AMD Ryzen 9 5950X Review: Total Domination

[Mr Majestyk]

Not interested so much in the 5950X to buy, but great to see the performance uplift and efficiency. I will be buying the 5900X instead and pairing it with a 6800XT.

Would it be possible to add some other benchmarks like Matlab, Mathematica too, want to see if they have really boosted floating point performance as the rumours were alluding too.

 

[Squid Surprise]

How does it fare against the threadrippers? Can it beat the 3960?
Would be nice to see them in the graphs.

 

[OortCloud]

So you'd take the slower CPU for literally no reason? Good to see you really are loyal.

Which is interesting considering it's only Microsoft Flight Sim 2020 you ever talk about (a game that's stuck on DX11 and poorly coded to the point a single thread strangles performance) of which, these new Ryzen CPU's are better at, substantially so.

It's $150 cheaper - that's a lot of money - and runs the games he wants to play just as well.

 

[Arbie]

It's only total domination until we see the 11th gens or anything from intel that's coming up.

If you think Rocket Lake desktop will do anything more than edge out a few odd benchmarks or games, you're going to be sorely disappointed. Fanboys will focus on those and claim that's what they really wanted - and a couple of them will even buy it - but the market won't. Rocket Lake will be road-kill. You (apparently...) read it here first.

And BTW the phrase "anything from Intel that's coming up" is a howl. Thanks for that.

 

[DonquixoteIII]

I hate to be THAT person, but the rampant fanboism present in this article just does journalism no favors. Items missing in this article: Test setups, and specs for all parts.Actual values in commentary instead of misleading percentages. Lack of labeling on the various tests designating the tests as single core or multi core.

Also, I think I noticed it mentioned once that the GPU was a radeon. Again, it goes back to the first whinge, test setups. I have yet to see if an Intel running a new gen Radeon is at any disadvantage, but... It should have been declared.

There was also no mention of the incredibly weak AM4 chipset when it comes to the PCIe department. Not much point to having PCIe 4.0 if the user cannot take advantage of it.

When will this website change its name to AMD Techspot?

 

[Arbie]

Well now that you bring my attention to it, I'd only take the 10900K. Thing is, I don't forsee myself building a new PC for years. I've spend a whole lotta money to run flight sims for the time being.

A couple of weeks ago you were chortling over the 5950X. The flip-flops are amusing.

 

[Arbie]

Hehe - the trouble is most people who buy these will never make use of all those cores. As I said it looks like a great chip just not 'Total Domination' hyperbole.

That's completely illogical! Most people are going to buy what they need or at least see a use for. Are you assuming that everyone - except you of course - is stupid?

Domination means having the best performance, at a competitive price, across the board. AMD now has that. So they can and will sell to everyone. If you don't think so, watch the market figures.

 

[Arbie]

I cannot wait for the 5600X review, I see it did well at Anandtech.

Support Hardware Unboxed on Patreon. The charts are up.

 

[Arbie]

basically its identical to the 10900K ... ... Given that 99.99999% of the world wont ever run any of the non-gaming benchmarks ...

So, essentially, nobody in the world does anything but game? And the few who do other stuff run only benchmarks? I won't even request a source for those claims..

 

[Ornayen]

So what we learned :
The i7-7700k still rock games I'll keep it for another two years

 

[Irata]

Is no one going to bring up @QuantumPhysics hasn't commented on this?

They didn‘t benchmark Flight Simulator.

 

[Irata]

I hate to be THAT person, but the rampant fanboism present in this article just does journalism no favors. Items missing in this article: Test setups, and specs for all parts.Actual values in commentary instead of misleading percentages. Lack of labeling on the various tests designating the tests as single core or multi core.

Also, I think I noticed it mentioned once that the GPU was a radeon. Again, it goes back to the first whinge, test setups. I have yet to see if an Intel running a new gen Radeon is at any disadvantage, but... It should have been declared.

There was also no mention of the incredibly weak AM4 chipset when it comes to the PCIe department. Not much point to having PCIe 4.0 if the user cannot take advantage of it.

When will this website change its name to AMD Techspot?

As for the test set-up (including GPU used), if you start reading at „With that, let’s go over our test setup...“ you will find your questions answered.

As for the rest of your post...is everything OK ?

 

[JimboJoneson]

It's $150 cheaper - that's a lot of money - and runs the games he wants to play just as well.

