Can the most expensive and powerful Zen 5 chip dominate the benchmarks and not just your wallet?
IF YOU DIDN’T KNOW
anything about Zen 5, you’d think the new Ryzen 9 9950X is a step sideways from its predecessor, the Ryzen 9 7950X. They have the same number of cores and threads (16 and 32, respectively) and the same total amount of L3 cache (64MB). The 5.6GHz boost clock is the same for both, and the new chip even has a lower base clock (4.3 versus 4.5GHz). And yet, the Ryzen 9 9950X is definitely the better processor. The question is, by how much?
The answer is somewhere in the guts of the two CCDs (Core Complex Dies) that nestle next to the IOD (Input/Output Die) underneath the heatspreader. Indeed, the fact that the new 9950X has the same boost clock as the old 7950X means that any performance gains are going to be purely architectural.