AMD 9950x

[lupaz]

I recently bought my 9950x.

After some tests (testing with 4 of my scenes), the improvement over the 7950x is 16-18%.
(Scene 1: 16.63% improvement
Scene 2: 17.71% improvement
Scene 3: 22.32% improvement
Scene 4: 16.44% improvement)

BUT, I didn't have the 7950x overclocked because the temps were already high at stock.
AMD claims the 9950x is more efficient so I enabled PBO, which led to a higher difference.

Hope this helps.

[hurrycat]

A little off-topic but I see this processor is not that far away in bencharks than my own threadripper 3970x that I bought for 3-4x the price (some years ago). Is the consumer line of AMDs now that capable?

[Nejc Kilar]

A little off-topic but I see this processor is not that far away in bencharks than my own threadripper 3970x that I bought for 3-4x the price (some years ago). Is the consumer line of AMDs now that capable?

Pretty much yes I'd say. The Zen 2 Threadrippers are now like 5 years old and we had 3 succeeding Zen generations in between. The "problem" however is that the top end also got a lot faster which means sure, the 9950x is as fast / faster as the 3970x but then the top end chip is still like 2.75x faster than the 9950x :)

[lupaz]

A little off-topic but I see this processor is not that far away in bencharks than my own threadripper 3970x that I bought for 3-4x the price (some years ago). Is the consumer line of AMDs now that capable?

Pretty much yes I'd say. The Zen 2 Threadrippers are now like 5 years old and we had 3 succeeding Zen generations in between. The "problem" however is that the top end also got a lot faster which means sure, the 9950x is as fast / faster as the 3970x but then the top end chip is still like 2.75x faster than the 9950x :)

They come with issues though, right? I mean, threadrippers. At least with corona. That's my impression after several years of reading here on the forum that those using them were not able to get the full performance. So I was always hesitant to spend that kind of money on more problems.
Is that true do you think?

[hurrycat]

I've been working on 2 3970x machines (identical) for 3-4 years now and I've had zero issues. The only thing is after long rendering sessions the frequency may drop to ~3.45GHz (less than the advertised 3.7) but that may be to cooling (using Noctuas NH-U14S single fan). Otherwise pretty stable system!

[lupaz]

I've been working on 2 3970x machines (identical) for 3-4 years now and I've had zero issues. The only thing is after long rendering sessions the frequency may drop to ~3.45GHz (less than the advertised 3.7) but that may be to cooling (using Noctuas NH-U14S single fan). Otherwise pretty stable system!

Thanks.
I'll need to consider them the next time

[Jens]

I recently bought my 9950x.

After some tests (testing with 4 of my scenes), the improvement over the 7950x is 16-18%.
(Scene 1: 16.63% improvement
Scene 2: 17.71% improvement
Scene 3: 22.32% improvement
Scene 4: 16.44% improvement)

BUT, I didn't have the 7950x overclocked because the temps were already high at stock.
AMD claims the 9950x is more efficient so I enabled PBO, which led to a higher difference.

Hope this helps.

How is life with the 9950x so far Lupaz? I'm considering to build a new system with that cpu. What amount of ram and motherboard are you using?

[lupaz]

I recently bought my 9950x.

After some tests (testing with 4 of my scenes), the improvement over the 7950x is 16-18%.
(Scene 1: 16.63% improvement
Scene 2: 17.71% improvement
Scene 3: 22.32% improvement
Scene 4: 16.44% improvement)

BUT, I didn't have the 7950x overclocked because the temps were already high at stock.
AMD claims the 9950x is more efficient so I enabled PBO, which led to a higher difference.

Hope this helps.

How is life with the 9950x so far Lupaz? I'm considering to build a new system with that cpu. What amount of ram and motherboard are you using?

All good. No issues that I can relate to the new CPU.
I have 64 MB of RAM. My motherboard is a GIGABYTE B650
I am considering adding 64 more RAM to be honest.

[marchik]

I recently bought my 9950x.

