AMD Ryzen 9 9900X Benchmarked in Geekbench 6, Beats Intel's Best in Single-Core Score

[AleksandarK]

As AMD prepares to roll out its next-generation Ryzen 9000 series of CPUs based on Zen 5 architecture, we are starting to see some systems being tested by third-party OEMs and system integrators. Today, we have Geekbench 6 scores of the Ryzen 9 9900X CPU, and the 12-core, 24-thread processor that has demonstrated impressive performance gains. Boasting a base clock of 4.4 GHz and a boost clock of up to 5.6 GHz, the CPU features only 120 W TDP, a significant reduction from the previous 170 W of the previous generation. In Geekbench 6 tests, the Ryzen 9 9900X achieved a single-core score of 3,401 and a multicore score of 19,756.

These results place it ahead of Intel's current flagship Core i9-14900KS, which scored 3,189 points in single-core performance. Regarding multicore tasks, the i9-14900K scored 21,890 points, still higher than AMD's upcoming 12-core SKU. The benchmark of AMD's CPU was conducted on an ASUS ROG Crosshair X670E Gene motherboard with 32 GB of DDR5 memory. As anticipation builds for the official release, these early benchmarks suggest that AMD will deliver a compelling product that balances high performance with improved energy efficiency. The top tier models will still carry a 170 W TDP, while some high-end and middle-end SKUs get a TDP reduction like the Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X dial down to 65 W, decreased from 105 W in their previous iterations.



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[P4-630]

AMD Ryzen 9 9900X Benchmarked in Geekbench 6, Beats Intel's Best in Single-Core Score

Q4 intel will crush that score once again...

 

[Quicks]

Q4 intel will crush that score once again...

Possibly implode at the same time.

 

[DutchTraveller]

Competition is great!!
I use both AMD and Intel depending on the use-case.

 

[ymdhis]

Q4 intel will crush that score once again...

And then AMD will release the X3D variants.

 

[Vya Domus]

And then AMD will release the X3D variants.

They're going to have lower single thread performance. It doesn't matter anyway, single thread performance is becoming more and more inconsequential, it's just a metric these companies keep clinging on for marketing purposes like clock speed used to be.

 

[FoulOnWhite]

The competition is heating up so to speak, can't wait for proper reviews on both.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Yay it slightly beats an architecture in ST that's been out since 2022.... A win is a win though amirite....

 

[Gigaherz]

Yikes, more than twice the multicore of my Threadripper.

 

[Dristun]

Yikes, more than twice the multicore of my Threadripper.

Almost six years have passed since zen+ threadrippers' release date - time flies!

 

[JIWIL]

Probably in the minority here, but pretty much all the games I play on the regular are held back by just 1-2 threads. Given the state of the industry I don't see myself moving on from these titles anytime soon either. Single core performance remains the most important metric for me.

That said, I'll probably be waiting for a 9700-9800x3d chip late in the product cycle before upgrade this 7600x.

 

[AnarchoPrimitiv]

Yay it slightly beats an architecture in ST that's been out since 2022.... A win is a win though amirite....

Question: What else are they supposed to compare it to from Intel? Their upcoming chip that isn't even out yet?

Regardless it is still impressive that a company with an R&D budget less than a third of Intel's is able to put out a far more efficient chip that beats their current best which uses way, way more power and has had the snot overclocked out of it.....am I the only one that thinks it's crazy that Intel spends over 3x more than AMD on R&D and still can't beat AMD? That Intel has to resort to cartel tactics by selling chips at cost, giving huge sums of money to OEMs to keep AMD's chips out of the best laptop models, and trying to buy up capacity at TSMC?

 

[R0H1T]

Their upcoming chips are probably gone be slower anyway, top end clocks for desktop parts, so overall it'll probably beat AMD in low single digits. This is assuming there's no other major regressions anywhere else.

That Intel has to resort to cartel tactics by selling chips at cost, giving huge sums of money to OEMs to keep AMD's chips out of the best laptop models, and trying to buy up capacity at TSMC?

You're talking about notebooks right? I don't normally defend Intel but that sounds over the top. Lisa was on record last year saying they reduced the APU output to not compete on price. That's still probably true right now, even if to a lesser extent.

 

[stimpy88]

I think that ultimately Zen 5 will prove to be disappointment, I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think I am. I get the feeling that AMD is just surfing their own wave of previous success and have "settled" yet again. This behaviour nearly cost the company last time. They are currently doing this with their GPU's, and that's costing them massive market share declines.

But it looks like the time of the non-3D cache-grab skus are numbered. AMD needs to stop messing around and redesign the die to incorporate the extra cache and stop charging extra for it, or take the more complicated route and fix Zen's terrible memory controller and sort out the issues with the IF. It's too slow, and the latency too high, and that's why they depend so heavily on huge amounts of L3 in the first place.

So it looks like this generation of CPU's is Intel's to lose. If their upcoming CPU's are as good as they claim, Zen 5 will be 5-10% behind, at least!

