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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bigboxes - Friday, November 15, 2019 - link
derpAlexvrb - Friday, November 15, 2019 - link
As the review points out, it's also hard to measure burst frequency. The harder you try, the more you skew the result, too. The CPU could very well be hitting 4.7 briefly in variable workloads on the hot core... although maybe other samples hit it more often or for slightly longer periods of time.III-V - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
For real. It's the performance that matters, not some number with zero real world meaning.Marlin1975 - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
Wow thats a lot of CPU for not much when you compare it against the competition and how much others cost.I am surprised the dual channel memory does not hold it back more.
Foeketijn - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
That's exactly what I was thinking. An incredable feat to score about double compaired with a 3700x, with twice the cores, twice the power envelope but the same memory bandwidth. What are those embedded Epyc chips (3000 series) doing with quad channel DDR4?brantron - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
Zen 1 and Broadwell have higher memory bandwidth than Skylake-X at low thread counts.Broadwell D is still updated almost annually High memory bandwidth at low power is apparently somebody's thing.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/11544/intel-skylake...
Silma - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
Based on you geomean chart, it looks like on 7nm, Intel chips would destroy AMD's, and there's a real possibility Intel's 10 nm chips will be competitive in price & superior in performance if Intel prices them to compete.Silma - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
Anyway, congrats to AMD and thanks for heating the competition again.naxeem - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
Intel can't really do much. They have nothing in the pipeline.Teckk - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
Destroy is probably too strong? AMD will be on TSMCs 5 nm plus their new designs so they'll mostly be on par or in the same situation as today.