AMD has been busy, not only did we just have their first RDNA 4 based GPUs launched last week with the RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 but they also announced on Friday that their latest Radeon 9 X3D CPUs would be hitting stores on March 12th. Well, today the performance embargo lifts on those and I’ve got the AMD Radeon 9 9950X3D on hand to put to the test before they hit stores tomorrow. Back in November, I took a look at the Ryzen 7 9800X3D that we liked enough to use with our GPU test bench. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D takes the already very capable Radeon 9 9950X with its 16 cores and 5.7 GHz max boost and adds in the 2nd generation AMD 3D V-Cache. A lot of gamers will recognize the X3D model designation because AMDs 3D V-Cache CPUs have been dominating the market when it comes to gaming for a few generations now. The 9950X3D brings that technology up to the top of their CPU product stack for those who want great gaming performance but also need the highest-end CPU capabilities as well.
Product Name: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D
Review Sample Provided by: AMD
Written by: Wes Compton
Amazon Affiliate Link: HERE
What is the Ryzen 9 9950X3D
Before getting into the specifications for the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, I did want to touch on 3D V-Cache as a whole for anyone who hasn’t seen anything about it for the last few generations of AMD CPUs. In short, it is stacking the L3 cache right with the CPU core. Both having additional L3 cache and having it so close to the CPU offers significant performance improvements in cache-dependent workloads. One of the biggest that sees an improvement is gaming. With past generations of Ryzen CPUs with 3D V-Cache, they did this by putting it right on top of the core which worked but does have a few big downsides. It isolates the CPU core from the heatspreader making cooling harder. With that, they had to be more conservative with clock speeds, voltages, and those CPUs didn’t support overclocking. With the Zen5-based 9000 Series of CPUs, they have moved the 3D cache to under the CPU core which has helped with those issues. The core is in direct contact with the heatspreader and we now see higher clock speeds on these CPUs including the Ryzen 9 9950X3D.
One other aspect to keep in mind with the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and the Ryzen 9 9900X3D, like their non-X3D brothers and the previous generations 7900X and 7950X these CPUs with their higher core count have two CCX’s aka core complex. That split configuration means that to do 3D V-Cache on that configuration they would have to put twice as much. To keep costs from getting completely out of control they only run 3D V-Cache on one of the two CCXs. To make this perform correctly they do have to run what they call the AMD 3D V-Cache Performance Optimizer on top of the AMD Provisioning Packages Service that they already run to optimize gaming on Ryzen 9 CPUs.
With that in mind, I have listed out the specifications for both the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D which are both being launched today. Along with that, I have the previous generation CPUs that match and the previously tested 9800X3D as well. Except for the cache and sometimes the power ratings the X3D CPUs have the same specifications as their non-X3D brothers. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D is a 16-core and 32-thread CPU which isn’t changed from the 7950X3D, the 9900X3D is a 12-core and 24-thread CPU, again unchanged from the previous generation. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D has a max boost of 5.7 GHz and the 9900X3D has a max boost of 5.5 GHz, again unchanged which is a surprise given the changes in the 3D V-Cache location. In fact, most of the specs haven’t changed, especially with the 9900X3D which specification-wise only the Tjmax has changed. For the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, when compared to the 7950X3D it has a higher TDP, default socket power, and max current in addition to the higher Tjmax. Both CPUs are mostly relying on the changes in the Zen 5 architecture for improvements. If you were curious how the 9800X3D compared to the 9950X3D, not only does it have half as many cores, it also has a lower max boost clock speed but does have a higher base clock.
For testing did send over a motherboard to test the Ryzen 9 9950X3D along with the CPU, an SSD, and RAM. We run G.Skill memory in most of our test rigs so there isn’t anything different there. The memory is a Trident Z5 Neo RGB 6000 MHz 2x16GB kit which hits the sweet spot for memory clock speed and support EXPO for an easy setup. You can’t go wrong with Samsung SSDs and the X870E Aorus Master motherboard is a monster as well that isn’t going to have any trouble with the higher power requirements of the 9950X3D.
