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pretty sweet, nice that price stayed the same here...
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA2eYqKhDWY
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9950x3d reviews and discussions
- Thread starter pendragon1
- Start date
pretty sweet, nice that price stayed the same here...
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA2eYqKhDWY
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the_sextein
Weaksauce
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I decided to skip this gen. Sold out in 30 seconds and scalped across the internet just like the 5090. I might as well chase Pokemon cards at this point.
It doesn't look like it is particularly popular in NZ. I was able to walk in to my local store and just buy one over the counter. It was their only one but it was there for a few days before I decided to bite the bullet.
I checked with a few other retailers and there is wide-spread availability. The 9800X3D was the same, I think Kiwi's aren't keen because of the prices at retail. The 9800X3D is just over $1k and the 9950X3D is just over $1400.
Performance is better than I expected. Considering an upgrade. As far as availability, Newegg seems to have plenty of combo deals in stock which works for me since I’d need a board anyway. Still not thrilled with the hybrid CCD approach though.
The difference is the scalping won't last long. People were scalping the 9800X3D's and I just walked into Microcenter and bought one a couple months ago. Literally a week before that I couldn't find them in stock and there were tons of them on eBay for $650-$1,000 or more.
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Very tempted to upgrade finally from my 5950X. 9950X3D looks solid overall... and even at 4K gaming, it looks like I might get a boost in some games. My local MC has a ton of these in stock too. Now the hard part, decide what mobo and RAM combo I want... lol.
Tempted too. Main upgrade hurdle now is, I don’t know if this GPU market will ever get any better. While I have no plans to upgrade my 4090 to a 5090, I don’t think anything will improve with 60 series, and at that point, I’d definitely want to upgrade. It would be a waste if I’m compelled to spec out a custom pre built to get a 60 series if I already have a 9950 x3d
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Hard to say. My local microcenter has 5080s and 5070s on shelf all the time now and I have seen 5090s last well past noon when they come in (just not the ones I want). I guess if you don't have an MC tho, things may be more bleak...
Nearest one is a couple hours north in Tustin. I drop in when i'm in the area about once or twice a year so not really an option. I was hoping MC would take over the local Fry's building in San Diego but that building was demo'd and they're building apartments
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I did one of the 9950X3D reviews, and then once it was done I swapped it into my main rig.
I only have a 3080 Ti, and I play at relatively high resolutions. But I can still feel the difference, depending upon the game, and of course general applications are absolutely flying.
Is it a huge difference given the context of my GPU? No. Would I have bought a 9950X3D for gaming over a less expensive CPU? Absolutely not. Is it screaming fast anyways? Indeed.
Managed to nab one yesterday from Amazon. Wasn't going to buy one, but my dad needs a new PC so I'm giving him my 9800X3D. Curious to see if the extra 8 cores will make a noticeable difference in working in my IDE (JetBrains Rider, small .NET C# microservices). Really does seem to be the perfect CPU for productivity + gaming.
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Since I'm done with the review, I have done some toying with optimization. I have disabled SMT which is supposed to help out gaming performance a little bit. It hurts multi-core performance where you load up all the cores, but 16 threads is plenty for me and SMT disabled nets almost an additional +200 MHz on my clock speeds and knocks 9C off my temps when I put it under full load. Additionally I did a quick -20 curve in PBO and it's been rock solid.
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I bet the performance regression of disabling one CCD on the 16 core, is due to the chipset driver expecting/being tuned for the dual CCD/16 core layout. They have made a lot of changes to the driver, to make that all work a lot better. And not rely on the Xbox gamebar.
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Any reviews on gaming performance at 4k / full settings versus something older like 3rd gen or 5th gen threadripper? I know it's a fast CPU but most of the published benchmarks seem to highlight only 1080p and 1440p that show a more marked difference. I'm trying to understand whether something like the 9950x3d would be faster vs. flat at 4k/full settings gaming and faster vs. flat on throughput and productivity.
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At 4K, unless you're rocking a 4090 or 5090 class GPU, you're probably going to be GPU limited. I have a lowly 3080 Ti and game at 4K, and I moved from a 5950X to the 9950X3D, and my gaming performance is *mostly* unchanged. I would say that some stuttering is lessened and certain highly-CPU dependent scenarios see a performance uptick, but for the most part I live *very* GPU constrained.
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TBF, even with a 4090 at 4K, I'm struggling to justify the move from my 5950X setup to a 9950X3D. Maybe that will change if I can ever snag a 5090, but so far, I can easily keep up with modern games at 4K in comparisons. I will argue though, it also heavily depends on how people have setup their systems. I run my old 5950X with an all core OC (4.9Ghz), none of the CPPC stuff, no SMT, no C-States, and have pushed my DDR4 to the max I possibly can without risking it, it's pretty fast and I never notice any microstutter. That being said, most people are not willing to configure in such a way or just throw voltage (and time testing) at their old CPUs to achieve such performance.
