AMD Ryzen 9 3950X 16-Core Zen 2 CPU Hits 5.4GHz Overclock Breaking More Records

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AMD's Ryzen 9 3950X hasn't even been officially released yet, but the processor is already making waves in the enthusiast community and breaking world records while overclocked. The Ryzen 9 3950X has 16 cores/32 threads, and boasts a base clock of 3.5GHz and a boost clock of 4.7GHz. 

However, as we've seen in the past few weeks, the Ryzen 9 3950X has been able to achieve some impressive overclocks on LN2. This time around, Twitter user uzzi38 was able to overclock the beast to a dizzying 5.4GHz across all 16 cores at 1.77 volts. AMD loves to cite Cinebench R15 to flex its multi-core muscles, and the overclocked Ryzen 9 3950X impresses here with a CPU score of 5501. At an AMD-sanctioned event prior to the public debut of the Ryzen 9 3950X, an overclocked CPU was able to achieve a score of 5434 in Cinebench R15.

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Intel called out AMD for its reliance on Cinebench R15 to tout superiority over its Core processors earlier this month, with VP Jon Carvill exclaiming, “If they want this crown come beat us in real world gaming, real world gaming should be the defining criteria that we use to assess the world’s best gaming CPU. 

"I challenge you to challenge anyone that wants to compete for this crown to come meet us in real world gaming. That’s the measure that we’re going to stand by.”

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More recently, an internal Intel memo leaked that also tried to discount Cinebench R15 as not being reflective of real-world performance. “Cinebench is often used by AMD, since it favors high core/thread count and represents one of the best-case benchmarks for AMD," said Intel Circuit News Managing Editor Walden Kirsch. "Intel believes that Cinebench is not a representative benchmark for general platform evaluations and real-life workloads.”

While the bulk of the Ryzen 3000 family will launch on July 7th, the Ryzen 9 3950X isn't scheduled to hit store shelves until September. When it does launch, it will be priced at $749, undercutting similar 16-core Intel processors by over $1,000.