The Ryzen 9 9950X3D comes in the same packaging that you would get any other Ryzen CPU. While this is their flagship, they aren’t doing anything special or over the top for it. You have the black box with silver and orange accents that highlight that this is a Ryzen 9 CPU and point directly to the window on the front that shows the CPU itself. Because this is a 3D V-Cache CPU the left arrow has that inside in orange. Inside the CPU comes in a clear clamshell tray along with a Ryzen 9 case sticker. If you haven’t seen any of the AM5 CPUs you might be a little surprised when you see that the CPU doesn’t have any pins, they have moved to an LGA socket with the pins on the motherboard which helps prevent CPU damage but it does also mean that damaging your expensive motherboard is a lot easier as well. The heatspreader has that unique X-like shape that likes to hold on to some of your thermal paste but you won’t miss it when you see the CPU anywhere. Then on top, they have the AMD Ryzen branding etched in a large font with the full model name just below it.
Test Rig and Procedures
Test Rig
Motherboard – X870E Aorus Master – Live Pricing
Ram – G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo RGB 6000 MHz 2x16GB – Live Pricing
Storage – Samsung 990 Pro 1TB – Live Pricing
Video Card – Nvidia RTX 4090 Founders Edition – Live Pricing
OS – Windows 11 Pro – Live Pricing
CPU Performance
To start off our testing I went with the rendering-focused Blender benchmark, specifically the latest version, Blender Benchmark 4.2. To get a good look at the overall performance I have all three of the results stacked together and in this test, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D is of course at the top of the chart jumping past the 285K and 14900K and a significant performance jump over its brother the 9800X3D.
Continuing with the video encoding theme I also have Handbrake which is an open-source transcoder. For this test I am taking a 4k video down to 1080p 30 FPS, the results are the average FPS of that task. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D improved on the performance we saw with the 9800X3D by over 30 FPS and that put it ahead of the 14900K and 13900K but Intel is still ahead here by 40 FPS with the Core Ultra 9 285K.
For the always popular Cinebench, I am testing with the older Cinebench R23 as well as the newer 2024 edition as well. I always like Cinebench because we have multi-core and single-core performance which gives us a good look at the performance of the whole CPU and IPC performance. In R32 the Ryzen 9 9950X3D topped the chart and is out in front of the 285K by 7.2% and improved on the 9800X3D by a significant margin with an improvement of 83.7% there. For single-core, however, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D is still behind the 285K. In Cinebench 2024 we see more of the same. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D is at the top and ahead of the 285K but by 3.9% here and 78% improvement from the performance we saw from the 9800X3D. Single core performance in Cinebench 2024 the Ryzen 9 9950X3D comes in second with the Core Ultra 9 285K still in front with its 145 to the Ryzen 9 9950X3D’s 140.
Next up we have ray tracing-focused rendering benchmarks. Here I tested the CPUs in POV-Ray and V-Ray Benchmark 5. POV-Ray was also tested with a single core and across all of the cores. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D improved on what I saw with the 9800X3D significantly with a 72% improvement there but did still come in second on the chart with the 285K ahead here and 8% over the Ryzen 9 9950X3D. Single core performance in POV-Ray the Ryzen 9 9950X3D comes in behind the 285K as well as the 13900K and 14900K. In V-Ray Benchmark 5 however, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D is up at the top of the chart by a big margin. It is 17% over the 285K and 84% over the 9800X3D.
I also tested using the CPUz’s built-in benchmark which does run on a single thread and with all threads. In the multi-thread test, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D wasn’t able to pass the 285K in either the single-thread or multi-thread tests. It did pass the 14900K in the multi-thread test but is still behind it in the single-thread test in addition to the 285K.
Next, we have wPrime which is a classic overclocking benchmark that calculates pi out to 1024 million digits and is timed. This is a multi-thread heavy test which has the older high-core count CPUs still all over the top of the charts and you can see that with the top CPUs sitting at 8 or more cores. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D with its 16 cores topped the chart taking the throne from the 7950X. We didn’t get our hands on the original 9950X which would have also been here as well. But we are getting to the point where the score can barely fit on the chart as these finish the test so quickly. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D is 38.9% faster than the 285K, most of its competition is from AMDs top end 7000 Series CPUs.
7 Zip is another open-source program, this time for compressing and decompressing all of your files. Here I have run the benchmark and we have three results. The combined MIPS is a combination of compressing and decompressing performance. Then I have it broken down between the two. The combined results have the Ryzen 9 9950X3D way out ahead of anything else tested here. It is in front of the 285K by 35% and ahead of the 7950X3D by 55%. With the split results, we can see that the Ryzen 9 9950X3D outperformed with both sets of results but it’s the decompressing performance that sets it apart by the most.
