Review: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X

by Tarinder Sandhu on 14 November 2019, 14:01

Tags: AMD (NYSE:AMD)

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HEXUS Bang4Watt and Bang4Buck

The performance benchmarks on the previous pages tell part of the story, but it is always fun to add some Bang4Buck metrics into the mix. Do be aware that there are many methods of calculating such results - different benchmarks will skew the outcome, and prices can both fluctuate daily and vary wildly depending on region.

We've chosen to use the multi-threaded Cinebench R20 test as a basis for our results, and pricing was taken from Newegg.com, or SRP pricing, as on November 13, 2019.

These scores simply divide the Cinebench R20 score by the dollar price or SRP. Ryzen 9 3950X has a class-leading score that is head and shoulders above anything else, but at $749, it certainly ain't cheap, leading to a mid-pack result in the value evaluation.

This graph divides the same Cinebench result with the system-wide power consumption we observe during evaluation.

When you can fit 32 Zen 2 threads humming along at around 4.0GHz and within a 105W TDP, the bang4watt is naturally going to be extremely impressive. Cinebench usually represents a best-case scenario for AMD, yet going by our results, Ryzen 9 3950X offers about 2x the system-wide perf-per-watt compared to Core i9-9900K(S), which is likely to be higher when looking at the CPU alone.

Compared to older Ryzen chips, this processor enjoys a 2.25x improvement over first-generation Ryzen 7 1800X. Not bad for 2.5 years.

This metric takes 18.92 as the ceiling for Bang4Buck, and 45.23 for Bang4Watt, and combines them into a weighted score where a maximum of 2 is possible.

Ryzen 9 3950X is still reckoned to be the best, even with a lofty $749 price tag to contend with.