Lifting the lid on its latest Ryzen 9000 series CPUs, AMD has rolled out the red carpet for its Zen 5 architecture. Of course, it features the usual performance comparisons, stepping all over Intel’s 14th Gen, but it’s their low efficiency that’ll really get the hairs standing on the back of your neck. Look, I’m just thinking of the pennies saved on my electric bill.
At the top of the line-up, AMD Ryzen 9 9950X is primed to show just how powerful Zen 5 is without any added fluff. It has the same core arrangements as its predecessor, as well as identical frequencies, cache, and power draw. Yet, composition aside, Team Red’s internal tests state you’ll get a 23% frame rate boost in Horizon Zero Dawn and a whopping 56% improvement in Blender compared to Intel’s Core i9-14900K. Not bad, considering 7950X3D fell short of rivalling Team Blue’s processor in the very same programs.
Comparing the two CPUs, Ryzen 9 9950X has twice the bandwidth when using PCIe 5.0 graphics lanes alongside direct-to-processor storage. This is ideal for using the best SSDs or multiple Gen 5 graphics cards in tandem, when they finally arrive. The flagship is also 20% faster with AI, particularly using large language models. Naturally, AMD caveats that you’ll likely use the best graphics card for AI with a desktop, which is why Ryzen 9000 series doesn’t contain an efficiency-conscious neural processing unit (NPU).
| Ryzen 9 9950X | Ryzen 9 9900X | Ryzen 7 9700X | Ryzen 5 9600X | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cores (Zen 5) | 16 | 12 | 8 | 6 |
| Threads | 32 | 24 | 16 | 12 |
| Maximum boost clock | 5.7GHz | 5.6GHz | 5.5GHz | 5.4GHz |
| Total cache | 80MB | 76MB | 40MB | 38MB |
| TDP | 170W | 120W | 65W | 65W |
In my eyes, it’s the lower end of the stack that shines more than anything. Once again featuring the same core and thread count as their predecessors, they’re mind-bogglingly more efficient. Ryzen 9 9900X shaves 50W off the TDP while operating at the same clock speeds. Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X, on the other hand, shrink down by 40W while slightly improving frequencies. No matter the CPU you choose, AMD believes you’ll get a 16% average uplift over their Zen 4 counterparts. My only question is, how does running this much leaner affect temperatures?
As always, take in-house performance claims with a pinch of salt. However, if it’s true, it’s a testament to Zen 5’s prowess. The architecture is less about the surface value of its arrangement and more about what’s under the hood. Described as a “sweeping update,” AMD touts improved branch prediction for both accuracy and latency, pushes higher throughput with wider pipelines and vectors, and deepens the window size for more paralellism. Collectively, this grants twice the instruction bandwidth, data bandwidth, and AI performance over the previous generation.
If you’re in the market for an upgrade, the good news is that Zen 5 CPUs are all AM5 compatible. You can place them current B650 and X670 motherboards just fine, likely pending a BIOS update. To get the most out of them, though, you’ll want to slip them in the new AMD X870 and X870E models, which come with USB4 and PCIe Gen 5 across graphics and NVMe as standard, and feature higher EXPO memory clock support. X870 and X870E are also happy to house Ryzen 7000 and 8000 processors but keep in mind that some features might not be available due to bandwidth constraints.
AMD plans to keep AM5 going for a little longer than anticipated, extending support through 2027 and beyond. If we’re lucky, we might even see another CPU generation pass through the platform before it hangs up its hat, but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves just yet.
Sadly, we don’t know how much any of these will cost, as AMD is still figuring things out. Rumours suggest prices will be identical to Ryzen 7000 series at launch, potentially putting Ryzen 9 9950X at £780 / $699, Ryzen 9 9900X at £599 / $549, Ryzen 7 9700X at £429 / $399, and Ryzen 6 9600X at £326 / $299. We should find out the official MSRP as we approach the July release date.
Ryzen 9000 aren’t the only CPUs AMD has in store for this Computex. The brand is taking a trip down memory lane with a new Ryzen 5000XT series that’s never been done before. These arrive alongside 300 AI series mobile chips, a slimmer Radeon Pro W7900, and an Instinct MI325X GPU with HBM3E memory.
