How well does the new AMD Ryzen 9 7950x fair against 5950x?

AMD’s previously announced 7000 series of processors has finally seen its launch. The four newly launched processors include the flagship 16 core 32 thread 7950X, 12C/24T 7900X, 8C/16T 7700X and 6C/12T 7600X. The processors will be available starting September 26 and are priced at $699, $549, $399 and $299, respectively.

AMD’s new flagship, the 7950X, was the company’s focus, with claims of the new processor being up to 57% faster than the previous flagship 5950X in Chaos V-Ray while being up to 62% faster than Intel’s i9-12900K. Thanks to the new 5nm build process and AMD’s new Zen4 architecture, AMD also claims it consumes 47% less power than its predecessor, the 5950X.

Outside of its 16 cores and 32 threads, the 7950X features a base clock of 4.5GHz which can go as high as 5.7GHz. The processor is rated at a 170W TDP but overclocking can push it up to 230W, the maximum amount of power AMD’s new AM5 socket can deliver. The total cache comes at 80MB (combining the 64MB L3 and 16MB L2 cache).

Of course, these numbers mean the processor or the entire lineup for that matter is going to crush gaming workloads. AMD confirms this by claiming that the 7950X is up to 35% faster in gaming performance than the 5950X. No gaming comparisons to Intel’s processors were announced though, potentially indicating that Intel’s existing 12th-gen lineup could perform better or similar to AMD’s new offerings. 

Even on paper, AMD’s claims seem to easily be true, at least when compared to the 5950X.

The rest of the processors also benefit from all the standard 7000 series perks outside of their own capabilities. Even the slowest processor in the lineup, the 7600X offers 5% faster gaming performance in “select titles” according to AMD, over the 5950X.

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