Ryzen 9 5950X

The 16-core, 32-thread Ryzen 9 5950X is an impressive workhorse. It sits at the top of AMD’s latest Zen 3 based, 5000 series of CPUs and sends a clear message that AMD can beat Intel in terms of raw performance and core count. The 5950X has a boost clock speed of up to 4.9 GHz, a massive 72 MB cache and a TDP rating of 105W. Despite the clear “gaming” focus of AMD’s 5000 series launch marketing, the 5950X does not efficiently leverage all its 16 cores in gaming (as demonstrated by similar effective speed scores compared to the 12-core 5900X, 8-core 5800X and 6-core 5600X.) 16 cores are only suitable for professional use cases that have CPU processing needs which cannot be more efficiently met by a GPU or other dedicated hardware. There is no Intel equivalent with this number of cores, and the 5950X’s uniqueness is reflected in its $799 USD price tag, 45% more expensive than the 5900X. Gamers will get far higher FPS per dollar by allocating a higher proportion of their budget towards a better GPU rather than blowing $799 USD on the 5950X. Professional users that plan to use 32 concurrent threads at 100% load will find value in the 5950X. On the other hand, workstation users that rarely exceed 20 concurrent threads at 100% should consider the 10850K for around half the money. ^{[Nov '20 CPUPro]}