Introduction

AMD Zen 4 is here, and the new Ryzen 9 7950X 16-core processor in this review is out to restore the company’s top-spot in the PC processor industry. With Zen 4, the company is firmly into the next-generation era, with the latest high-IPC CPU cores supporting new instruction-sets for future applications; and support for the latest I/O standards such as DDR5 and PCI-Express 5.0. The Ryzen 7950X targets both enthusiast-gamers, professional game-streamers, as well as overclockers. This is a classic multi-core processor, and all 16 of its CPU cores are what Intel would consider “performance” cores. With this generation, AMD is making integrated graphics standard, so even businesses and academic/scientific customers who need the compute muscle without graphics cards, can look for Ryzen 7000-series processors. While the iGPU isn’t gaming-grade, it’s intended to be as capable, if not more, than the one competing Intel processors ship with.

The new Zen 4 architecture introduces a generational 13% IPC uplift, which when combined with the high boost frequencies afforded by the new 5 nm process, work out a single-thread uplift of 29%. The company claims that not only do these processors nullify the gaming performance advantage of Intel processors, but also dominate in productivity tasks, where the 16 P-cores offer up to 44% more multi-threaded performance than the previous-gen 5950X, which already enjoyed a slight performance lead over the i9-12900K “Alder Lake,” with creator workloads that scaled across cores. The Zen 4 core comes with double the L2 cache size, now at 1 MB, while the L3 cache of the processor totals to 64 MB.

Boosting the creator credentials of the Ryzen 9 7950X is its platform I/O. AMD’s PCI-Express Gen 5 implementation goes a step ahead of Intel’s. You get Gen 5 not just for the x16 PEG slot, but two additional x4 connections, besides the chipset-bus. It’s possible for motherboard designers to wire out two Gen 5 M.2 NVMe slots attached to the CPU, without eating into the x16 PEG bandwidth. The Ryzen 7000 series exclusively supports DDR5 memory, which means no backwards-compatibility with DDR4. New-generation connectivity is why the company had to develop Socket AM5.

AM5 is a new LGA socket, much like Intel’s desktop sockets for the past couple of decades. It wires out DDR5 memory, 28 lanes of PCIe Gen 5, platform I/O that include more 20 Gbps USB 3.2 ports; modern display connectors such as DP 2.0, and most importantly, comes with a smarter, more capable power architecture. The socket enables 2-way communication between the processor and voltage regulators, and supports up to 230 W power delivery. AMD has given the 7950X and its sibling, the 7900X 12-core, a massive 170 W TDP, with 230 W PPT. The company recommends a 240 mm or 280 mm AIO liquid CPU cooler to go with these chips. Air-cooling won’t cut it. The good news here is that AM5 maintains cooler-compatibility with AM4, so you’re spoiled for choice with AM4-compatible liquid coolers.

The Ryzen 9 7950X comes with the highest clock speeds in the series, with a base frequency of 4.50 GHz, and a massive 5.70 GHz boost frequency, with all-core boost frequency spread above the 5 GHz-mark under acceptable cooling conditions. These processors are designed to run hot, and AMD claims that temperatures around the 95°C mark is considered “normal.”

In our Ryzen 9 7950X review, we put AMD’s new flagship through its paces, to see if AMD has restored the gaming performance lead, and by just how much its productivity performance has advanced. For this review, we’ve revamped our test-bench with many new benchmarks and game-tests, and we’ve retested dozens of processors, going several years back.