At long last, Ryzen 9950X reviews are here and AMD’s new flagship Zen 5 processor certainly packs a punch. That’s not exactly a surprise to see, but not everyone is ranting and raving about the new CPU. It’s impossible to knock it in terms of performance, but many reviewers aren’t so impressed by the price, especially compared to the value of Zen 4 these days.
The 9950X boasts 16 cores and 32 threads, making it a beast for multithreading and hardcore productivity workloads, but it is pretty overkill for gaming scenarios. It has “proven to be the fastest CPU on the market” in many tests, but the high $649 asking price put it out of reach for many people. For gaming, we’d suggest waiting for X3D.
A few highlights from Ryzen 9950X reviews
AMD’s Ryzen 9000 series launch has been a little strange, especially with a supposed last-minute change to the TDP of the 9600X and 9700X chips. Either way, let’s take a deeper dive into what some of the biggest publications have been saying about the new flagship model.
Starting with IGN, Jacqueline Thomas writes that “anyone looking for the next best gaming CPU will probably be disappointed, as the Ryzen 9 9950X can fall behind more affordable CPUs when you’re playing games”. AMD’s target market with the 9950X isn’t exactly gamers, but it should really cater to every kind of enthusiast out there and the value for money isn’t there for all of us.
Moving on to Tom’s Hardware, who you may think have been harsh with their 3 out of 5-star rating. They come to a similar conclusion, noting that the pricing and gaming performance isn’t competitive enough. They say that “improvements in gaming performance aren’t enough to take the crown from Intel’s competing Core i9-14900K flagship, let alone AMD’s own X3D processors”. Tom’s Hardware also makes note of the core parking feature that can boost gaming performance. Overall, it’s a benefit, but still problematic as it cannot be uninstalled from the OS and can have a negative impact if you swap out for a CPU that isn’t designed with it in mind.
Finally, we took a look at PCGamer, who says that the new Zen 5 flagship will “dominate the benchmark wars and your wallet”. It’s not surprising to see the price be a highly contested issue; this is something we’ve grown accustomed to with new high-end hardware launches. They also agree that “Zen 4 is much better value for money” and report mixed results in Eco mode for gaming. On the plus side, the multithreaded performance was unmatched and it ran pretty cool considering its high 170W TDP.
So, what about 9000X3D?
Likely next up in AMD’s desktop processor plans will be the X3D variants of the new Zen 5 processors. These have been a massive hit for gamers thanks to the larger amount of cache, which comes in handy for CPU-intensive titles and can help improve performance or even combat stuttering in certain titles. Ever since AMD released the first one back with the 5800X3D, these models have been the gold standard for gaming scenarios and Team Red has been placing a bigger focus on them, even going back to older generations to fill in some gaps – such as with the 5700X3D.
With the 9950X not exactly being a standout processor for gaming according to launch reviews, enthusiasts may want to wait for 9000X3D models instead to unlock the full potential of the chip while benefitting from 3D V-Cache technology. And they can only get even better.
