The AMD Ryzen 9 5950X is every PC enthusiast's wet-dream—blockbuster gaming performance and content creation capability bar none. There was a time when mainstream desktop processors at most cost $350, beyond which enthusiasts were forced to buy high-end desktop (HEDT) parts with higher core counts, more PCIe lanes (for crazy multi-GPU setups), and more memory bandwidth. A lot has changed since then. Quad-channel memory doesn't benefit gaming and won't help most productivity tasks unless they are extremely memory intensive. Multi-GPU has faded away, and HEDT processors have fallen behind desktop chips on clock speeds due to bloated silicon and high TDPs. AMD realized where the HEDT market was heading and sought to expand the mainstream desktop offerings with high core count processors that run at high clock speeds comparable to mainstream processors while remaining under 125 W (on the box). Intel put up a fight, increasing its mainstream desktop CPU core counts all the way to 10, but has hit the limits on core counts with its 14 nm process. AMD's transition to 7 nm and its chiplet architecture meant that it could dial core counts up to 16 on the mainstream AM4 socket, so here we are.

We have another three Zen 3 reviews for you besides this one: Ryzen 9 5900X, Ryzen 7 5800X, Ryzen 5 5600X.

Armed with 16 cores, 32 threads, and enough cache memory to theoretically run Windows XP without a nibble of DRAM, the Ryzen 9 5950X gives us unfathomable levels of productivity performance, as it is about 35% faster in multi-threaded synthetics than the Core i9-10900K and has 71% higher multi-threaded performance in Cinebench R20 (24% higher in single-threaded). It can crush through a Blender render in close to half the time it takes the i9-10900K. It also ends up predictably 20% faster than the 12-core 5900X in rendering tests. The 16-core CPU should also shave valuable time off software development, as unlike first-gen Threadripper, there are no performance bottlenecks for any of the cores.

The performance leadership continues with simulation tests. Things get interesting with Adobe productivity—Photoshop performance for all Ryzen 5000 chips is ahead of Intel on account of better single-thread performance, but the 5950X isn't better than other Ryzen 5000 series chips. Interestingly, this trend holds up with our Premiere Pro test, which is not a brute encoding test that scales across all cores, but rather a lower-threaded load that represents the fact that Adobe applications don't scale well to a lot of cores. Predictably, the 5950X takes the video encoding performance crown on account of our encoders scaling with core counts. Overall, the 5950X ends up about 7% faster than the 5900X in productivity tests. The performance gap between the 5950X and 5900X is slimmed because not all of our tests scale perfectly with higher core counts—just like reality. Compared to Intel, it's a bloodbath, the Ryzen 9 5950X ends up 23% faster than the i9-10900K.

Gaming performance is a whole different story. AMD has made tremendous gains in gaming performance with Ryzen 5000 "Zen 3," and the 5950X trades blows with its siblings at gaming. This alone is a huge win—previously, the xx50X processors had difficulty competing in gaming performance despite their huge lead in multi-threaded application performance. On average, we see the Ryzen 9 5950X about 3.5% behind the i9-10900K at the academically relevant 720p resolution. At higher resolutions that gap shrinks because games are more GPU limited. Back in our launch-day Zen 3 reviews, these numbers surprised me, so I spent a lot of time trying to find out why Zen 3 is not beating the 10900K, as suggested by many reviewers and AMD's own data. Do check out my article "How Intel is beating AMD Zen3 at gaming?" to learn more. For this review, I ran a separate round of gaming benchmarks with a GeForce RTX 3090, which supports the PCI-Express 4.0 interface. On the Intel platform, the 3090 will run in Gen 3 mode, which will cost 1–2% gaming performance. I also set the memory speed on both platforms to 3800CL16, which will yield another 1–2% for AMD. Now we can see that the Ryzen 9 5950X clearly beats the 10900K in nearly all games, at all resolutions, which is pretty impressive. While some might call these hardware changes an unfair advantage for AMD, I think it's quite reasonable to pair a $800 CPU with the best memory and best graphics card you can find.

Don't let the massive core counts scare you, the Ryzen 9 5950X is running at temperatures comparable to the i9-9900K, so any premium air-cooler of an AIO CLC that's 240 mm or larger should do the job. It seems temperatures are much better because the heat is spread over a larger area, two dies instead of one. Ryzen 5000 series chips exhibit interesting boost behavior. The maximum boost frequency is slightly higher than advertised, with our 5950X sample hitting 4.93 GHz. This is probably a case of AMD giving itself some headroom against complaints of chips boosting lower than advertised, which affected Ryzen 3000 series chips at launch. The 5950X generously spreads its boosting headroom across its 16 cores, with up to 4.78 GHz on tap for 6 threads, 4.73 GHz at 8 threads, 4.70 GHz at 12 threads, 4.60 GHz at 16 threads, and no less than 4.45 GHz with all 32 threads loaded. Needless to say, today's AAA games, which typically load the processor with few threads, maybe 4–8, will enjoy the upper bands of the chip's boosting headroom, which is consistently above 4.65 GHz and explains the gaming leadership this chip enjoys despite its enormous core count.

Overclocking the Ryzen 9 5950X doesn't do the processor much good. We tested overclocking on the 5950X and achieved an all-core overclock of 4.50 GHz. 4.60 GHz was in reach but required too much voltage, which resulted in too much heat. If you plan on overclocking this beast, make sure to bring plenty of cooling—a 240 mm AIO at the absolute minimum. 4.5 GHz is considerably lower than the maximum rated boost of 4.90 GHz. This means that unless you are running highly threaded applications that fully load all cores on your processor all day, you're be better off without an overclock. It also helps keep power draw and temperatures low. It's still nice to see an unlocked multiplier on Ryzen processors. Intel charges you extra for this.

Single-threaded power draw for the 5950X is among the highest, but owing to its high IPC, it's also getting more work done, so it ends up moderately efficient. Multi-threaded tests see the i9-10900K struggling hard to get anywhere near the energy efficiency of the Ryzen 5000 series. The 5950X ends up being the most efficient multi-threaded chip we ever tested. Gaming power draw is comparable to that of a machine powered by an i9-9900K.

We have mentioned the lack of an integrated GPU in all Ryzen reviews and received a lot of criticism for just stating that fact. It's still true and not a big deal at all, but Intel offers an iGPU that is sufficient for basic tasks and minimal gaming. Yes, I know that AMD has their APU line of products, but given the modular design of the Ryzen processors, I wonder how expensive it could be to design a very basic GPU die connected via Infinity Fabric to strengthen the Ryzen position in non-gaming market segments, where every dollar counts.

AMD is asking $800 for the Ryzen 9 5950X, which is about $50 higher than what the 3950X launched at, and $300 higher than what AMD's first flagship part in over a decade, the 1800X, launched at. It's also $250 higher than the 5900X. Is this price worth it? Not if you go by price-performance. AMD has achieved complete domination over Intel in all possible domains—productivity performance, gaming performance, efficiency, and thermals. It's also the best pairing for the latest generation of graphics cards, having beaten Intel's fastest. This means the company is in a position to ask whatever it wants. HEDT processors under $1000 are an endangered species, even AMD has given up on this space, with its Threadripper chips only starting at $1300. This means that at $800, AMD is trying to establish a premium price point for mainstream processors that offer HEDT-like performance in many tasks. You're having to fork out the extra $500 for the cheapest Threadripper only if you have seriously memory-intensive apps which scale to the Nth core, or could use the added PCIe I/O of the Threadripper platform. The Ryzen 9 5950X is AMD Athlon 64 FX history repeating itself, and Intel looking just as helpless as it did before the first Core 2 Duo.