s Ryzen 9 7950X is packed with 16 cores / 32 threads based on the Zen4 architecture. This CPU features a 4.9GHz base clock with the ability to boost up to an insane 5.7GHz. And that’s not even it, the “F-max” frequency of this chip can go up to 5.85GHz. The Ryzen 9 7950X is rated at 170W TDP. For additional overclocked performance in heavy workloads, the PPT (Package Power Tracking) can go up to 230W.
Sisoftware then mentions that if the AVX512 ISA is optimized well enough, performance increments of over 100% can be seen across a variety of softwares.
Performance
In legacy integer testing, the Ryzen 9 7950X pulls ahead of last-gen’s 5950X by a whopping 42%. The legacy floating-point increments stand at 31% against the 5950X and 37% against the 12900K.
On using the AVX-512 ISA, the performance improves significantly with the 7950X 60% faster than Zen3‘s king across the board.
Moving over to an image processing test, the AVX512 does wonders for the 7950X with AMD’s Zen4 in lead by over 2x on average. The 7950X absolutely demolishes Alder Lake’s 12900K. Raptor Lake will need something big in order to catch up to these numbers. AMD has set a relatively high bar for team blue this time.
With heavy compute vectorised AVX512 code, there is no better CPU to be had at this time. Intel will have to bring AVX512 back pretty quickly if it wants to stay competitive.
~sisoftware
Efficiency & Pricing
Sisoftware calculated a performance-to-price comparison and results show the Ryzen 9 7950X being an absolute bang for the buck. This CPU gives you 2x more performance than the 5950X at the same price (39 points/$1 vs 19 points/$1).
The efficiency is higher than last-gen, however, the increase is not that drastic. As compared to Intel, AMD always seems to be in the lead efficiency wise. For every watt used, 7950X gives you extra performance.
Conclusion
With the Ryzen 7000 series debuting on the 27th of September, the prices seem relatively cheap for the performance you get. However, a major hurdle for AMD is AM5’s pricing paired along with expensive DDR5 RAM. All things considered, this is an early investment as AM5 will be supported for many years to come. We’ll keep you covered as more performance benchmarks unveil.