 

[R0H1T]

AMD needs to stop messing around and redesign the die to incorporate the extra cache and stop charging extra for it.

They don't need to do any of that, they just need to keep on giving at least 10% IPC growth across generations to stay ahead of the pack. You're forgetting the same CCX/CCD are used for pretty much 3-4 market segments so they can't really tinker with it too much to please the gaming crowd.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Yay it slightly beats an architecture in ST that's been out since 2022.... A win is a win though amirite....

Don't lose site of power consumption as the other half of this metric. The KS was pushed past the point of stability to get there. So yes, beating that chip while likely using significantly less power is a worthy achievement.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Don't lose site of power consumption as the other half of this metric. The KS was pushed past the point of stability to get there. So yes, beating that chip while likely using significantly less power is a worthy achievement.

Don't get me wrong improved efficiency is important and a big reason I don't like the vanilla 7950X/14900k although both can be tweaked to be much better.

Still not impressive after 2 years though.

As with anything reviews are king.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Don't get me wrong improved efficiency is important and a big reason I don't like the vanilla 7950X/14900k although both can be tweaked to be much better.

Still not impressive after 2 years though.

As with anything reviews are king.

I dunno. What does Intel legitimately have now? The arch in Raptor Lake has been pushed so hard that there is nothing left to give, and Intel went that direction for a reason--they didn't have a better answer. What they have been able to come up with instead has been an okayish mobile solution, but Meteor Lake appears to lack the legs to compete in a desktop package, and it's also a little buggy as a V1 design. Imagine where we'd be if Intel and AMD were using the same thermal restraints. It would have been really ugly for Intel for a few years now.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

I dunno. What does Intel legitimately have now? The arch in Raptor Lake has been pushed so hard that there is nothing left to give, and Intel went that direction for a reason--they didn't have a better answer. What they have been able to come up with instead has been an okayish mobile solution, but Meteor Lake appears to lack the legs to compete in a desktop package, and it's also a little buggy as a V1 design. Imagine where we'd be if Intel and AMD were using the same thermal restraints. It would have been really ugly for Intel for a few years now.

Yeah it comes down to arrow lake for sure, still barely beating a 2 year old architecture will never be impressive to me regardless of efficiency.... I care about efficiency but I care about absolute gains more than anything else.

 

[Daven]

I think that ultimately Zen 5 will prove to be disappointment, I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think I am. I get the feeling that AMD is just surfing their own wave of previous success and have "settled" yet again. This behaviour nearly cost the company last time. They are currently doing this with their GPU's, and that's costing them massive market share declines.

But it looks like the time of the non-3D cache-grab skus are numbered. AMD needs to stop messing around and redesign the die to incorporate the extra cache and stop charging extra for it, or take the more complicated route and fix Zen's terrible memory controller and sort out the issues with the IF. It's too slow, and the latency too high, and that's why they depend so heavily on huge amounts of L3 in the first place.

So it looks like this generation of CPU's is Intel's to lose. If their upcoming CPU's are as good as they claim, Zen 5 will be 5-10% behind, at least!

There are a lot of moving parts at AMD and limited resources must be assigned in the best possible way. Desktop CPUs are way ahead of customer needs and the competition is just trading blows (not moving ahead or increasing their distance). Just look at Raptor Lake Refresh and you can see neither Intel or AMD is paying as much attention to this market segment.

The 7950X3D and 14900K are powerful client desktop processors. Next gens will iterate on these already excellent designs.

 

[P4-630]

Yeah it comes down to arrow lake for sure, still barely beating a 2 year old architecture will never be impressive to me regardless of efficiency.... I care about efficiency but I care about absolute gains more than anything else.

You're always welcome at the blue-side...

 

[stimpy88]

You're always welcome at the blue-side...

He's right though, at least regarding barely beating a 2-year-old architecture.

But I certainly don't remember ever hearing that modern desktop Intel CPUs being efficient, and certainly never heard of them being more efficient than the equivalent AMD offering.

 

[Daven]

You're always welcome at the blue-side...

The 80%+ of TPU readers that use AMD processors will need a lot more than Lakes to get us to switch.

 

[stimpy88]

The 80%+ of TPU readers that use AMD processors will need a lot more than Lakes to get us to switch.

I have to admit to being disappointed in Zen 5, and I don't expect AMD have the footballs to take any kind of risks until they replace AM5, if indeed, they ever take any more risks.

I'm more than happy with my 5950x, but I see nothing compelling in the AM5 platform itself, and Zen 5 is not looking like it will beat Intel's up and coming desktop CPUs. Time will tell.

 

[Hecate91]

He's right though, at least regarding barely beating a 2-year-old architecture.

Intel doesn't have anything to beat them right now so it's a fair comparison IMO.
Also according to the article tests on the i9 were done before Intel baseline default settings, so the 14900K loses up to 15% of its performance.