AMD has announced what the company is calling the “world’s most powerful desktop consumer processor”. This CPU marks the first of AMD’s Zen 5 desktop processors and comes in the form of the Ryzen 9 9950X.
The CPU is based on AMD’s AMD5 platform. The lineup includes the Ryzen 9 9950X, Ryzen 9 9900X, Ryzen 7 9700 X and Ryzen 5 9600X. The flagship Ryzen 9 9950X is a 16-core, 32-thread CPU with 80MB of L2 and L3 cache and a 5.7GHz boost clock.
AMD says the Ryzen 9 9950X promises around a 16% instruction per cycle (IPC) uplift in performance over the previous generation Ryzen CPU. The company promises major gains in productivity and gaming.
The Ryzen 9 9950X bodes “really well against the competition” says AMD. It has shown a 56% improvement in Blender against Intel’s Core i9-14900K. In addition, it has a 21% improved performance in Cinebench R24 against the same Intel CPU.
In terms of gaming, the Ryzen 9 9950X shows a 5% frame rate improvement over the 14900K in Borderlands 3 and a 23% improvement in Horizon Zero Dawn.
The big focus for the Ryzen 9 9950X is its AM5 socket support. AMD hasn’t changed the die so you can use the CPU on all existing AM5 boards. This means the CPU also includes PCIe Gen 5 and DDR 5 support. The improvements to the CPU make this a “substantial update” according to AMD.
AMD Says:
“Sometimes there are updates of Zen that are not as fundamental, but Zen 5 is a sweeping update with vastly improved branch prediction for both accuracy and latency. It’s a really impressive difference, and this delivers up to twice the instruction bandwidth, up to twice the data bandwidth, and up to twice the AI performance of the last gen.”
The company has also promised to extend its AM5 support from 2025 to 2027. AMD originally planned to release a next-gen socket, likely AM6, in 2025 which would see new CPUs require new motherboards. However, the company now says users can see new CPUs beyond 2027 support AM5. Keep in mind that AM5 was released back in 2016.
Intel, on the other hand, has released its fourth new socket type since 2015. This year’s LGA 1851 will replace 2021’s LGA 1700.
AMD plans on releasing the new Ryzen 9000 series CPUs in July. There is currently no pricing available at all for the lineup. The Ryzen 9000 will launch alongside the 5900Xt and 5800XT.
