If you do video editing, 3D rendering, or any other task that can benefit from a 32-thread processor, you'll love the 3950X. For tasks that don't scale well to 16 cores, though, you're better off with a less expensive part.
AMD's 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X, 32-core Threadripper 3970X Available November 25 - ExtremeTech.
AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X is overkill for most gaming and enthusiast PC builds. An NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT would be perfect for 1080p and some 1440p gaming. Stepping up to ultra 1440p and some 4K, you'll need an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 or AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT.
Click the "Performance" tab in the Task Manager. This shows current CPU and memory usage. The Task Manager displays a separate graph for each CPU core on your system. You should see double the number of graphs as you have processor cores if your CPU supports Hyper-Threading.
AMD 3950X OverviewBuilt with Zen 2 architecture, the third-generation 7nm Ryzen processor offers increased performance compared to its predecessor. It has a base clock speed of 3.5 GHz and can reach a max boost clock speed of 4.7 GHz.
This means a greater speed of process resulting in less latency for games. So in effect the 3950x has 4x16MB cache sections, with four cores (eight threads) each whereas the 5950x has 2x32MB cache sections, with eight cores (16 threads) each – the same amount of memory and cores overall, just more efficiently utilized.
The Ryzen 9 3950X's 16 cores run at a base clock speed of 3.5GHz, but they can boost up to 4.7GHz. That many cores running that fast can chew through multi-core workloads, as we saw in our benchmarks. In our Geekbench 4 test, it earned a single-core score of 5,770 and a multi-core score of 53,829.
The TDP of the chip is rated at 105 watts and it has 24 PCIe 4.0 lanes as well as dual memory channels that support up to 128 GB of DDR4-3200.
The regular Ryzen 9 3950X, which is listed with the 100-100000051BOX OPN on AMD's website, comes with the fancy AMD Wraith Prism RGB cooler. The 16-core, 32-thread part is rated with a 105W TDP (thermal design power), so the Wraith Prism should be more than capable of keeping its operating temperatures under control.
Ryzen 9 5950X - desktop processor produced by AMD for socket AM4 that has 16 cores and 32 threads. The base clock frequency of the CPU is 3400 MHz, but due to Turbo Core technology, it can perform up to 4900 MHz. The size of the L3 cache is 64 MB.
Power.
| Transistors | 19.2 billions |
|---|
| Max. temperature | 95°C |
AMD Ryzen 9 3950X 16-Core, 32-Thread Unlocked Desktop Processor.
Ryzen 9 3950X has 64MB of L3 cache and operates at 3.5 GHz by default, but can boost up to 4.7 GHz, depending on the workload. AMD is building the Ryzen 9 3950X on a 7 nm production process using 3,800 million transistors. The silicon die of the chip is not fabricated at AMD, but at the foundry of TSMC.
The Core i9-9900K has a base frequency of 3.6GHz and a maximum boost frequency of 5GHz, compared with the Ryzen 9 3900X's base 3.8GHz speed and 4.6GHz maximum boost. Both can be overclocked. Here, at least on pure specs, the Ryzen 9 3900X wins hands down.
