Testbed and test results
| AMD AM5 | Intel LGA 1851 | Intel LGA 1700 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPUs | Ryzen 7000 and 9000 series | Core Ultra 200 series | 14th-generation Core |
| Motherboard | ASRock X870E Taichi or MSI MPG X870E Carbon Wifi (provided by AMD) | MSI MEG Z890 Unify-X (provided by Intel) | Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Master X (provided by Intel) |
| RAM config | 32GB G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo (provided by AMD), running at DDR5-6000 | 32GB G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo (provided by AMD), running at DDR5-6000
32GB G.Skill Trident Z5 (provided by Intel), running at DDR5-7200 |
32GB G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo (provided by AMD), running at DDR5-6000 |
All these CPUs have been tested in a Lian Li O11 Air Mini case with an EVGA-provided Supernova 850 P6 power supply and a 280 mm Corsair iCue H115i Elite Capellix AIO cooler. Gaming and graphics benchmarks are being run on an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090, and all systems are running a fully patched version of Windows 11 24H2.
Both the 9950X3D2 and 9950X3D outperform Intel’s best desktop offering, the $350 Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, in gaming performance. But Intel keeps performance close to both Ryzen chips in multi-core productivity performance, albeit with slightly higher power consumption.
The Intel comparisons are worth making, but the people looking at this chip aren’t really interested in maximizing their performance per dollar. The main practical reason to consider the 9950X3D, to the extent that one exists, is that you’re having specific, enduring, unfixable problems with the software-based solution that AMD uses for the 9950X3D, 9900X3D, 7950X3D, and 7900X3D to make sure the right tasks are being run on the right cores. You’ve got to trust that the software will run games on the cores with 3D V-Cache first, and general productivity tasks that benefit from slightly higher clock speeds will be run on the cores without the extra cache first.
Generally, that software works pretty well, and for specific apps, AMD does provide some workarounds to force the issue. But the 9950X3D2 eliminates the possibility of error, since for the first time in a 12- or 16-core X3D chip, all the cores are the same. This could be worth the peace of mind, sometimes.