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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Jorgp2 - Wednesday, August 14, 2024 - link
Could the high latencies be the hardware bug which caused the delay?Slash3 - Wednesday, August 14, 2024 - link
It's almost certainly a core wake delay from the use of the Balanced power profile.Staying on Balanced allows core parking for power savings and effective CPPC scheduling, but at the expense of constant core sleep/wake cycles. Switching to High Performance should solve the inter-CCD delay (cores do not full sleep, plus the Infinity Fabric does not downclock), but at the expense of disabling the CPPC scheduler. Easy to test.
aron9621 - Sunday, August 18, 2024 - link
With the High performance power profile selected the core to core latency numbers stay the same. Just tested it on my 9950x.Axiomatic - Wednesday, August 14, 2024 - link
I'll keep my 7950x for now. Not liking the PPM driver requirement. I wonder how much better the new linux 6.12 kernel will perform with the 9950x with its new AMD specific cpu scheduler? It certainly doesn't need the PPM driver.GeoffreyA - Wednesday, August 14, 2024 - link
Thanks, Gavin. Great review, and well written: I chuckled quite a few times with the humorous commentary, such as, "Winning comes at a cost," or it takes "every joule in sight."As for the PPM issues, that's poor testing on AMD's part, but I'm sure they'll fix it soon. Reminds me of when Ryzen first came out, and there were deficits in games because of suboptimal scheduling. Otherwise, strong CPUs.
Kamen Rider Blade - Wednesday, August 14, 2024 - link
Process Lasso is your friend, I wouldn't trust Intel or AMD to properly park my Processes.dwillmore - Wednesday, August 14, 2024 - link
It might be nice to see the results of y-cruncher that support Zen-5. You're using the last version *before* support was added. It's also from September of 2023.529th - Wednesday, August 14, 2024 - link
Could be related to what Jay2cents discovered,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wdQpVcL_a4
529th - Wednesday, August 14, 2024 - link
Sorry, the YT vid is about Core Parking fix and GamingIketh - Wednesday, August 14, 2024 - link
Small gripe. You use "here" far too often. It never needs said at all.