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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Oxford Guy - Friday, August 16, 2024 - link
Intel sells CPUs with small cores and large cores. That's a kludge, too. Get used to these kludges because they're the new reality.Makaveli - Wednesday, August 14, 2024 - link
If you are on Zen 4 you can skip this your next upgrade is Zen 6 and a new motherboard.For those of us on Zen 3 or lower Zen 5 is a good move.
ondma - Thursday, August 15, 2024 - link
Even if upgrading from Zen 3 or older, right now it is hard to recommend Zen 5 over Zen 4, at least until the price comes down on Zen 5. Zen 5 offers negligible performance gains at a higher price. I suppose you could argue Zen 5 is more "future proof" if AVX 512 suddenly becomes mainstream, but it has been around a long time and is still a niche instruction set.GeoffreyA - Thursday, August 15, 2024 - link
AVX-512 is used in different video encoders and decoders: x265, SVT-AV1, and dav1d at the least, possibly x264 and FFmpeg, and I am sure elsewhere too. So it is available in quite common software used today.Oxford Guy - Friday, August 16, 2024 - link
Didn't this site have at least one custom benchmark designed specifically to showcase AVX-512 performance in CPU reviews?I don't know if there were more than one. I do recall, though, that the AVX-512 performance of Intel CPUs at the time was considered important enough to showcase, and not merely in an article specific to AVX-512 performance.
GeoffreyA - Saturday, August 17, 2024 - link
I think the 3DPMv2 benchmark. All it did was show how much faster Intel was than the competition. It took a lot of criticism and was called unrealistic.TheinsanegamerN - Monday, August 19, 2024 - link
And how many people are encoding video even on a monthly basis?For decode, well, I can decode 4k video just fine on my zen 3 rig, so its not necessary. AVX512 is a nice to have, not a necessity.
GeoffreyA - Monday, August 19, 2024 - link
Certainly. AVX2 tends to be the baseline nowadays. I'm just pointing out that AVX-512 *is* used in common software.GeoffreyA - Monday, August 19, 2024 - link
The weakness in AMD's strategy is that this is becoming like 3DNow! All Intel has to do is cut out AVX-512, and it will, possibly, die off. Programmers won't want to write code not used on both sides.Oxford Guy - Thursday, August 22, 2024 - link
Intel has been like Lucy with the football with AVX-512 and I think the buck is stopping.AMD has become a force to reckon with, especially given how weak Intel is, in terms of competing. I don't think Intel has the luxury to play Lucy with AVX-512 now.