I guess you didn't see any of the 5900x, 5800x and 5600x reviews yet ... just sayin' ... one tends to pay a bit more for 16 cores that out well outperforms the competitions top end 18 core HEDT parts in the workloads those parts were designed for.

5600x is almost at par with the 5950x in gaming, if budget is your thing.

Again, I'm just sayin' -- wait for Techspot's reviews, or check out what GN and Linus has observed on that front, if you really do want to look at objective numbers. Your choice ... unless being objective doesn't fly with you.

 

[kiwigraeme]

It's $150 cheaper - that's a lot of money - and runs the games he wants to play just as well.

Maybe it does maybe it doesn't - don't know yet - But QuantumP already has a fine gaming system - that's his point-it makes very little financial sense to change.

Ignoring those with cash to splash - most gamers won't buy this chip - when a ryzen 3600 does just fine now at 1440p - But dropping a 5600 or whatever in your 450 m/b will be a nice increase across the board - cheaper power draw for CPU power . Plus know things will going get better - with developers optimizes for AMD in the future due to more gamers buying it and it being on PS5 , XBOX series X and all that - DX12 etc .
Plus it you do buy this chip - assume you buy 32Gb as well - you could have 30 tabs open , running handbrake and another encoder/avisynth filter etc and still game fast with less powerdraw

 

[JimboJoneson]

...
When will this website change its name to AMD Techspot?

I have a prediction on this question. Maybe it should change to that now, and then we can change it back when Intel stops sucking it, and makes something thats not 14nm?

Just an idea I had ... their new Tiger Lake IGP looks pretty good though ... can we get an applause on that new IGP that the old AMD guy made? What was his name ... Raja Kardboardy?

720p IGP gaming - maybe this could be the new trend for Intel "enthusiasts"?

Like I said, just an idea I had ...

 

[OortCloud]

I guess you didn't see any of the 5900x, 5800x and 5600x reviews yet ... just sayin' ... one tends to pay a bit more for 16 cores that out well outperforms the competitions top end 18 core HEDT parts in the workloads those parts were designed for.

5600x is almost at par with the 5950x in gaming, if budget is your thing.

Again, I'm just sayin' -- wait for Techspot's reviews, or check out what GN and Linus has observed on that front, if you really do want to look at objective numbers. Your choice ... unless being objective doesn't fly with you.

Yes I will thanks. As I keep saying I am not an Intel or AMD fanboy - I would buy the AMD chip at the moment, no question. I'm a dev and work on very large C# and C++ applications so the multicore stuff would have real benefits for me, but just wanted to point out to people the price and single thread performance of this chip mean it might not make sense for everybody. As you say the 5600x looks a great chip too - the whole range looks good - just trying to keep some perspective rather than this 'Total Domination' nonsense.

 

[Burty117]

It's $150 cheaper - that's a lot of money - and runs the games he wants to play just as well.

What are you on about? Even the lowest model (5600x) runs flight simulator better than the 10900k?

Not sure how long you've been around here but this dude basically tells everyone, on nearly every single post he's ever written, that Intel is and will always be the best and same with Apple and the iPhone.

I was just intrigued if he'd change his tune when overwhelming evidence showed up that Intel aren't infact the best at all but na, loyalty and all that.

 

[Lionvibez]

It's $150 cheaper - that's a lot of money - and runs the games he wants to play just as well.

The guy that has a 3080 or 3090 is worried about $150 bucks?

We already know what his choice was going to be you don't need to defend him

 

[Avro Arrow]

So, I was hoping to score a cheap Ryzen 3000 series CPU for my first-gen Ryzen motherboard, but as it turns out, Ryzen 5000 is more efficient

This AM4 compatibility thing is huge honestly. Even if it dies off with this generation, I hope AMD can keep it up on their next big thing. Not to mention, Intel can learn from this, too.

Yes, the Ryzen 5000-series is more efficient than the 3000-series (it is the newer one after all) but if you have a 300-series mobo, I don't think that the 5000-series is worth it because it adds a craptonne of cost. I looked at it this way, I could get an R5-3600X for $300CAD to replace my R7-1700 or I could get an R5-5600X for $420CAD plus $210 for an X570 motherboard ($630).

