AMD’s Ryzen 9 9950X CPU was tested at an all-core overclock of 5.5GHz, plus 320W of power using the unlimited power profile.
The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X was overclocked to 5.5GHz at 253W across all 16 cores and was also tested at unlimited PPT settings with a power draw of 320W.
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X CPU Test Final Bomb Dropped Igor_kavinski, Anandtech forum member He has shown how the 16-core flagship scales at various TDP limits within the Blender benchmark. 60W,90W,120W,160W, 230W The PPT resulted in two new entries, one with a 5.5GHz overclock at 253W and one with an unlimited PPT.
The chips used by Igor’s sources are engineering samples and should have slightly lower clocks than the commercially available chips. At 60W, the chip can boost up to 4084MHz, approaching the Intel Core i9-12900K, and at 90W it could boost up to 5053MHz, outperforming the Ryzen 9 5950X. At 120W, the chip can boost up to 5555MHz, outperforming all of Intel and AMD’s current top-gen processors, and the same is true for the 230W results, with frequencies now exceeding 5.6GHz.
In Unlimited PPT mode, we saw no change in maximum frequency, but all core clock speeds were above 5.5 GHz, and around 5.4 GHz with 230W PPT. There is also a static overclock of 5.5 GHz achieved with 253W PPT, which matches the maximum power limit of Intel’s Core i9 CPUs. Keep in mind that the other chips tested here are running at their peak power ratings; only the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X ES CPU is throttled. Putting it all together, we see the following:
- Ryzen 9 9950X (Unlimited PPT) – 5621 MHz peak clock / 80C temperature
- Ryzen 9 9950X (253W PPT / 5.5GHz OC) – 5500 MHz peak clock / 61C temperature
- Ryzen 9 9950X (230W PPT) – 5620 MHz peak clock / 62C temperature
- Ryzen 9 9900X (160W PPT) – 5555 MHz peak clock / 58C temperature
- Ryzen 9 9950X (120W PPT) – 5220 MHz peak clock / 55C temperature
- Ryzen 9 9950X (90W PPT) – 5050 MHz peak clock / 49C temperature
- Ryzen 9 9950X (60W PPT) – 4084 MHz peak clock / 41℃ temperature
It should be mentioned that these results were achieved using a water-cooling setup. AMD officially recommends AIO with their Ryzen 9 9000 CPUs such as the 9950X and 9900X. I mentioned earlier that the Ryzen 9000 chips should run a bit cooler. That’s better than the Ryzen 7000 ‘Zen 4’ CPUs. The cooling appears to be custom and very powerful – keeping the chip below 90°C at a 320W TDP is a very impressive feat in itself.
With unlimited PPT, the CPU reached a maximum temperature of 80°C and achieved a peak frequency of 5621MHz and an average frequency of 5378MHz. With static 253W PPT overclock, the CPU reached a peak temperature of 61°C and achieved an average of 5.5GHz across all cores.
As expected, the 253W PPT and 5.5 GHz overclock was just as fast as the Unlimited PPT configuration, since all cores were running reliably at the higher frequency and had plenty of thermal headroom. Meanwhile, the Unlimited PPT not only consumed more power, but also ran much hotter.
So the final performance of the CPU is ~40% better than the Core i9-14900K and ~38% better than the Ryzen 9 7950X at stock configuration. Performance per watt is minimal above 230W, so if you’re looking for the best performance, we recommend sticking to 230W PPT. Alternatively, if you need another 5%, a 5.5 GHz overclock on all cores instead of unlimited PPT should be enough.
AMD has led the efficiency race with its strong Zen portfolio in past releases and that seems to be the case for their next-gen lineup as well. AMD Ryzen 9000 ‘Zen 5’ Desktop CPUs These are due to hit stores later this month, with more testing and review expected in the coming weeks.
