AMD Ryzen 9 7950X: What Real Users Actually Think

9950X on TSMC N4 trading blows with the 13900k on old ass Intel 7. This bodes well for Arrow Lake on N3/20A.

9000 series is really looking to be a joke huh? This is early 2010's Intel levels of stagnation good lord.

Just buy 7800X3D if you're just gaming.

So for the price of a 4090 you can get a 7950x and 7900xtx. Actually, it's a few dollars cheaper. Sorry nVidia, this is my stop.

These issues are exclusive with Windows. Linux does not have any of the scheduling issues on the 7900/7950/9900/9950 that Windows has.

This seems like a chip that's designed for data center applications and the consumer/gamer market is definitely an afterthought. The Anandtech review showed some encoding workloads were far below the 7950x and some were quite higher.

Got it, so just get a normal noctua cooler, turn on eco mode at 105w then just smile and relax at the blistering performance and normal temps

I was able to price match this 7950x price at microcenter with free 32gb DDR5-6000 RAM. That swayed me into purchasing it over Intel.

'Only the fastest desktop CPU ever made...' But yeah, I wish the performance uplift was bigger too, but as they say: it's not a bad product if the price is right.

Windows is so incredibly trash at being an OS. AMD has to be aware that's what the vast majority of people buying this chip will be on and figure it out accordingly.

The AIO achieved higher clock speeds than the Noctua at 100% fan speed, not massively at all. At 32 threads in cpu rendering the Noctua at 20% fan was at 4.7Ghz while the AIO still maintained 5.24Ghz, the Noctua ran a little lower at 5.171Ghz.

From my brief read through of the article, it seems that AIO's are pretty pointless for this generation of AMD CPUs. Just get yourself a good Air Cooler like a NH-D15 and limit the fan speed to 50% and have a near silent rig on CPU heavy loads and still reach ~98% performance of a really good AIO.

Glad I got a used 7950X for like 320 euros two weeks ago. Much better value for money at the moment.

It's true, running 4 sticks of DDR5 at high speed is not a good idea at this time, it's still new tech, cutting edge as it were, requires a lot of finagling to get it working and only dedicated overclockers can do it manually through a very long, tedious process of finding the right combination of settings.

Kinda regret my 5950x at 499 until I remember I can run DDR4 without having to sell my house to afford the amount of RAM I need for my VMwares.

You don't need a 16-core CPU. Even the 12 cores on the 7900X are more than you need for gaming and streaming. There's not much gain going higher than an 8-core 7700X.

Best Part of the article: 'The biggest problem is probably psychological. For years we have been trained that 95°C is bad. This is no longer true. 95°C is the new 65°C.'

The 7950X is silly for a gamer/streamer. The 7900X is similarly silly. Especially if you're going to be using an RTX 4000-series GPU as the improved NVENC will be faster at stream encoding than any general purpose core will ever be. Games just don't really use >8 cores.

Having the option to upgrade to the latest and greatest 6 years later is awesome and a huge factor in peoples platform buying decisions. Why do you think AM4 Zen 3 is selling so extremely well, even with all the latest CPUs? It's not just because the platform is incredibly inexpensive, though that's a big part of it, but people have older CPUs and want to upgrade to Zen 3 at this point.

If you don't like e cores, still need multithreading performance, and want a platform that's upgradeable then this is it.

Not sure where you're looking, 7950X is widely available.

2 sticks per channel may not work at the XMP clock/timings. This can happen on Intel as well. The catch with XMP/EXPO is that it's actually not a guaranteed specification.

I did some testing of a 360mm AIO vs an NH-D15 on a 7950X. Perf was very similar with perhaps a small edge for the D15.

Honestly for gaming and streaming 7700x is all you need. The 7900x and especially the 7950x are meant for workstation builds.

I got a 7950x3d for like 400 nearly 6 months ago. It's been excellent.

Idle will not be 95c, and unless you are running benchmarks 24/7 you will not see 95c that often. You can also enable eco mode, undervolt, use the curve optimizer, all of which will allow you to reduce power giving you less heat output.

Yes it's overkill. You'll see maybe a 1 fps difference, if any at all. There are a few CPU heavy games that might benefit from the higher thread count but in general it's not needed at least at this point. Maybe in 5-10 years, but you'll most likely have upgraded by then.

For gaming the AMD and Intel offerings trade blows pretty evenly, the problem for AMD was the price of the chips and the rest of the platform. The 7950x is the exception where it does still do about 10% better in most productivity workloads and is within 1-3% in gaming. Now it is cheaper, it is a much better proposition.

With the release of the 9950X so close at this point, I think the time to buy in on Zen 4 is over unless you find a really good deal; especially if you're only jumping one generation. Zen 3 to 4 wasn't a bad jump by any means but I don't think it warrants upgrading from one flagship to the next, and on an entirely new platform to boot.

Better cooler results in better clockspeed but temps is nearly the same nearing TJMax. Doesn't throttle like intel 12th Gen.

I'm using a custom loop which I purchased from Micro Center 8-9 years ago. I had this kit on a 2600k, then an 8700k. Now it's on a 7950x. The EK quantum Velocity 2 block for AM5 does not hit the thermal limits under Cinebench R23.

AMD CPU's are definitely capable of running 128gb (i have personal experience), but you'll need to get higher rated kits so you can run them at acceptable speeds. When getting 4 sticks of DDR5, they should aim for a kit roughly 1000mhz higher than they intend to run it at.

Recent AMD CPU memory controllers can't handle more than two fast sticks of RAM. It shouldn't have been an option from a knowledgeable (and honest) seller in the first place for that CPU.

So cheaper 7000 it's better buy, if the extra ~30% avx512 performance won't be needed.

7950X Gaming: Good. While it may not outperform chips like the 7800X3D in gaming, it provides excellent performance for high-end gaming setups. Multitasking: Excellent. With 16 cores and 32 threads, it's a powerhouse for multitasking and productivity tasks such as video editing, rendering, and simulations.

In multithreaded tasks 7950x will be better than 13900k. In gaming the 13900k would be better than 7950x but worse than 7800x3d and 7950x3d. So if you only have two choices, 13900k on paper is better in gaming. But you want reliability and probably want an easy upgrade path, so you can't pick 13900k. So 7950x — but preferably some other x3d chip.

Sounds like you just got a poorly binned CPU. If it only occasionally crashes with PBO and CO settings, the current settings may be unstable so you can try backing off the CO and see if that helps with stability.

It is not possible to get those temperatures with this CPU, I have the 7950X and it reaches 95C on R23.

I game and stream on an 8 core. First the 3800x and now the 5800X3D. The 16 core is just overkill for basically everyone, same as Intel's obsession with efficiency cores on their I9.

If you're a gamer, the X3D continues to be a no-brainer. For everyone else there's a choice between Zen4/5 depending on your workload.

I think I heard the 7950X is popular for crypto mining, so that might be taking some of the inventory you would normally see.