Jetstream 2.1 is a compilation benchmark that takes a long list of HTML5 and Java in-browser tests and runs them all three times and puts together an overall score. I love this benchmark because let's be honest, most people are using their browser more than any other game or program. Jetstream gives some interesting results sometimes though but it tends to prefer high IPC or single-core performance and there are some situations where it prefers lower core-count CPUs. In this case, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D used its max clock speed of 5.7 GHz to top the chart here and is 6% out in front of the Core Ultra 285K as well. I also included our first tests with the newer Jetstream 2.2 test as well, those results were similar but the gap between it and the 285K was a little smaller a 3.7%.
As a new addition to our testing, I have added in a few AI-focused tests using Geekbench AI and Procyon’s Computer Vision Benchmark. The Geekbench AI test looks at single and half-precision performance with scores for each and a quantized score as well. They test using 10 different workloads to create their score. The Procyon AI Computer Vision Benchmark focuses on machine vision tests using neural network models like MobileNet V3, Inception V4, YOLO v3, DeepLab V3, Real-ESRGAN, and ResNet 50. I test those using the Windows ML setting and in cases that support it, I test built-in NPUs as well. I have also included Windows ML and TensorRT results using an RTX 4090 as well as a reference point where these CPUs compare to a high-end GPU. For Geekbench AI the Ryzen 9 9950X3D dwarfs the 285K with its quanitized score sitting 87% over it. The single and half-precision scores are a little closer but still way out in front by 51%. In the Procyon AI Computer Vision Benchmark, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D did well in the float16 test, improving on the 9800X3D which was already ahead of the 285K. Of course that doesn’t count the NPU tests where the 285K is WAY out in front.
As a new test, I have added PugetBench for Creators to test out the performance of DaVinci Resolve and Photoshop. I need to get more CPUs including the new Intel Core Ultra CPUs tested but with all of the GPU reviews, I wasn’t able to fit in that testing. But did want to at least include those results. What stood out to me with the limited results that we do have here was how the Ryzen 9 9950X3D stands out in Photoshop.
For Passmark Performance Test I used the latest version, Performance Test 11. I only look at the overall CPU score which takes a few different synthetic benchmarks and combines the results to put together an overall score. This is a test that does favor multi-threaded performance over IPC. In Performance Test 11 the Ryzen 9 9950X3D topped the chart with a score of 70421. It sits 4% over the 285K and improved on last generations 7950X3D by 10%.
Crossmark is from BAPCo which also makes SYSmark and this is a cross-platform test where you can compare performance between phones and both Windows and Mac computers. This is the start of our overall PC benchmarks and Crossmark uses a mix of real-world tests to output an overall score. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D didn’t do as well here sitting behind the 9800X3D putting it behind the 14900K.
PCMark 10 is a great test because it tests things like video calls, browser performance, Excel, and Word performance to give an idea of real-world performance. It tends to like higher clock speeds but does take raw core count into account as well which you can see. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D is up near the top of the chart but interestingly the 9700X edged it out. I also ran the PCMark application test with Microsoft Office and the Ryzen 9 9950X3D scored a 18859 which is out in front of most of the CPUs tested except the 285K which is just in front of it with a 19171.
Moving the focus over towards gaming my next test is using Dolphin 5.0 Benchmark. Dolphin 5.0 is a Wii emulator and like most emulators, it doesn’t care about high core counts at all. In fact, it only runs two in total. Clock speeds are king here most of the time which is why all of the 5 GHz+ CPUs are at the top of the chart here. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D topped the chart with its 5.7 GHz clock speeds, outperforming the 9800X3D by 21 seconds.
Before diving into game testing I wanted to check out synthetic performance using 3DMark. I tested with the older DX11 Fire Strike test as well as the newer DX12 Time Spy. I also added the new 3DMark CPU Profile benchmark into the mix as well which does a good job of showing the full range of thread counts that you might see being used in games as well as a max threads option that does everything above 16 threads. In the Fire Strike test, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D improved on the performance I saw with the 9800X3D and it is up near the top of the chart sitting between the 14900K and 13900K but the 285K is still up at the top of the chart here. The Time Spy results show that performance improvement compared to the 9800X3D but the Intel CPUs are still dominating the top of that chart. Then with the last test, the CPU Profile has the Ryzen 9 9950X3D start a little under the Core Ultra 9 285K and it stays behind it until we hit 16 cores where it jumps out ahead.
