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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coburn_c - Wednesday, August 14, 2024 - link
The clocks make this a hard pass with X3D coming.boozed - Thursday, August 15, 2024 - link
Very interesting. I think I probably already know the answer but was comment on the issues you found sought from AMD prior to publication, and if so was there a response?Looks like I too will be waiting for the next single-CCD X3D.
trivik12 - Thursday, August 15, 2024 - link
Only huge boost is with AVX-512 loads which is useless for real life applications on client side. Otherwise Zen 5 has been the most meh upgrade from AMD in a while. its not shocking as there is only so much one can do to boost IPC and performance.Let us wait for Turin review and comp with Granite Rapids. That should be more interesting.
On client side Apple M series is the boss. Their IPC is so much better and higher performance despite lower clockspeeds. I hope X Elite 2 on N3P can produce something competitive. I am pessimistic on x86 chips coming close to Apple.
Oxford Guy - Saturday, August 17, 2024 - link
'Only huge boost is with AVX-512 loads which is useless for real life applications on client side.'Not really, although it doesn't help that Intel wasn't consistent with the deployment of that feature.
ondma - Thursday, August 15, 2024 - link
Wow, the AMD apologists are out in full force. Reminds me of the Bulldozer days: "It's a great chip, just wait till the software catches up." Remember, though, these are consumer chips, not enterprise/server, so for the market it will be sold to, there is basically no improvement over the previous generation. Very disappointing release from AMD, and I don't expect much improvement performance wise for Arrow Lake either, except hopefully they solved the stability issues and lower power consumption. Even worse, it looks like another 2 years before a new desktop lineup from either manufacturer (Zen 6 or Nova Lake). So there is a good chance by 2026/27 we could have gone 4 years without significant performance increases for consumer desktop. Yikes!!evanh - Friday, August 16, 2024 - link
The IPC gains are really there if you filter out the overreactions of the reviewers themselves. The real question is how come that isn't translating to gains across the board like it normally would. Games in particular normally love a boost to IPC. There's a mystery to be solved here.Oxford Guy - Friday, August 16, 2024 - link
'Reminds me of the Bulldozer days'Ridiculous hyperbole. These CPUs are highly competitive, unlike Bulldozer.
GeoffreyA - Sunday, August 18, 2024 - link
There's a narrative going on that Zen 5 is a failure.Oxford Guy - Thursday, August 22, 2024 - link
It's not a failure. It may not be terribly impressive but it's not a failure. Bulldozer was a failure.GeoffreyA - Friday, August 23, 2024 - link
Yes. Once the scheduler issues are fixed, or those relating to the admin account, whatever they are causing, branch prediction or otherwise, Zen 5 will be shown in a truer light. It is an excellent series bogged down by problems on the OS side.