The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X and Ryzen 9 9900X Review: Flagship Zen 5 Soars - and Stalls
by Gavin Bonshor on August 14, 2024 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- AMD
- Desktop
- Zen 5
- AM5
- Ryzen 9000
- Ryzen 9 9950X
- Ryzen 9 9900X
CPU Benchmark Performance: AI Performance
As technology progresses at a breakneck pace, so do the demands of modern applications and workloads. As artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) become increasingly intertwined with our daily computational tasks, it's paramount that our reviews evolve in tandem. To this end, we have AI and inferencing benchmarks in our CPU test suite for 2024.
Traditionally, CPU benchmarks have focused on various tasks, from arithmetic calculations to multimedia processing. However, with AI algorithms now driving features within some applications, from voice recognition to real-time data analysis, it's crucial to understand how modern processors handle these specific workloads. This is where our newly incorporated benchmarks come into play.
Given makers such as AMD with Ryzen AI, with multiple iterations including the XDNA 2 NPU within the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, and Intel with their Meteor Lake mobile platform featuring AI-driven hardware, aptly named Intel AI Boost within the silicon, AI, and inferencing benchmarks will be a mainstay in our test suite as we go further into 2024 and beyond. While there's currently no defacto benchmark for AI at the moment, we've compiled a couple of different benchmarks to gauge performance.
It's also worth noting that desktop processors don't really utilize NPUs, so all of the grunt in the below benchmarks is done using the CPU.
In our AI-based benchmarks, which leverage TensorFlow, and even in DeepSpeech, both the Ryzen 9 9950X and Ryzen 9 9900 comfortably beat the competition when using the CPU cores. This puts Zen 5 in a good light, but graphics compute in AI is where the performance is at. Still, comparing Zen 5 to Zen 4 and Intel's Raptor Lake, the Zen 5 chips comfortably beat out the competition here.
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evanh - Friday, August 16, 2024 - link
Ah, right, thanks for the correction. Fingers crossed it has a rectification.jcc5169 - Friday, August 16, 2024 - link
After reading lots of other reviews, Anandtech's reviews are incomplete. This is more of an Intel counter-espionage article than anything else. You will probably need to redo these in about 4 weeks.evanh - Friday, August 16, 2024 - link
Gaming tests, on Windoze at least, have universally been below expectations. Doesn't matter which review site you read.evanh - Friday, August 16, 2024 - link
And it really is a puzzle because single core productivity and IPC testing do show excellent uplift. That should be good news for games but isn't. Why?Oxford Guy - Friday, August 16, 2024 - link
'All of the Ryzen 9000 series processors use the same AM5 socket as the previous Ryzen 7000 (Zen 4) series, which means users can use current X670E and X670 motherboards with the new chips. Unfortunately, as we highlighted in our Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X review, the X870E/X870 motherboards, which were meant to launch alongside the Ryzen 9000 series, won't be available until sometime in September.'How unfortunate is this in the big picture? Intel likes to arbitrarily obsolete the current motherboards when it releases a chip series.
ballsystemlord - Saturday, August 17, 2024 - link
@Gavin , The image for 1080p AV1 encoding, here: https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph21524/136...Is partially cut off. You might want to fix that.
icf80 - Saturday, August 17, 2024 - link
Is core parking affecting the inter-CCD latencies?icf80 - Sunday, August 18, 2024 - link
Does the latencies between CCDs depend on the speed of infinity fabric or DRAM settings? It would be interesting to test this. Is it possible to adjunt de IF speed?Bruzzone - Monday, August 19, 2024 - link
Don't believe everything that some PC media, stuck in their benchmarking segment caught up in their application box, then acting as a catalyst for others to shoot from the hip mimicking repeaters engaged in a false narrative promoting a herd effect reporting on Granite Ridge adoption "stalling' in sales channelsAMD relying on buyers for R9K validation ahead of Arrow there is so much back generation to sell; R7K, R5K, Raptors, Alder before Granite Ridge and Arrow producer (q4 OEM) ramp. PC market continues in a deflationary downward price spiral into q1 2025 probably all the way into summer 2025; CPU, dGPU, cases, boards you name it all has to liquidate to finance channel procurements into 2025.
R9K between Thursday and Saturday cleared down < 66% and it appears box processor got a restock on Saturday 17th. There are a lot more SI PC offered then boxed R9K CPU and those SI PC' are clearing their current run end full kit from the channel.
R9K price is held up by the channel to clear back generations R7K/R5K, Raptors, Alders and laptops wow there are a lot of laptops to clear and there are R9K CPU price premiums to margin cost offset the clearance sales. Today WW channel 9950X ask $689 to $1050, 9900X ask $499 to $782, 9700X ask $359 to $591, 9600X ask $279 to $484 so shop around if you can on geographic location.
Here is what AMD sells R9K for to volume customers which is the retail cost; 9950X = $486, 9900X = $375. 9700x = $270, 9600X = $210 so in relation AMD MSRP that is a + 33% margin across the board if there are no price premiums albeit there can be even for end user buyer beta evaluators (knowing and unknowing, voluntary and involuntary) until all the older products sells off.
Remember the AMD and Intel basic price to volume retail seller rule SO you know what the volume seller paid and in a kit purchase know you get what u negotiate. AMD CPU rule is MSRP / 3 * 1.5 is volume seller cost. For Intel its $1K AWP / 2.
I am monitoring the situation to validate R9K desktop sales out the gate were other than fleeting on initial interest.
One thing is certain through, current and back one generation AMD and Intel desktop processors and laptops are being discounted and the pricing only gets better between now and year end because the channel must liquidate current inventories to financial next generation procurements.
mb
ballsystemlord - Monday, August 19, 2024 - link
My question is, why $650 for the new R9950X? That's not competitive at all IMHO.