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AMD’s 12-core Ryzen 9 9900X desktop processor has been tested on Geekbench, scoring some impressive gains over Intel’s 14th generation processors.

12-Core AMD Ryzen 9 9900X Delivers 16% Single-Core Performance Increase Over 7900X, Crushes Core i9-14900KS in Geekbench Benchmark

The AMD Ryzen 9 9900X “100-000000662” processor is a 12-core and 24-thread variant. This chip has a base clock speed of 4.4 GHz and a boost clock speed of up to 5.6 GHz with 76 MB cache. The interesting thing about this chip is that it has a TDP of 120W much lower than the 170W of the Ryzen 9 7900X chips.

Once again, while the chip retains the same boost clock as the Ryzen 9 7900X, the base clock sees a drop of -300 MHz, which again should fit within the 120W power limit, but again the 12-core should be able to boasted some nice multi-threading capabilities. Following are TDP comparisons between the four chips of this generation versus the previous one:

• Ryzen 9 7950X (170W) -> Ryzen 9 9950X (170W)
• Ryzen 9 7900X (170W) -> Ryzen 9 9900X (120W)
• Ryzen 7 7700X (105W) -> Ryzen 7 9700X (65W)
• Ryzen 5 7600X (105W) -> Ryzen 5 9600X (65W)

As for the performance benchmark, the chip was tested within the Geekbench 6 benchmark on an ASUS ROG Crosshair X670E Gene motherboard with 32 GB of DDR5 memory. The chip ran at a peak frequency above 5.6 GHz (5664 MHz). In terms of performance, the Ryzen 9 9900X scored 3,401 points in the single-core test and 19,756 points in the multi-core test.

This puts the single-core performance of the 12-core AMD Ryzen 9 9900X ahead of the current fastest chip, the Intel Core i9-14900KS, which scores around 3,250 points in the single-core test, and even the multi-core test is pretty phenomenal for this 12-core part, which is almost on par with the Core i9-14900K, which averaged around 20,500 points. Compared to the 12-core Ryzen 9 7900X, the Ryzen 9 9900X delivers a 16% increase in the single-core and an 11% increase in the multi-core test.

We should also remember that the Intel Core i9 processors here were tested at the settings before “Intel Baseline Default”, which further reduce the performance of the chips to ensure better stability. These new profiles can result in performance degradation of up to 15% compared to default settings.

These are some impressive performance figures that, if they turn out to be true, really demonstrate the strong edge in single-core performance that Zen 5 CPUs can offer. Of course, Geekbench is just one synthetic benchmark, so we can’t really base its overall performance on one test, but as mentioned earlier, expect the final numbers to be great for AMD Ryzen 9000 desktop processors. According to AMD themselves, Geekbench is one of the best scenarios for boosting Zen 5’s IPC, seeing up to a 19% increase over Zen 5, as shown in the slide below:

We also took a look at the Cinebench R23 performance numbers a few days ago which showed impressive performance on the same chip, although this was an engineering sample, while this new result looks to be a suitable retail chip.

Once again, AMD Ryzen 9000 “Zen 5” desktop processors, including the Ryzen 9 9900X 12-Core, hit retail shelves later this month on the AM5 platform, so expect some action.

AMD Ryzen 9000 “Granite Ridge” Desktop Processor Specifications:

News source: Benchleaks