AMD launched its first Zen 5 desktop processors earlier this month, and tomorrow, it’s on the cusp of launching what looks to be an underwhelming flagship CPU, the Ryzen 9 9950X. Early reviews of the initial Zen 5 CPUs (the Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X) revealed a lack of performance and efficiency improvements, and now reviews of the flagship Ryzen 9 9950X CPU are coming to the same conclusion.
Hardware Unboxed has been tested a variety of productivity workloads and games with the 9950X, and the results make the previous-generation Ryzen 9 7950X chip look like a better choice in most cases.
In an average of 13 games run at 1080p with an RTX 4090, Hardware Unboxed found the 9950X to be just one percent faster than the existing 7950X. AMD’s new flagship Zen 5 CPU offers the same level of performance as it did two years ago – essentially. There are no real efficiency improvements on the power side, either. “From a gaming perspective, the 9950X is a complete and utter failure,” Hardware Unboxed’s Steve Walton concludes.
The 9950X is also equally disappointing on the productivity front. Hardware Unboxed found real regression in performance for compression and decompression work, and small improvements over the 7950X in tests like Cinebench, Blender, and image editing in Photoshop. On average, the 9950X is just 3 percent faster than the 7950X during these productivity tests.
The results are a far cry from AMD's big, “monster” promises of productivity and gaming performance improvements. AMD described Zen 5 as a “huge leap” that it was “very proud of” in a press conference with The edge Earlier this year.
JayzTwoCents says AMD has “messed up with this launch,” and it’s hard to disagree. At a time when Intel’s 13th and 14th Gen CPUs have suffered from lock-in issues that have led to extended warranties, many were hoping that AMD’s new Zen 5 CPUs would offer solid competition to Intel. Now, all eyes are on Intel’s Arrow Lake desktop CPUs, which are slated to launch later this year.