FWIW, everything I have found is dependant on what games you play, and how you have your system setup. Some games you may not notice anything, others, possibly better 1% lows or better overall averages. Without knowing your full specifications and how you have setup your system, it is hard to say.
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Yeah, my 5950X was less optimized than that. I think I turned on a very basic PBO curve and touched nothing else. My 9950X3D has slightly more done to it than that, but I'm not a big believer in chasing down the final 2-3% of performance since it takes a lot of time/effort to get there. Especially for gaming, since I know I'm going to be GPU limited.
I'm just happy that frame gen is a thing. I'm replaying Starfield right now, and frame gen gets me from a healthy framerate at 4K somewhere around 60 up to much closer to my 120hz refresh rate, and I'm old enough I can't tell a difference on latency.
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I enjoy the chase for performance and overclocking almost more than gaming anymore, kind of always have... lol. I just love tweaking stuff to the very edge of it's life. Does help when it comes to gaming tho!
Configured my 5950X this way maybe 1 or 2 years ago and never looked back at PBO. Maybe its better on the 9xxx series, but in testing, I found it to be a stuttering mess and leaving a ton of performance on the table, even with offsets and tweaking.If your on a 9950X3D and game at 4K like me, I'd love to compare some games we might share, just to get a good comparison at 4k. Cause ultimately, I'm sure I'll end up with a 9950X3D at some point in the next month or so because I simply want to play with something new and future proof a bit.
Also, i agree, framegen is awesome
. It can also get around CPU bottlenecks as well.
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All I've really played since I swapped into the 9950X3D is Starfield, Avowed, Fortnite with my kiddo, and various indie type games that would be happy to run on a cell phone (Slay the Spire, Wizard of Legend, Heroes of Hammerwatch 2, Balatro, etc). Starfield and Avowed I feel both run better than they did on my 5950X, specifically in denser 'city' areas within both games. When 1.1 drops I'll probably do another full play through Satisfactory, where in the lategame I anticipate feeling a difference.
I would not have paid for a 9950X3D. I was considering an upgrade to Ryzen 9000, but honestly I was going to get a 9700X. But I stumbled into the 9950X3D, so I wasn't going to say no lol.
I enjoy the chase for performance and overclocking almost more than gaming anymore, kind of always have... lol. I just love tweaking stuff to the very edge of it's life. Does help when it comes to gaming tho!
I do minimal tweaking on my new builds. Today’s boost algorithms do a pretty good job of squeezing the vast majority of performance out of the CPU/GPU. Plus, I prioritize stability above the last few percentage points of performance.
On my outgoing build though, I start putting it through the wringer to see just how much performance was still on the table.
I am indeed rocking a 4090 and getting data on exactly how much my aging 3960X is holding me back is hard to come by. Lots of claims and opinions, but not much data. My impression is that even with an old TR3, for most of the games I play, the 4090 is still the bottleneck.
In my case, it's a 4090 liquid cooled, and a thread ripper 3960x running all cores around 4.4GHz. Games are everything from oldies like World of Warcraft to the newer CP2077-esque stuff.
My impressions (from UC/OC the CPU and seeing if the performance matters) is that the CPU simply doesn't matter all that much. I went from a moderate under clock (3.6GHz, standard RAM timings) to the 4.4GHz + best possible RAM OC and while Warcraft did indeed see better responsiveness, less lag and higher frame rates, CP2077, Valhalla, Starfield, Homeward, No Man's Sky, BG3 etc. all behave more or less the same when everything's cranked to max resolution (4K), settings and something like DLSS=Quality. So, my impression is that CPUs that are 2, 3, 4 years old simply aren't the bottleneck if you tend to favor running modern games at their max possible quality settings, even with a 4090.
Frankly speaking I suspect the justification to go from an ancient 3960X to a 9950X3D would be the improved power efficiency, rather than the 4k gaming performance.
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I mean, the first question I would have is wondering why you got a 3960X in the first place. Was it for gaming? If so, that was probably a bad choice. Was it for productivity where you can utilize all the cores? That makes more sense.
If you're almost exclusively gaming, then I don't think it makes much sense to move to the 9950X3D basically for anyone. Since I'm GPU limited at 4K, I was originally planning on either sticking it out another generation with my 5950X (or the 5800X I used to have) or moving to something like a 9700X for the efficiency. Even the 9800X3D, premier CPU for gaming, doesn't make much sense for the average 4K gamer. Some RT heavy games actually hit the CPU pretty hard, so the Zen5 will help there, but the X3D won't do much. The 9700X is also startlingly efficient.
