AMD Ryzen 9 5900X and 5950X review - Conclusion

Final Words 

The Ryzen 5000 / ZEN3 architecture is incredibly gratifying. It is just vacillating to see that AMD manages to get IPC up again, moving to a single 8-core architecture per die, tackling that last bit of uncertainty, gaming performance. Which was a bit of am Achilles heel on Rzyen in CPU limited game performance. There's no doubt that AMD is now offering the fastest processor series in the consumer market, and it is imposing to see what they managed in just three years. Now, we're not going to recommend you to upgrade if you are on Ryzen 3000. But on series 1000/2000 .. well, why not? The good news is that the Series 400 motherboards will support these CPUs starting January 2021 with selected motherboards. And yeah, AM4 has come a long way, alright. With future changes coming up on DDR5 and PCIe gen 5.0, we see perhaps one more refresh series (ZEN4, a refresh of ZEN3) to be AM4 compatible, but thereafter surely AM5 will be introduced.

Price and value

Gaming performance

Solved! Last-gen Zen2 Matisse based processors already made up for a lot of the deficiencies in gaming compared to Intel. Right now, with ZEN3, that 'problem' is gone; it has vanished. Yes, there will be individual wins per brand, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. So that means that with a mighty graphics card, this processor on average can feed frames as fast as Intel towards the graphics card driver, resulting in nearly the same performance, or with wins and losses at both sides. But I am glad we can put that discussion to rest. 

DDR4 Memory

Short answer, with up to 4000 MHz DDR4 memory, you're good/optimal to go. Memory compatibility should not and likely will not be an issue as long as you stick to recently released DIMMs. I'll keep reiterating this, but there are some good Ryzen optimized kits out there. With ZEN3, you can go higher in DDR4 clock frequency if you want to. We stick to our advice that you are good to go with up to 3600 MHz and CL14 or CL16 or lower. If you want to go a notch higher, up to 4000 MHz is what you could do best. After that frequency, a 2:1 divider kicks on the interconnect that will affect the Infinity Fabric bandwidth; even then, the perf differential would be modest but optimal up-to 4000 MHz, the best bang for buck = 3600 MHz. Oh, and yes, lower latency memory is always better, e.g., CL14, but more expensive.

Energy efficiency

These processors are fabbed at 7nm; you may see some exceptional energy efficiency; the 105 Watts listed for the 5900X was not necessarily something we could measure anywhere and thus remains relative; of course, that is marvelous all by itself. Mind you; these are numbers at a nominal load. The load values are excellent. Despite that, this processor series runs a notch faster, AMD stays within its Wattage / Voltage and TDP budget. They are merely redistributing voltage and frequency with lower thread counts. When we stressed all cores, we sit in a 250 Watt power consumption range (that's the entire PC).  

Conclusion

We gave it away already in the very first lines of this review; the original ZEN design was bronze, ZEN2 silver, and ZEN3 truly is gold. The release of Ryzen 5000 probably will make a whole bunch of people at Intel nauseous as from every and any angle AMD now is faster. So that last bit you could nag about with a Ryzen proc is gone, strictly speaking from a hardware and performance point of view, of course. Not just that, AMD offers an infrastructural advantage as well with full PCIe Gen 4.0 compatibility throughout the eco-system. Arguably, the one thing we can label as abrogating is pricing; AMD is pushing it by adding an extra 50 USD premium on top of the entire range. In the end, though the consumer market is brutal, if a product is even 5 bucks too expensive, people will not buy it. I suspect that even despite that price premium of 50 bucks, this series still will be a ginormous hit. You've seen the numbers, is it worth it? Well, yes, we think it is. Also, we have to talk about some relativity here. An Intel HEDT platform with 10+ cores two years ago would cost you $1000 easily just for the processor, right now you can purchase as a 12-core beast for $549 or $799 for the 16-core ZEN3 part. To ease that pain of pricing a little, I do have some positive news on this front. AMD will bundle Far Cry 6 with select Ryzen 5000 processors, according to terms and conditions for the AMD rewards program listed on its website. The promotion is valid until December 31; far Cry 6 will be released H1 2021. But enough said about the coins and value.

We really cannot nag about anything else as both the Ryzen 5900X and 5950X are gems, never has single-threaded performance been this fast, never has multi-threaded performance been this fast, never (for AMD) has gaming performance been this fast. You've seen it, throughout the spectrum of possibilities from web browsing that becomes faster up-to complicated many threaded workloads for content creation, AMD will save you some time on any workload as it's simply put, the fastest product series. The move to a full 8-core design, as opposed to two 4-core CCXes, was the right choice to make for ZEN3. However, AMD thereon advanced at many levels in the architecture, bring that extra IPC per single thread utilized. I mean, CB20 scores at ~640 points, just wow. 

Tweaking procs and GPUs these days are getting more complicated; we say leave things as they are as procs are refined these days. In the past you had 10% maybe even 15% headroom left, these days all procs are binned, the best ones have maybe a margin of 5% left in the headroom. Then firing off complicated all core tweaks versus power consumption and heat, I'd say walk away and be happy with what this product series is offering at defaults. As really, that's a lot. You can argue that AMD did most of the tweaking work for you or that they binned and clocked so precisely that there is little margin left for them to maximize their profits. ZEN3 did tweak better than the previous generation, though, that has to be said. Regarding gaming, you're good to go as, with any graphics card, including the 1000 USD ones, the performance is there, but you have to consider that there will be wins and losses on either side. No game is programmed the same.

That said, both the 5900X and 5950X will suit many. If you need a couple of more cores or want some extra reserve for the future, hey, look no further. The true heroes, we suspect, are going to be the 8- and 6-core parts as here a better value is to be found. And yes, I'll keep repeating this for a while. We feel a 6-core 5600X or 8-core 5800X are that sweet spot procs to get. However, if you need a few more cores for that demanding workload of yours, slap a good LCS on this proc, and your eyebrows will ryze alongside the smile on your face that'll last for days—well done, AMD, well done.

If you have not done so, you can read up on the more value-oriented (but great!) Ryzen 5 5600X (6c/12t) right here. The Ryzen 7 5800X should be ready by Friday as well.

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