About a year ago, AMD announced the Ryzen 7000-series of desktop CPUs. The series launched with 4 processors and at the top end was the Ryzen 7950X. It is a 16-core/ 32 thread beast of a processor that replaces the previous flagship Ryzen 5950X and we got our hands on it. After testing it, here is our review.
Since the Ryzen 7950X is very similar to the Ryzen 7900X, this review will focus mainly on the benchmarks and its performance. For a deeper look into Zen 4 architecture and the Ryzen 7000 series, check out our review of the 7900X here.
Package and Box Contents
The packaging is similar to other Ryzen 7000 series processor. The box contains the processor and nothing else. Since it is the “X” variant of the processor, AMD does not include a cooler in the box. This has become standard practice for enthusiast-class CPUs as most customers will have their own cooling solution.
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X Specifications
| Cores | 16 |
| Threads | 32 |
| Base Block | 4.5 GHz |
| Max Boost Clock | Up to 5.7GHz |
| L2 Cache | 16MB |
| L3 Cache | 64MB |
| PCI Express | PCIe 5.0 |
| Memory Support | DDR5 at 5200MT/s |
| Max Temp | 95 degrees |
| TDP | 170W |
| Manufacturing Technology | TSMC 5nm FinFET |
| Socket | AM5 |
| Architecture | x86 / AMD Zen 4 |
| Warranty | 3 year limited warranty |
Our Test Bench
- ASUS ROG Strix X670E-E Gaming WiFi motherboard
- CoolerMaster MasterLiquid ML240L V2 RGB AIO cooler
- 32GB DDR5 5200MHz RAM
- WD Black SN850 512GB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD
- SilverStone ET750-HG 750W modular power supply
Benchmarks
In this review, we focused on synthetic CPU-focused benchmarks. In the future, we will expand the benchmarks to include gaming benchmarks too.
Cinebench R23
In Cinebench R23, it achieved a multi-core score of 36770 and a single-core score of 1933.
GeekBench 6
GeekBench has recently released a new version of their CPU benchmark tool. The Ryzen 7950X scored 2938 in the single-core test and 17900 in the multi-score test.
CPU-Z
In CPU-Z’s built-in benchmark, it achieved a score of 749.7 for single-threaded performance and 15349.4 for multi-threaded performance.
PCMark 10 Extended
In the PCMark 10 Extended benchmark, the 7950X scored a total of 5129, which is a lower score than that achieved by the 7900X. The reason for this is that the benchmark for the 7900X was conducted with the RTX 4070 GPU connected, while the 7950X was benchmarked without a dedicated GPU. If you observe the CPU specific scores in particular, the 7950X does perform better than the 7900X.
Blender
This is a relatively new benchmark tool from Blender that checks the Samples per minute in three different projects.
Jetstream 2
This is a benchmark that was run on the Google Chrome browser. The Ryzen 9 5950X scored 339.894 in this test.
Mozilla Kraken
This benchmark was also conducted in the Google Chrome Browser.
Real World Performance / Thermals
Similar to the Ryzen 9 7900X, the Ryzen 9 7950X has an increased power target of 170W. While running idle and for light loads, the temperatures were fine and under control. However under synthetic load, the 7950X quickly reached its limit when cooled with 240mm AIO liquid cooler. The processor would hit a boost frequency of 5.7GHz, drop to about 5.4GHz all cores for a bit, after which it will drop to 5.0GHz all cores when it reached steady state. During this period, the processor stayed at around 95°C, which suggests that the processor will perform better with more cooling.
Under gaming loads, the processor would stay under its temperature limit. But if you have plans to stream or use creative applications, then I would strongly recommend high-end cooling solutions.
Conclusion – Verdict
If you require absolute performance, then the Ryzen 9 7950X feels like the obvious choice. Its sixteen Zen 4 cores are incredibly capable and powerful, both in single threaded and multi-threaded tasks. In fact, the true strength of the 7950X is its multi-threaded performance. So if your applications can benefit from more cores and more threads, then the Ryzen 7950X is a powerful CPU that is also noticeably more power-efficient when compared to the competition.
If the priority is gaming alone, then I would suggest looking at the Ryzen 9 7950X3D processor too. It has a lot more onboard L3 cache, which will help during gaming workloads.
As for the price, the Ryzen 9 7950X can be purchased online for anywhere between Rs. 51000 and Rs. 54000. That is quite a bit higher than the Ryzen 7900X, which is also an excellent processor. The question you need to consider is if the performance from the 4 extra cores in the Ryzen 9 7950X are worth the increase in price. That will depend purely on your computing needs.