I did of course test the two new CPUs in games as well. I will dive into testing the integrated GPU in the next section. Here though they are paired up with a powerful GPU (the RTX 4090) and I compare CPU to CPU performance. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D, like all of the other X3D CPUs, runs at the top or near the top on all of our tests. Four of the games have it sitting behind the Ryzen 7 9800X3D and in the Ghost Recon Wildlands Breakpoint test the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K does sneak up in between the two. Then in the other four games, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D is at the top sitting ahead of the 9800X3D.
Last I did also run the AIDA64 benchmarks as well. These give us a great look at a few aspects including the full range of cache performance, memory performance, and more. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D doubles up the cache performance that we saw with the 9800X3D. The 285K outperformed the 9800X3D in most of those tests but the Ryzen 9 9950X3D’s big jump pushes it up well past that. For memory performance both of the Core Ultra CPUs are still faster but they also had a higher latency than both the 9800X3D and the 9950X3D. single-precision and double-precision FLOPS are impressive with the Ryzen 9 9950X3D sitting at 5437 for the single-precision FLOPS, 53% better than the 285K.
Onboard Video Performance
With the Ryzen 9 9950X3D being their highest-end CPU and with its gaming and work mix. I just don’t see anything planning on running the CPU without a dedicated GPU. If you just needed the CPU power and wanted onboard you would run the normal 9950X. That said there are times when you need to run your PC without a video card. Maybe it has died or hasn’t come in at all. With any CPU I always put the onboard GPU to the test as well and that is no different even when it’s the Ryzen 9 9950X3D. To start off testing I went with the old reliable 3DMark which has a few tests I wanted to check out. The first test was Fire Strike and the Ryzen 9 9950X3D came in at 2451 in this test. That was a little better than the 9800X3D but it was just a hair behind the Ryzen 9 7950X3D. Intel’s last 5 generations are all sitting higher as well as the Ryzen 2000 and 8000 G CPU which have an onboard GPU focus. Time Spy was similar with the Ryzen 9 9950X3D sitting in the mid with the 9800X3D and all of the 7000 and 9000 Series Ryzen CPUs, with Intel once again ahead as well as the G Series CPUs. In Speed Way, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D scored 111, which put it between the 9600X and 9700X but at about a 1/3 of the performance of the G CPUs or Intel’s Core Ultra CPUs. I did also add in the new Steel Legion Light benchmark and the Ryzen 9 9950X3D scored 637 putting it ahead of the 14th Gen Intel CPUs but behind the other 9000 Series Ryzen CPUs. Last up I did also run the AMD FSR 2 feature test at 1080p and with the quality detail. I was curious what FSR would do for the iGPU and the Ryzen 9 9950X3D went from 3.36 FPS up to 6.4 which is a 90% improvement but not enough to make it playable in that situation.
For Unigine Superposition, I ran both the 720 Low and 1080 Medium presets. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D came in just ahead of the 9800X3D but behind the 7950X3D here. It is still down below the last few generations of Intel CPUs and the Ryzen G Series CPUs putting it in the middle of this chart.
With AI being an important metric these days I did slip in a look at the AI performance for the integrated GPU as well using Procyon’s AI Computer Vision Benchmark which tests using a few different neural network models including Yolo v3 which is one of the models we use with our own AI security camera filtering. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D scored a 58 which tied it with the Ryzen 7 9800X3D and put it ahead of the 14th gen Intel CPUs but was also less than half of the new Core Ultra CPUs performance even without using the Intel OpenVINO setting that game those even more performance.
Then from there on, I jumped into game tests. Some of our tests are older games but I did also add in a few newer games as well to get an idea of newer games when tested at 1080p and low or medium settings. My goal with these tests was to see if base-level gaming at low or medium settings was possible at all. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D consistently improved on the performance that we saw with the Ryzen 7 9800X3D. That said, that still kept it in the middle of the charts with the Intel Coore Ultra CPUs and the AMD Ryzen G CPUs making everything else look slow. In the end, you can get barely playable performance in some games like F1 22 at 1080p Medium detail or you do have room to drop the detail down farther. Ghost Recon Wildlands was similar but at 1080p and the old Tomb Raider was playable but not smooth as well. This isn’t something that I would try to game on, but if you need to wait for your GPU to come in or come back you won’t have any problems using your PC for anything else.
