AMD Ryzen 9 5950X: What Real Users Say on Reddit

If you can't load up all those cores, then there's really no point. If you do load up all those cores and you get paid for doing work on your computer, then it's absolutely worth it. The most intense thing I do is play video games, so I don't consider anything beyond the 5800X3D. My friend is a professional 3D artist, so the 5950X was the right choice.

It is if you actually need it. Since you're asking you probably don't.

$350!!!! That is a really good deal. I got mine for $800

The entire 5000 line is dominating. It's pretty remarkable.

About the only issue is that it is still stuck with 2-channel DDR4 memory that even at high speeds cannot feed 16-cores / 32-threads in streaming algorithms despite the absolutely massive 64MB L3 cache.

It's disgusting. 5950X with AVX2 against Intel's Skylake-X with AVX512 and it still wrecks it because it's just so damn fast. The perf/w difference between Zen 3 and Intel HEDT or Xeon is hilarious.

A solid 100 points higher than the 10900k in single-core Cinebench test. That is just incredible!

I went with the 5950x mainly for virtual machines, which absolutely love all the cores you can give them. For gaming, my other main heavy workload, it's excessive, though if you want to stream with an AMD GPU the extra cores will also be very helpful for software encoding.

For a perfectly objective value you would need to assign a minimum extra value for the 5950X as 33% higher than the value of a 5900X. You work up from there for the slightly higher quality of the dies and the performance that comes with that.

Unless you need the extra cores for doing work (ie 16 that the 5950x has), go with a 5600/x/5700x/5800x/xt - as in gaming their performance is much the same, and all represent a decent bump in performance compared to your 3600.

I got the 5950x because the 5900x wasn't in stock. Is it worth it? Hell yea. Will I use it... no

Memory bandwidth seems to hurt 5950X more than 5800X. Still great product.

This chip/deal is more for people who already have an AM4 system/motherboard and this is the best upgrade you could get for the AM4 if you want to process workstation stuff. If building a new system, it's better to get an AM5 motherboard for the new chips and have an upgrade option for future AM5 processors.

Great cpu 🙂‍↕️ great thermals to performance

It's a fine CPU and it's efficiency is still pretty class leading. By no means a slow CPU just not as fast as newer CPU's. I bought mine for the same price as my 5600x on launch. I'm happy to wait out until AM6 comes along before replacing it. Paired with a 5070ti and 32gb of RAM, it games, it does AI, it does Adobe all at the same time, and it runs super cool and quiet on a AIO.

Turn on eco mode, you'll still get great performance tbh

5950X is aimed at productivity use - for gaming, it's a terrible value at current prices since it offers no real benefit over a solid 8-core CPU like the 5700X.

The appeal for me was the binned silicon. My 5950x with pbo2 uses less power than either of my 2 5900x specimens with pbo2 enabled. The core voltages are so much lower that it actually runs cooler. Apparently this is the rule and not the exception, from what I've heard from others anecdotally.

The Ryzen 5950 is a very powerful processor, especially if it's geared towards productivity. But most kids think it's all about gaming. Go ahead and buy it; it's a real all-rounder. The day you need to work on your PC, you'll know it was a good idea to build something that can handle everything. It's AMD's top-of-the-line processor for a reason.

This makes one helluva HyperV server for the home if you're that type of person. Gaming is not really its thing.

Turn off precision boost overdrive if it's on, it could improve your temps quite a bit, with only a small performance loss (negligible in gaming from my experience). Or get an arctic liquid freezer AIO, that thing cools my 5950x so well.

Yeah, it's a solid CPU and will be a pretty big upgrade over a 3500X for video editing.

I use computers for a long time and I use a lot of threads, so $200 over the life of the machine doesn't seem like much to me. Totally worth it. If you use it only for gaming and web browsing, then it's definitely not worth it.

Temps are really spikey and can skyrocket if you're using a couple cores heavily and suddenly a new core starts working. I've got mine so it never goes above 80 anymore even under full load, but I have a 280mm aio and I replaced all of my fans with Noctuas. I think a 240 would struggle a bit.

considering RAM prices.. possibly best AM4 workhorse money can buy

I'm still running my 5950x, (paired with a 4080RTX and 64GB Ram) and I honestly have no reason to upgrade, it runs any game I throw at it at high/ultra settings and I also use it work wise where I occasionally host VMs to create test environments, which it is also great at with all those cores. I would be surprised if It doesn't last me another 2-4 years easily.

