News AMD's flagship Zen 5 desktop CPU impresses in new rendering benchmarks — Ryzen 9 9950X outperforms Ryzen 9 7950X by 24%

[Admin]

An AnandTech member benchmarked an engineering sample of AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X in Cinebench R23 at various power levels.

AMD's flagship Zen 5 desktop CPU impresses in new rendering benchmarks — Ryzen 9 9950X outperforms Ryzen 9 7950X by 24% : Read more

 

[-Fran-]

I find interesting how at 40W the performance drops a lot compared to Zen4. I'm guessing the improvements to the IF make the overall package consume way more power so the cores can be starved at lower power levels.

And also how AMD realized people was ok with CPUs consuming 250W+ as a norm, so they just upped the power limit. Now, AM5 socket is rated for 250W in motherboards, right? I seem to recall there was an explicit limit to it, but not the exact number.

Regards.

 

[JamesJones44]

The scaling is kind of interesting. 40w watts under performs while is roughly equal between 40w and 100w, after that 9950x runs away with it. Stepping bug in the ES samples?

 

[eX_Arkangel]

i think is more a deliberate decision from AMD; based on previous market behavior, the market openly hailed AlderLake++ as the winner (pre degradation fest pandemic breakout decision) even if more often than not needed over twice the power to match or beat Z4, so, they went that road (again), as they already did with Z4, only this time the kinda split the lineups, an obvious choice, going more efficient and expensive node to the segment were perf/w and margins are way larger, and leave DT with cheaper nodes designed for higher speed-voltages. Im assuming that for EPYC Z5 Pcores IF speed will play a bigger perf factor than higher clocks at lower power, if not EPYC Z5 is in for a rough start against GENOA... as this are usually configured for 25~40W per 8Core chiplet (so 50~80W for 2 CCDs), also IMC wont be pushed as hard as in DT speed wise.

Also the 20% speed increase of the IF and cache speed and IMC more likely contributes to lower scores than Z4 at lower power, as the cores starve while the IOD and other parts of the chiplets eat more power for the same work done without directly contributing to the scores/perf at certain powertargets vs workloads.

Edited after fact checking EPYC node use (4NP/X for Z5 Turin P and N3 for Z5C Turin Dense).

 

[Quirkz]

I was hoping to see more of an improvement at the lower ~60w TDPs - you know, the laptop targets.
Looks like that while we get very nice desktop improvements, we might not see much in the way of laptop performance.

 

[TheHerald]

I find interesting how at 40W the performance drops a lot compared to Zen4. I'm guessing the improvements to the IF make the overall package consume way more power so the cores can be starved at lower power levels.

I think it's because it's an ES sample. Maybe the VF curve isn't proper yet.

 

[gamezenchill]

For instance, going from 40W to 60W yields a whopping 51% performance improvement, and going from 60W to 80W yields an even more significant 81% performance improvement.

What's the math ? How are you getting the 51% and 81% performance improvements ?

 

[Quirkz]

What's the math ? How are you getting the 51% and 81% performance improvements ?

I noticed that too.

29430/23985 = 1.227

so a 23% performance.

 

[SunMaster]

It makes the 170W TDP give a lot of sense, and a sensible target, given that there's solid performance increase up to 170W and not so much after. It also makes the 9900x @120W instead of sharing the TDP with the nn50x sibling logical.

 

[jp7189]

I'm really loving AMDs solid and consistent improvements, but now I'm conflicted... my infracaninophile* nature is causing me to root for Intel for the first time I can ever recall.

*I admit, I had to look it up. Infracaninophile = someone who always roots for the underdog.

 

[Silas Sanchez]

So the quick math shows that from 200W to the limit, the7950x only yields 1% increase while the 9950x yields 7%. Not interested thanks. Dealing with that much heat on a mobo that sure wasn't designed for it for so little gain, right back to the intel problem. Still if 24% is what i get then that would be worth it. By the looks ~200W is the hard limit for air coolers, at least mine. maybe 220-230max with better designs. Air just cant compete with water.

 

[Avro Arrow]

This is a result of tech sites saying that Intel's performance was on par with AMD's despite using as much as 55W extra watts. It looks like AMD decided "Well, if the tech sites aren't going to penalise Intel for using more juice than Ryzen while also penalising Radeon for using more juice than GeForce, we might as well just do what Intel's doing." and thus, the power limits on these CPUs are higher.

 

[eX_Arkangel]

I'm really loving AMDs solid and consistent improvements, but now I'm conflicted... my infracaninophile* nature is causing me to root for Intel for the first time I can ever recall.

*I admit, I had to look it up. Infracaninophile = someone who always roots for the underdog.

dont be, AMD is still the underdog by marketshare and mindshare metrics, only when they really overtake Intel in Server, Desktop and Mobile marketshare by more than a 10% difference (60% AMD to 40% Intel) can you then call them "underdog", Intel still has waaaay more industry and political power, thats the biggest weakness AMD had and still have.

 

[TheHerald]

So the quick math shows that from 200W to the limit, the7950x only yields 1% increase while the 9950x yields 7%. Not interested thanks. Dealing with that much heat on a mobo that sure wasn't designed for it for so little gain, right back to the intel problem. Still if 24% is what i get then that would be worth it. By the looks ~200W is the hard limit for air coolers, at least mine. maybe 220-230max with better designs. Air just cant compete with water.

Uhm...this is a review comparing a 13700k to a 7700x.

Doesn't look like performance is on par, it looks like Intel is way faster. Their new R7 needs to be ~50% faster to even be competitive with intel's 2 generations old i7.

Spoiler

 

[jp7189]

dont be, AMD is still the underdog by marketshare and mindshare metrics, only when they really overtake Intel in Server, Desktop and Mobile marketshare by more than a 10% difference (60% AMD to 40% Intel) can you then call them "underdog", Intel still has waaaay more industry and political power, thats the biggest weakness AMD had and still have.

Your right of course. I just wish Intel was putting out better products. AMD is kicking them around at their historically core products and TSMC is kicking them around in manufacturing. I never thought I'd see the day they outsourced a CPU tile to a 3rd party fab. Sure it's the right business decision for today, but it speaks volumes about their fab's lack of competitiveness.

 

[Amdlova]

Dear god =) have same scores of the 14600T from 35 to 80w