AMD’s next-gen Ryzen CPUs are huge, and… well, they’re a bit of a mixed bag. The delayed launch of the first chips — the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X — showed strong single-core performance, but multi-core performance lagged behind Intel.
Now that the top-tier Ryzen 9 9950X and Ryzen 9 9900X models are out, Gordon has taken a deep dive into the series’ performance on the PCWorld YouTube channel.
This is a long video that covers all of the new chips with exhaustive comparisons to both the previous-generation Ryzen 7000 CPUs and Intel’s 14th-generation competition.
If you don’t have 80 minutes to drink in every single point made in this review, then check the video description on YouTube for handy timecodes to all of the benchmark and game tests — or simply scroll down, right below, to where I’ve compiled them for your convenience:
At launch, the Ryzen 9000 series is a tough sell. If you’re considering these CPUs, you might already have an AM5-based system and they won’t offer a ton of performance on top of Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 chips, at least at the same level.
And the current/older AMD chips are offered at such deep discounts, it might be hard to resist going with the cheaper option and waiting for the following generation, or maybe just the X3D version of the chips with extra V-cache that should boost game performance.
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