I upgraded from the 2700X to the 5900X and eventually to the 5950X. 2700X to the 5900X was a huge jump, the 5900X to the 5950X was very small except when lots of cores are being used. The nice part is I can run absolutely everything all at the same time and never have to worry about a performance hit.

Yeah, but it's a solid CPU if you can get it cheap, I paid £200 for one a couple of years back, it was notably faster than my 5800x (I sold that for £140 too)

This CPU is for people who want both a top of the line gaming CPU and a very capable productivity CPU. If you're just gaming then the 5800X or 5900X will likely give you very similar performance.

5950x gets crapped on by the x3d cpus in gaming

It´s a great CPU for next few years. My setup 5950x with RTX 4090 at 4k. Waiting for AM6 or AM7.

If it were me, the first thing I'd look at is your actual use case. Gaming: Ideally, the 5800X3D is still the better option if you can find one at a good price. Mixed use / productivity: The 5950X is extremely powerful. I have one myself, and I mostly use it for everything except gaming.

I upgraded to this CPU from a R5 3600X recently. I don't use my PC for gaming, but for software development and music production. I'm very happy with this CPU. It allows me to use low-latency settings on my audio interface that weren't possible with the R5 3600X.

Upgraded from a 3700x to my 5950x, I don't think I'll upgrade anytime soon, mainly due to needs and cost. I'd rather max spec on previous generations.

Due to ram prices, I have changed my 5600X out for a 5950X (250$ for a brand new). I do virtualization and play around with LLM and much more. So the VM gives me more to play with. 5950X under stress test for 5 minutes, it only goes up to 58c with a X63 kraken. Very satisfied!

Im running a 5950x with a rx9700xt and 64gb of ram on a msi x570 godlike motherboard and it is absolutely phenomenal.

I'm running a 5950x, x570, 32gb DDR4, and a 3080. I can run most of my games at my required specs - 4k/120, the few that don't run at 1080p/120. I only plan on a GPU upgrade in the next 3 to 5 years.

5800x3d if you're doing games, my 5950x is waste of silicon lol

Waste of money if you're a gamer.

This review convinced me that there is absolutely no need to upgrade from Zen2.

I built an AM4 based machine with a 5800x some years ago for CAD based work. Very solid platform, however considering getting into 3D scanning work so was tossing up between upgrading to a 5950x with 64gb or moving to AM5. Think I'll go with the 5950x after reading through the comments.

Consider the 5900XT. Same core count, 100mhz lower clock. Better value.

I have a 5950x in my gaming pc and after a shit ton of tuning ive managed to get it to perform incredibly well for gaming around or slightly better than a 5800x3d. Disabled smt and halved my threads for better performance since i dont need 32 threads for gaming, 4 x 8gb of samsung b die ram at 3600mhz and super tight timings, per core CO with the extra 200mhz boost in pbo as well.

Depends on use case. Gaming - it's pretty outdated (low per-core performance compared to newer generations). For productivity, it's still great, as long as you can use all those sweet cores. CB23 5950X vs 9950X multicore: 25000 vs 41000.

Best all-rounder consumer-grade CPU on the market.

It can be a great buy at the right price. The 5700x3D is better for gaming, but there is no better CPU on AM4 for video editing. I use one in my hypervisor running in eco mode, personally.

The 5950X is hard to beat. It's very close to AM5's 12-core CPUs in non-gaming tasks. Against your 3500X, it's a fairly huge bump in every possible metric. Something like 30-40% faster single core, and something like 2.5x faster all-core.

I'm running a 9060xt 16gb with this and 32gb of ram and I'm loving it. I can play and stream battlefield 6 on ultra in 1080p with no visible drops or tears even when there's a bunch going on.

I have this CPU and love it! Upgraded from a 3600 to the 5950x 3 months ago. Almost tripled my FPS with my old 2080super.