AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D Review: No Compromise Gaming And Creator Performance
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D: CPU, System, And Browser Benchmarks
When configuring our test systems for this evaluation, we first made sure all firmwares were up to date, then we entered each system's respective BIOS / UEFI and set the board to its "Optimized" or "High performance" defaults. We then saved the settings, re-entered the BIOS and set the memory frequency to the maximum officially supported speed for the given platform (without overclocking). The SSDs were then formatted, and Windows 11 Pro was installed and fully updated.
In our Geekbench tests, the new Ryzen 9 7950X3D is actually able to overtake the standard Ryzen 9 7950X by the slimmest of margins, with better single and multi-threaded scores, and drops in just behind the Core i9-19300K.
PCMark 10's mixed workloads also had the new Ryzen 9 7950X3D offering somewhat higher overall performance than the standard Ryzen 9 7950X, but it couldn't quite jump into the overall lead. AMD's newest flagship outran the Core i9-13900K, but it couldn't quite catch the hot-clocked Core i9-13900KS special edition chip.
When the Windows installation was complete, we installed all of the drivers necessary for our components, disabled Auto-Updating and Windows Defender, and installed all of our benchmarking software. When that process was done, we performed a disk clean-up, cleared any temp and prefetch data, processed idle tasks, and optimized all of the SSDs using Windows' built-in utility. Finally, we enabled Windows Focus Assist to minimize any potential interruptions and let the systems reach an idle state before invoking any tests.
HotHardware's Test Systems:
AIDA64 Memory Bandwidth, Memory Latency & Cache Latency
AIDA64's CPU Cache and Memory benchmarks measure memory bandwidth during read, write and copy operations, in addition to memory latency, and cache bandwidth and latency.
Although they were outfitted with the exact same memory and used the same motherboard and memory timing configuration (our memory kit supports EXPO), the Ryzen 9 7950X3D offered every so slightly higher peak write and copy bandwidth, though read bandwith was a touch lower. The deltas are very small though, and are essentially just noise here -- for all intents and purposes.
While DDR5's higher clocks results in more memory bandwidth versus previous-gen offerings equipped with DDR4, the higher CAS latency of current DDR5 memory kits also results in increased memory latency. And the Ryzen 9 7950X3D actually ends up with somewhat higher latency than the standard Ryzen 9 7950X.
The Ryzen 9 7950X3D's cache latency characteristics are also somewhat higher than the 7950X. L1 and L2 cache latency is only marginally higher, but L3 cache latency is significantly increased. Keep in mind, however, that the L3 cache is so much larger with the Ryzen 9 7950X3D that it is exponentially more likely to offer a cache hit to the cores, and is far less likely to require fetching fresh data. As a result, higher cache latency is much less likely to impact overall performance.
While DDR5's higher clocks results in more memory bandwidth versus previous-gen offerings equipped with DDR4, the higher CAS latency of current DDR5 memory kits also results in increased memory latency. And the Ryzen 9 7950X3D actually ends up with somewhat higher latency than the standard Ryzen 9 7950X.
Geekbench v5.4.1 CPU Benchmark
The GeekBench CPU tests stress only the processor cores in a system (not the graphics card/GPU), with both single and multi-threaded workloads. The tests are comprised of encryption processing, image compression, HTML5 parsing, physics calculations and other general purpose compute processing workloads.
In our Geekbench tests, the new Ryzen 9 7950X3D is actually able to overtake the standard Ryzen 9 7950X by the slimmest of margins, with better single and multi-threaded scores, and drops in just behind the Core i9-19300K.
UL PCMark 10 Benchmarks
Next, up we have some full-system testing with PCMark. We're reporting all test results from the PCMark 10 benchmark suite, including the Essentials, Productivity, Digital Content Creation and and total PCMark score. The Essentials test covers workloads like web browsing, video conferencing and app start-up times, while Productivity tests everyday office apps from spreadsheets to word processing. Finally, the Digital Content Creation test evaluates performance of a machine with respect to photo and video editing, as well as rendering and visualization.
PCMark 10's mixed workloads also had the new Ryzen 9 7950X3D offering somewhat higher overall performance than the standard Ryzen 9 7950X, but it couldn't quite jump into the overall lead. AMD's newest flagship outran the Core i9-13900K, but it couldn't quite catch the hot-clocked Core i9-13900KS special edition chip.
Browser & Web App Benchmarks: Jetstream 2 And Speedometer 2
Next up, we have some numbers from the Speedometer 2.0 and Jetstream 2 tests available at browserbench.org. The Speedometer Benchmark Suite uses a wide array of latency and throughput benchmarks to evaluate web application performance and Jetstream evaluates Javascript and WebAssembly performance; both tests take all of their individual results and tabulate them into a final score.
These benchmarks measure performance of an array of browser-based technologies used on modern, rich web applications. Scores in these benchmark are an indicator of the performance users would see when browsing the web and running advanced web apps. All of the systems were tested using the latest version of Microsoft's Edge browser, with default browser settings, on a clean, fully-updated install of Windows 11.
Once again we see the Ryzen 9 7950X3D putting up very strong scores in the browser-based Speedometer and Jetstream tests. It doesn't quite lead the pack, but performance is very strong and a processor like this is certainly more than capable of handling any web application out there at the moment.
These benchmarks measure performance of an array of browser-based technologies used on modern, rich web applications. Scores in these benchmark are an indicator of the performance users would see when browsing the web and running advanced web apps. All of the systems were tested using the latest version of Microsoft's Edge browser, with default browser settings, on a clean, fully-updated install of Windows 11.
7-Zip Data Decompression Tests
The 7-Zip benchmark measures compression and decompression performance using the LZMA method, which leverages the Lempel–Ziv–Markov chain algorithm to perform lossless data compression. The benchmark produces a final rating in GIPS (giga instructions per second).
Although it technically offers a similar configuration, albeit with more cache, the new Ryzen 9 7950X3D slots in just behind its standard 7950X counterpart in the 7-Zip decompression tests. This is likely due to the 3D V-Cache enabled CCD having to hover at lower clocks under a long, sustained multi-threaded workload that taxes every available thread.
Although it technically offers a similar configuration, albeit with more cache, the new Ryzen 9 7950X3D slots in just behind its standard 7950X counterpart in the 7-Zip decompression tests. This is likely due to the 3D V-Cache enabled CCD having to hover at lower clocks under a long, sustained multi-threaded workload that taxes every available thread.