I also slipped in the F1 22 FSR tests, I was curious if that would be enough to push the game to be playable and it was. It went from 28 FPS up to 43 FPS. I wouldn’t call it smooth, but you could play at that frame rate. Or you could even try the lower detail or another step down in resolution if you just have to have 60 or higher FPS.
Power Usage and Temperatures
For some people, performance is the only thing important, but for others, power usage and temperatures also play a role so we do take a look at both of those as well. This is especially important in SFF or even just smaller mid-sized builds and it affects the components you need to get for your system as well as your PSU and cooler. To take a look at power usage I ran three different tests. I noted the idle power draw of our entire system then I took a look at the load wattage of the system using two different workloads. One was wPrime and the second was AIDA64 using their FPU workload which is extremely demanding. At idle the testbench with the Ryzen 9 9950X3D pulled 105 watts which is a little higher than the 96.3 watts that the 9800X3D pulled and higher than the 77.1 watts of the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K. When testing wPrime the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and test bench pulled 341 watts which puts it up at the top of our chart even above the older Ryzen 9 7950X. That is 133 watts higher than the 9800X3D and 89 watts higher than the 285K. Changing to the AIDA64 Stress Test using the FPU workload the wattage dropped down to 308 watts whereas the Intel CPUs jumped up on this test putting the Ryzen 9 9950X3D 20 watts below the 285K.
I’ve spoken in the past about how temperature testing isn’t an end-all-be-all-be-all result. CPU to CPU with the same CPU can be different and that gets even more complicated once you add in different motherboards and BIOS revisions as well. Not to mention different coolers. In this case, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D ran at 71 watts with this workload, putting it in the middle of the pack and (surprisingly) below the Ryzen 7 9800X3D. Switching to the CPU workload which is more realistic to what you might see when gaming the Ryzen 9 9950X3D only dropped 1 degree which tells us that the CPU was being throttled back with the mode demanding workload.
Overall and Final Verdict
It’s interesting just how things have changed. Years ago CPU performance was cut and dry architecture, manufacturing processes, and clock speeds were the only things you had to focus on. While those all still are very important, because of changes in CPU design from both AMD and Intel the software side of things plays a much bigger role now than it did in the past. Intel has its efficiency and performance cores and AMD with their dual CCX 3D V-Cache CPUs have to rely on the software side to properly assign the correct cores to the correct workloads. We have seen big swings in performance from both sides because of this and things have been improving but this is the first time that I haven’t noticed it much. Crossmark and 3DMark were the only times I saw numbers that made me wonder if it was related to that. That consistency, even without considering the overall performance of the Ryzen 9 9950X3D itself, has me seriously considering going with the Ryzen 9 9950X3D or a similar CPU for my own PC.
The Ryzen 9 9950X3D in all of our tests put down a dominant performance when it came to gaming. It was only really competing with AMDs own 9800X3D with the 285K coming in third in most of our tests. All of our real-world tests like PCMark 10, PugetBench with Davinci Resolve and Photoshop, and the Jetstream browser benchmarks all had the Ryzen 9 9950X3D at or near the top. The 285K did still edge out in the PCMark 10 Applications test with Microsoft Office. The main downside for the Ryzen 9 9950X3D is its power demands which given its performance aren’t all that surprising. Intel still outperformed it in our AI tests. The new Intel Core Ultra CPUs outperformed in all of our onboard video tests as well, but I would put that down at the bottom of the list of concerns. This just isn’t the type of CPU you would be using onboard video with in most situations.
For pricing, the MSRP of the Ryzen 9 9950X3D is $699. That puts it a little over $100 more than Intel’s Core Ultra 9 285K and with just a few exceptions I do think you are getting your moneys worth in performance with the extra money there. Of course, if gaming is your main focus, AMD’s 9800X3D which is $479 is still a much better value. The original Ryzen 9 9950X has an MSRP of $599, meaning the 3D V-Cache is costing you an extra $100. At $699, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D is still well beyond the price range I would be looking at on my personal budget. But if you need the best possible CPU performance and also plan on gaming you aren’t going to find anything better. It wasn’t that long ago that a $699 CPU would seem crazy, but comparatively video card prices almost make this feel like a value in comparison. For example in 2018 the Intel 9900K was $580 and a RTX 2080 Ti would run you $999. Compare that with the 9950X3D and an RTX 5090.
Live Pricing: HERE