If you actually stress those cores via other methods, then the 9950X3D makes sense to me. It's a small premium over the 9950X, and the 16 Zen5 cores will really spank the Zen2 cores from your 3960X in non-gaming tasks. Normal day-to-day things will be faster, and some games - especially those with RT - will benefit as well from the Zen5 uplift. The X3D is an inexpensive upgrade to the 9950X, as opposed to the 9700X->9800X3D price gulf, so I would probably pick it up.
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TBH, it really is how you CONFIGURE your system as well between all components. I was on the fence about upgrading, after matching settings in the video below (to get 1:1 comparison) in CP2077, I ran the same test on my 4090 (which the video uses) on my 5950X configured the way it is... the results are insane. (time-stamped link to get to the point).
Basically, configuring the 5950X the way I did, I beat the 7950X3D (and all else below it), I am only topped by the 7800X3D, newer 9800X3D and 9950X3D, but keep in mind, this is at 1080p, I game at 4K, MAX settings... lol.
View: https://youtu.be/QhGsQvDaEPo?t=1016
Here was my score at the same settings:
Basically, configuring the 5950X the way I did, I beat the 7950X3D (and all else below it), I am only topped by the 7800X3D, newer 9800X3D and 9950X3D, but keep in mind, this is at 1080p, I game at 4K, MAX settings... lol.
View: https://youtu.be/QhGsQvDaEPo?t=1016
Here was my score at the same settings:
Nah that Techtuber isn't really good or rigorous or knownledgeable, the drivers are totally fine.
When you disable CCD1 you just get a slightly faster 9800X3D, nothing more nothing less (~300mhz better single core clock). But he mixed up OC'd settings and stock settings for no good reason, all he had to do was disable CCD1 and leave both CPUs at stock (like the Koreans did... or I did).
Not saying it's worth the extra cost if you're a gamer, but there's nothing weird about the vcache die of this CPU: it's a 9800X3D that boosts higher. The same story happened with the 7950X3D.
Both. My first priority is productivity, second priority is 4K max setting gaming, and I do not want two desktop systems (space). 3960X was perfect for this use case as I use all those cores regularly, and at max settings with strong GPUs (3080, then 4090) I haven't been left wanting for better gaming performance. This system is starting to get longer in tooth, I would benefit from more throughput so I'm thinking what's next.
Doing more research, I have found a small number of benchmarks suggesting that the 9950X3D does indeed offer a small bump on overall throughput versus the 3960X, on the order of maybe 10% but in a much reduced power envelope, so it's indeed compelling, but it's also a relatively small improvement in performance over what is now a 5 year old platform. (Really shows how amazing TR3 was.). 7960X would be a bigger leap in throughput but I'm paying double for what is now a somewhat dated platform. If gaming were a notable step up, that might be enough to push me over the edge, but these benchmarks are largely absent, hence my question.
Looks like the answer is "nobody knows."
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FWIW, i just jumped from a massively overclocked 5950X setup to a 9950X3D setup. Will probably take a few days to tweak and OC, but when I'm done I'll have some 4K comparisons for everyone!
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I think it'll be a bigger difference than that, honestly. I think you'll be seeing a more variable uplift between 10% and 50% improvement, depending on the task. While IPC improvements on the Zen2->Zen5 pipeline add up to around 56% or so, which barely outclasses the extra 50% of cores your 24-core chip has over any 24-core chip, most workloads are not completely evenly distributed across multiple cores. Any time you have a workload that has any single-threaded performance bottleneck, or even any bottleneck at a lower number of threads where maybe threads 0-4 are hit hard and 5-23 are less lightly loaded or whatever, the 9950X is going to leap to the front of the line by a considerable margin. And at a lower power load for sure, though the total package power usage on the 9950X3D at least hits 200W pretty easily.
For gaming, I would suspect your maximum will remain where they are, but Zen2 is old enough that even at 4K you will reduce stuttering and minimum framerates. There are games where you would benefit more significantly, but my guess is those are the ones you're already 100+ FPS.
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Thank you, really looking forward to this!
Appreciate the feedback. The reason I think the bogey is closer to 10% is because (a) for me my workloads are indeed fairly well distributed across all the cores and (b) the 3960X overclocked extremely well whereas benchmarks of 2024-25 era silicon is typically on the knife's edge of the CPU managing its own, best performance limits.
I completely agree that power will be a breath of fresh air. Between the 3960X OC'd and the 4090, this PC can regularly exceed 1KW off the wall.