AMD’s Ryzen 9 9950X processor was tested at 5.5GHz overclocked on all cores and again, using an unlimited power profile, pushing 320W of power.
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X overclocked to 5.5 GHz across all 16 cores at 253 W, also tested with unlimited PPT settings with 320 W power consumption
The latest AMD Ryzen 9 9950X CPU benchmarks have been dropped by Anandtech forum member Igor_kavinski, who shows us how the 16-core flagship scales at various TDP limits within the Blender benchmark. So far it has shown 60W, 90W, 120W, 160W, 230W PPT results, and now we have two new entries, one with 5.5GHz overclock at 253W and one with unlimited PPT.
The chip used by Igor’s source is an engineering sample that should have slightly lower clocks than the retail chip. At 60W, the chip was able to come close to the Intel Core i9-12900K while clocking up to 4084 MHz, and at 90W, it was able to outperform the Ryzen 9 5950X while clocking up to 5053 MHz. At 120W, the chip beats all of Intel’s and AMD’s best current-gen processors while clocking up to 5555MHz, and the same is the case with the 230W result, which kicks things up a notch with a frequency now reaching over 5.6GHz .
With unlimited PPT mode, the maximum frequency did not see any change, but the clock speeds of all cores were higher, exceeding 5.5 GHz, which in the case of the 230W PPT was around 5.4 GHz. There’s also a 5.5GHz static overclock, which was achieved at a PPT of 253W to match Intel’s maximum power limit for its Core i9 processors. Note that the other chips tested here are operating at their maximum power. Only the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X ES processor is tuned. To sum it all up:
- Ryzen 9 9950X (Unlimited PPT) – 5621 MHz peak frequency / 80C temp
- Ryzen 9 9950X (253W PPT / 5.5 GHz OC) – 5500 MHz peak frequency / 61C temp
- Ryzen 9 9950X (230W PPT) – 5620 MHz peak frequency / 62C temp
- Ryzen 9 9900X (160W PPT) – 5555 MHz peak frequency / 58C temp
- Ryzen 9 9950X (120W PPT) – 5220 MHz peak frequency / 55C temp
- Ryzen 9 9950X (90W PPT) – 5050 MHz peak frequency / 49C temp
- Ryzen 9 9950X (60W PPT) – 4084 MHz peak frequency / 41C temp
It should be noted that these results were achieved using a water cooling system. AMD has officially recommended AIOs with its Ryzen 9 9000 processors as the 9950X and 9900X, and we mentioned earlier that the Ryzen 9000 chips should run slightly cooler than the Ryzen 7000 “Zen 4” processors. The cooling looks custom and very powerful as keeping the chip under 90C at 320W TDP is quite an impressive feat in itself.
With unlimited PPT, the CPU reached a maximum temperature of 80C while achieving 5621 MHz peak frequency and an average frequency of 5378 MHz. With the static 253W PPT overclock, the CPU reached peak temperatures of 61C while averaging 5.5 GHz across all cores.
As you might expect, the 253W PPT and 5.5GHz overclock was just as fast as the unlimited PPT configuration, as all cores ran stable at a higher frequency and had plenty of thermal headroom to work with, while the unlimited PPT not only consumed more power, but it was also much hotter.
As such, the CPU’s ultimate performance saw up to a 40% improvement over the Core i9-14900K and a 38% improvement over the Ryzen 9 7950X in their standard configurations. Power scaling performance above 230W is minimal and you’re better off sticking with the 230W PPT if you’re aiming for top performance or if you want that extra 5% then going to 5.5GHz all-core overclock should be good enough instead of choosing unlimited PPT.
AMD has led the performance race with its strong Zen portfolio in past editions, and that looks set to hold true for the next-gen lineup as well. We’re fast approaching the launch of the AMD Ryzen 9000 “Zen 5” desktop processors, which are expected to hit retail later this month, and we can expect a lot more testing and reviews in the coming weeks.
