The Ryzen 9 3950X reveals some of its capabilities. This new AMD showcase on the mainstream market has just appeared in the benchmark database Geekbench 4.
AMD has recently officially released its Ryzen 9 3950X, which is expected with some momentum. With 16 physical cores for the first time, the standards in the consumer market are being redefined. Intel is now under pressure because the Core i9-9900KS is supposed to be “the gaming reference”, while its performance is put to the test with highly multi-threaded applications. The situation is such that a comparison with Core i9-10980XE seems more appropriate. However, we are not in the same market segment.
The Ryzen 9 3950X is the last of the Ryzen family of the third generation. It takes advantage of the Zen 2 processor architecture and brings 16 physical cores to life compared to 32 logical cores in SMT technology. Internally we find a 72 MB L2+L3 cache, support for 40 PCIe 4.0 lines (CPU + chipset) and a dual-channel memory controller. The whole small world runs at 3.5 GHz against 4.7 GHz in boost mode. The thermal envelope is 105 watts, but AMD strongly recommends the use of 280-watt water cooling. Finally, the positioning is at 749 dollars.
On the Intel side, we are in the HEDT segment with a showcase. This Core i9-10980XE is equipped with 18 physical cores against 36 logical cores. The equipment includes a 24.75 MB L3 cache. It has 3 GHz turbo speed against 4.8 GHz in the single-core and 3.8 GHz on all cores. We have a four-channel DDR4 memory controller and support 72 PCIe 3.0 lines (X299 platform). Finally, Intel announces a thermal envelope of 165 watts and a price of 979 dollars.
These two references have been identified in the Geekbench 4 benchmark database and in the single-core mode, we have corresponding values of 5570 points versus 5453, so AMD takes a light grip. The switch to multi-core positions the Ryzen 9 3950X at 52 098 points compared to 51 180 points for the Core i9-10980XE.
The results, therefore, benefit AMD, regardless of whether it’s single or multi-core performance or pricing.
Please note, this is a theoretical benchmark with a rough approach. Things can change in daily use. However, Geekbench 4 evaluates performance through various tasks.
Some of them are JPEG, LZMA compression, AES encryption, PDF and memory write speed. As far as memory is concerned, for example, the software announces a bandwidth of 36 GB/s for the Ryzen platform and 33.1 GB/s for the Intel platform. We have two channels against four channels. In the first case, the machine is equipped with 32 GB DDR4-1464MHz, compared to 128 GB DDR4-1331MHz for the Intel PC.
While we are waiting for the first independent tests, we still have a nice result for AMD.