althoughthey’lllikelyrequirea BIOSupdate.Aslongastheboard
hasdecentcooling,evenB450motherboardssuchasMSI’s
B450Tomahawkshouldworkfine.Again,you’llprobablyneed
toupdatetheBIOS,butthankfully,thatboardin particularoffers
USBBIOSFlashback,allowingyoutoupdatetheBIOSwithout
installinga compatibleCPU.
Performance
WeoverclockedtheRyzen9 3950Xtoanall-corefrequency
of4.35GHzusinga vcoreof1.375V,wheretemperatures
hoveredaroundthelow80°Csusinga 240mmall-in-one
liquidcooler.Thisall-coreoverclockedclockis a fairwaysouth
ofthe3950X’s4.7GHzpeakboostfrequency,though,soyou’ll
losesomelightlythreadedperformancegoingthisroute.
However,theall-coreboostfrequencyatstockspeedis only
3.9GHz,soif maximummulti-threadedperformanceis your
goal,a manualoverclockis definitelythewaytogo.
OurGIMPimageeditingtest,whichtestssingle-threaded
CPUperformance,usedtobedominatedbyIntelCPUs,
butinthegraphsonp28,you’llseethattheonlyCPUs
totop65,000pointswerethetwoRyzen9 chips.That
situationdidn’tchangewhenweoverclockedeitherthe
Corei9-9980XE and Core i9 10980XE either.
Only the overclocked Core i9-9900K and 9900KS could
beat these CPUs. The Ryzen 9 3950X was utterly dominant in
our heavily multi-threaded
Handbrake video
encoding test
too, topping 900,000 points, putting it noticeably ahead of the
Ryzen 9 3900X, and even the Intel Core i9-10980XE at stock
speed. Once the Intel 18-core CPUs were overclocked, they did
manage to topple the AMD 16-core CPU, but with significantly
higher power consumption.
Overall, though, the Ryzen 9 3950X is a clear winner in
the Realbench tests, bettering every other CPU by a wide
margin in the system score at stock speed and overclocked.
However, Intel’s 18-core CPUs have an edge in video
encoding once they’ve been overclocked.
Blender saw the Ryzen 9 3950X once again trounce the
18-core Intel competition, despite having two fewer cores,
and it was noticeably faster than the Ryzen 9 3900X here
too. Only when overclocking the Intel Core i9-10980XE and
Core i9-9980XE did we see faster scores, with the former
beating the AMD CPU’s time by 9 per cent. Likewise, the
Ryzen 9 3950X’s single-threaded Cinebench score of 529
beat all the competition, while the multi-threaded score
again topped every other CPU at 9,188, compared to 7,223
for the Ryzen 9 3900X and 8,742 for the Core i9-10980XE.
Far Cry 5 saw only meagre gains for the new AMD
flagship over the Ryzen 9 3900X at stock speed and when
overclocked,though,whileIntel’sCorei9-9900Kbettered
it atboth speeds. Meanwhile, the two Intel 18-core CPUs
were also a match in this test when they were overclocked,
producing higher average frame rates than the 3950X. Bear in
mind, though, that you won’t see these gains in most games.
The most striking part of the results is the power
consumption though. With the 3950X installed, our test
system drew 242W and 340W from the wall at stock and
overclocked speeds respectively, which is much lower than
the 376W and 595W results from the Core i9-10980XE.
Although the latter has two more cores, that doesn’t warrant
the higher power consumption – Zen 2 is clearly massively
more efficient here.Conclusion
While the Ryzen 9 3950X isn’t a vast amount quicker than
other Zen 2 CPUs in some tasks, and Intel’s 18-core CPUs are
faster in some tests, in most cases it’s a triumph for the 3950X- it’s one of the best all-rounders available right now. As an
efficient multi-purpose powerhouse, the Ryzen 9 3950X is
fantastic. Plus, while it’s undoubtedly expensive, it also looks
set to be a good £250 cheaper than Intel’s Core i9-10980XE.
The Ryzen 9 3950X offers massive multi-threaded
performance and excellent lightly threaded performance. The
icing on the cake is that it doesn’t need quad-channel memory
or an expensive motherboard to achieve these feats.
ANTONY LEATHER
VERDICT
One of the best CPUs we’ve ever reviewed. If you want
a CPU that can cope with both gaming and heavily multi-
threaded content creation, this is the chip to buy.HEXADECA-
CORE
+ Massive multi-
threaded
performance
+ Cheaper than
equivalent
HEDTCPUs
+ Good choice of
motherboardsDUAL-CORE- Manual overclock
slower than
stockboost - Slower than^
Intel CPUs in
some games
OVERALLSCORE
89 %%
PERFORMANCE
46 / 50
FEATURES
14 / 15VALUE
29 / 35