Since I already had an ASRock X370 Killer SLI motherboard, I went for the $300 option because other than having to pay more than double for maybe a 20% increase in performance, I would also have just generated one ATX-sized piece of e-waste. Since my primary focus for my rig is gaming and my video card is an XFX Radeon RX 5700 XT, I kinda doubt that the extra CPU gaming peformance would be worth it. If I had an RX 6800 XT however, maybe it would be a different story (but I really don't think so). There's also the annoyance of having to worry about availability (no thanks!).

I only ever buy Full-ATX motherboards that are X-class. I'd rather have an X370 than a B450 or B550 because I find that the B-class boards are just way too stripped-down and the ones with decent VRMs cost as much as the X-class boards anyway. I prefer to have a full feature set with robust power delivery.

 

[Avro Arrow]

In Germany, Mindfactory had the 5600x. It was sold out a bit over an hour after the launch. Last I checked, it said „over 850 sold“, so I estimate they had around 1,000.

The product page was taken down after they sold out. Will be interesting to see when they get new stock in.

But if you really wanted one, there was no need for repeatedly hitting F5, at least there.

At this moment, the Canada Computers location in Richmond Hill, Ontario has a single R5-5600X. It's already sold out everywhere else (BIG surprise there).

 

[neeyik]

How does it fare against the threadrippers? Can it beat the 3960?
Would be nice to see them in the graphs.

You can do some quick comparisons by looking at the 3960X review:

Third-Gen Threadripper Lands: AMD Threadripper 3970X & 3960X Review

The latest 32-core and 24-core high-end desktop CPUs from AMD have now landed. And yes, we've benchmarked the heck out of them. The Threadripper 3970X is a...

www.techspot.com

Cinebench R20 (MT)
5950X = 10157
3960X = 13711

Cinebench R20 (ST)
5950X = 641
3960X = 520

7-Zip (Compression)
5950X = 123436
3960X = 146884

V-Ray benchmark (different versions, though)
5950X = 30297
3960X = 36920

Corona 1.3
5950X = 46
3960X = 37

Blender Open Data
5950X = 474
3960X = 332

It does pretty well against a CPU that has more cores, more cache, and more memory controllers (even accounting for clock speed differences).

 

[Squid Surprise]

You can do some quick comparisons by looking at the 3960X review:

Third-Gen Threadripper Lands: AMD Threadripper 3970X & 3960X Review

The latest 32-core and 24-core high-end desktop CPUs from AMD have now landed. And yes, we've benchmarked the heck out of them. The Threadripper 3970X is a...

www.techspot.com

Cinebench R20 (MT)
5950X = 10157
3960X = 13711

Cinebench R20 (ST)
5950X = 641
3960X = 520

7-Zip (Compression)
5950X = 123436
3960X = 146884

V-Ray benchmark (different versions, though)
5950X = 30297
3960X = 36920

Corona 1.3
5950X = 46
3960X = 37

Blender Open Data
5950X = 474
3960X = 332

It does pretty well against a CPU that has more cores, more cache, and more memory controllers (even accounting for clock speed differences).

Yeah - but I’m lazy

Thanks for doing it for me!

After looking at the numbers, part of me says “I want that 5950”... but another part says “wow, the 5990 will be AWESOME when it comes out in a few months!!”

 

[OortCloud]

I was just intrigued if he'd change his tune when overwhelming evidence showed up that Intel aren't infact the best at all but na, loyalty and all that.

Did you read anything I wrote? As I said at TWICE - and I'll quote " I would buy the AMD chip at the moment, no question." but this was an early review of a high end part and it was quite expensive and in benchmarks here it's single core performance was very similar to the cheaper intel part. So at the time it looked like maybe if you just wanted a PC to game on then the Intel chip still looked ok-ish.

Since then reviews have come in for lower-end CPU's like the 5600x which looks like even at similar and lower price points AMDs single core performance is right there so good for AMD. I'll repeat - its BETTER, its the better chip, AMD are doing a fantastic job especially in multicore stuff. It's great to see AMD doing this as Intel basically almost stopped forward development on the Core2 series for a while when AMD were nowhere.

 

[Burty117]

Did you read anything I wrote? As I said at TWICE - and I'll quote...

Lol, even though we settled our differences and it was just a misunderstanding, TechSpot deleted my comments under "trolling / personnel comments". Try and explain that one!

But just wanted to clear the air anyway for anyone reading through the comments.

 

[Markoni35]

Corona Benchmark...... sounds so weird in 2020, doesn't it? )