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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
123 Comments
View All Comments
TheinsanegamerN - Monday, August 19, 2024 - link
That's a red herring. Both are being sold on a feature that isnt used yet.Oxford Guy - Thursday, August 22, 2024 - link
Given how poor the competition is from Intel, the red herring is expecting Zen 5 to be a big improvement in anything other than AVX-512.If Intel were in a highly competitive position it would be different.
Heavensrevenge - Thursday, August 15, 2024 - link
The biggest problem is using Microsoft Windows for the benchmark platform, Linux benchmarks show the true numbers AMD can give, it's just that the Windows kernel isn't using the hardware to it's potential but Linux can.ondma - Thursday, August 15, 2024 - link
Huh?? The "true" numbers you get are the numbers you get with the operating system you are using.TheinsanegamerN - Monday, August 19, 2024 - link
Huh?? The "true" numbers for hardware are what the hardware provides, if your OS is screwing up those numbers, that error should be corrected.James5mith - Thursday, August 15, 2024 - link
Seems like the interim answer while you wait for a fix from AMD is simply to re-run the tests without the PPM driver.Dante Verizon - Thursday, August 15, 2024 - link
Does Zen 5 use mesh instead of ring bus? If so, that's the explanation for the horrible latency.evanh - Friday, August 16, 2024 - link
How come the latency is so bad is something that needs investigating. The poor latency to DRAM could explain why games are hit hard. They tend to need large amounts of main memory and rapidly bounce around it. Which will also be why the X3D parts excel in that environment.evanh - Friday, August 16, 2024 - link
PS: It was noted by TechPowerUp that disabling SMT has a positive effect on most tests, not just games. Which should be the other way around.Ryan Smith - Friday, August 16, 2024 - link
The latency to DRAM is fine (~94ns for a 128MB access). The oddity we're looking into right now is the die-to-die latency. It's taking around 200ns for one CCD to reach the other.