The AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review: 16 Cores on 7nm with PCIe 4.0
by Dr. Ian Cutress on November 14, 2019 9:00 AM ESTTest Bed and Setup
As per our processor testing policy, we take a premium category motherboard suitable for the socket, and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the manufacturer's maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC subtimings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend out testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.
| Test Setup | |
| AMD Ryzen 3000 | AMD Ryzen 9 3950X AMD Ryzen 9 3900X |
| Motherboard | ASRock X570 Taichi 2.50 (AGESA 1004B) |
| CPU Cooler | Kraken X62 |
| DRAM | Corsair Vengeance RGB 4x8 GB DDR4-3200 |
| GPU | Sapphire RX 460 2GB (CPU Tests) MSI GTX 1080 Gaming 8G (Gaming Tests) |
| PSU | Corsair AX860i |
| SSD | Crucial MX500 2TB |
| OS | Windows 10 1909 |
We must thank the following companies for kindly providing hardware for our multiple test beds. Some of this hardware is not in this test bed specifically, but is used in other testing.
| Hardware Providers | |||
| Sapphire RX 460 Nitro | MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X OC | Crucial MX200 + MX500 SSDs |
Corsair AX860i + AX1200i PSUs |
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| G.Skill RipjawsV, SniperX, FlareX |
Crucial Ballistix DDR4 |
Silverstone Coolers |
Silverstone Fans |
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tmanini - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
depends on your development needs: in the article is states dual-channel memory. Not 4 or 6 channel.Spunjji - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
I have a question about the power numbers - do they look significantly different with only one thread loaded per core?ksec - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
If we look at the benchmark running on Open Source program, it is clear AMD tends to have a much higher chance of performance being on par or beating Intel. I wonder how much optimisation from compiler to other library giving advantage to Intel and not to AMD.Maxiking - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
Pretty sad cpu, bottlenecking ancient 1080gtx at 1080p. Just lolQasar - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
come on maxiking, the 9xxx cpu's are that bad.. after all they need the extra frequency just to keep what little performance advantage they, at times, barely still have.stux - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
Great review, but where are the compilation benchmarks?Ian Cutress - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
I was having issues getting the benchmark to work on Win 10 1909, and didn't have time to debug and retest. I'm hoping to fix it for the next benchmark suite update.stux - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
Thanks Ian, looking forward to the update.kc77 - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
I don't see the TDP comparisons with the Intel rig. Are they there? I see AMD TDP mentioned but not the Intel parts.willis936 - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
I moved to the midwest recently and I have to wonder: Who is christ and why does everyone care what CPU he has?