The AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review: 16 Cores on 7nm with PCIe 4.0
by Dr. Ian Cutress on November 14, 2019 9:00 AM ESTTest Bed and Setup
As per our processor testing policy, we take a premium category motherboard suitable for the socket, and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the manufacturer's maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC subtimings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend out testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.
| Test Setup | |
| AMD Ryzen 3000 | AMD Ryzen 9 3950X AMD Ryzen 9 3900X |
| Motherboard | ASRock X570 Taichi 2.50 (AGESA 1004B) |
| CPU Cooler | Kraken X62 |
| DRAM | Corsair Vengeance RGB 4x8 GB DDR4-3200 |
| GPU | Sapphire RX 460 2GB (CPU Tests) MSI GTX 1080 Gaming 8G (Gaming Tests) |
| PSU | Corsair AX860i |
| SSD | Crucial MX500 2TB |
| OS | Windows 10 1909 |
We must thank the following companies for kindly providing hardware for our multiple test beds. Some of this hardware is not in this test bed specifically, but is used in other testing.
| Hardware Providers | |||
| Sapphire RX 460 Nitro | MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X OC | Crucial MX200 + MX500 SSDs |
Corsair AX860i + AX1200i PSUs |
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| G.Skill RipjawsV, SniperX, FlareX |
Crucial Ballistix DDR4 |
Silverstone Coolers |
Silverstone Fans |
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529th - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
There is also a Windows power plan called 'Ultimate' What's better for AMD Ryzen CPUs, RHP or the plain old Windows Ultimate power plan?TallestJon96 - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
Stop testing with a GTX 1080. It is almost 4 years old, and there are half a dozen cards that are significantly faster than it now. Anandtech's gaming benchmarks are behind the times and not very useful because of this.Hadenas - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
Please start using either a 2080 or 2080ti for gaming test. Nobody would use a 1080 with the 3950x.Satyyri1972 - Wednesday, November 20, 2019 - link
I amCHADBOGA - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
Always wonderful to see the worst gaming setup for benchmarking, anywhere on the internet.SanX - Friday, November 15, 2019 - link
where is source code for 3D particle movement? In the link above are only exe files and it is unclear what the test is doing. May be it is doing just one single operation in cache over and over again.lenghui - Friday, November 15, 2019 - link
I am guilty of not reading the entire article, and will definitely come back again to read it all. At a glance, I love how AnandTech includes the prices so that I don't have to keep looking it up. However, I am still unable to figure out what RHP vs HP means half way through the charts. I wish there is a simple legend to explain that. I tried looking around and didn't find any references. Again, I am guilty of not reading it all, just saying it would be super convenient when I want to look at the results in a crunch.lenghui - Friday, November 15, 2019 - link
Thanks for the review, Ian. I finally got to the last page and saw what HP and RHP means, but my earlier comment still stand.To me personally, I never ran Ryzen Master since the first two days I built my Ryzen machine because Ryzen Master can only launch when Virtualization Based Security (VBS) is disabled. This is really lame on AMD part. I built this 8 core-16 thread machine to run my VMs, but I can't run Ryzen Master :( Other than that, I love my build.
GreenReaper - Friday, November 15, 2019 - link
This piece is a great endorsement of the 3900X, or the 3700X for desktop tasks. Why pay more?You profit from being willing to accept imperfect cores - and let's not forget a cooler is thrown in.
Testing for the latest issues will be fun; not only do you have before/after microcode patches, you have before/after the program under testing was recompiled to avoid the situation requiring patching.
Sailor23M - Friday, November 15, 2019 - link
3700X missing in the price/perf graph.