After some tests (testing with 4 of my scenes), the improvement over the 7950x is 16-18%.
(Scene 1: 16.63% improvement
Scene 2: 17.71% improvement
Scene 3: 22.32% improvement
Scene 4: 16.44% improvement)

BUT, I didn't have the 7950x overclocked because the temps were already high at stock.
AMD claims the 9950x is more efficient so I enabled PBO, which led to a higher difference.

Hope this helps.

How is life with the 9950x so far Lupaz? I'm considering to build a new system with that cpu. What amount of ram and motherboard are you using?

My short review. At first it worked great, I assembled it on the basis of Asus Rog Strix x870e-e + 4*48gb 6000 MT/s, which I was able to make work at 5200-5600MT/s without errors.

The raw performance is amazing.
The only thing that bothered me was a slightly lower score in the benchmark than my friends with the same cpu, despite the fact that my cooling system removes ~280 W of heat without a problem and I got a fairly good (Gold/Platinum) silicon sample with good curve offsets, but I can’t make it give a higher result no matter what I do.

I also encountered problems lately, I use Win11 23H2, and disabled core parking and on the latest Corona updates my workflow with enabled interactive rendering became laggy (like for many other users of this CPU, as far as I know).  In the end, only turning off XMP profile and returning the RAM frequencies to 3600 helped me, which further reduced the result in the benchmark.

Now I'm looking at the 9950X3D, considering the tests that appear recently after the release (it shows even better results than the regular 9950x), I'll probably buy it for the main workstation and put my 9950x in the secondary one.

[Jens]

thank you for the update, I think I will go for the 9950x3d too

[Nejc Kilar]

A little off-topic but I see this processor is not that far away in bencharks than my own threadripper 3970x that I bought for 3-4x the price (some years ago). Is the consumer line of AMDs now that capable?

Pretty much yes I'd say. The Zen 2 Threadrippers are now like 5 years old and we had 3 succeeding Zen generations in between. The "problem" however is that the top end also got a lot faster which means sure, the 9950x is as fast / faster as the 3970x but then the top end chip is still like 2.75x faster than the 9950x :)

They come with issues though, right? I mean, threadrippers. At least with corona. That's my impression after several years of reading here on the forum that those using them were not able to get the full performance. So I was always hesitant to spend that kind of money on more problems.
Is that true do you think?

There's been issues in the past yes but at the same time not everyone experienced these issues in the same way.

Some were bigger like in C4D where we had noticeable issues with SMT / more than 64 threads and that really prevented you from working. Some users were affected while others not which made figuring stuff out rather hard. That said, it is fixed now.
Then we had some issues on certain newer builds in 3ds Max where the UI was quite stuttery although IIRC it wasn't just Threadrippers affected. That should also be fixed now.

There's still things the team is looking into, like a faster UX in general that seemingly affects Threadripper users more than others (sometimes disabling SMT can help speed things up a bit). Then again, we also have Threadripper users that don't notice these issues at all so... It kinda depends but nonetheless arguably the things we are trying to improve now aren't showstoppers necessarly.

I'm on a 5995WX and I very much appreciate the fast(er) IR and overall rendering experience :)

[tatarka]

thank you for the update, I think I will go for the 9950x3d too

corona engine don't use extra AMD 3D V-Cache Technology that come with x3d.. i think

[Jens]

Seems like it does perform better anyway:
https://www.techspot.com/review/2965-amd-ryzen-9-9950x3d/

[marchik]

thank you for the update, I think I will go for the 9950x3d too

In any case, I would recommend waiting for the mass benchmark results. It is quite possible that reviewers now just have selected samples of chips and all the advantage over 9950x is explained by this (for the same reason, my sample is just slightly worse than others). And I do not see objective reasons why it should give a result better than 9950x. In the end we don't know at what settings of curve offsets and PBO limits and with what cooling the existing benchmarks were executed and what had to be done to achieve frequencies of 5.45-5.5 GHz

After all, this processor is mostly a marketing story, since it is the most expensive in the line but offers gaming performance identical to a much cheaper 9800X3D, which means that it will be in demand only among enthusiasts who need both productivity and gaming performance (in other words, who just want the best possible from the non-HEDT segment because there is no objective sense for any other group of buyers to overpay for it) and AMD can create artificial hype around it for this reason (this certainly sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it definitely worked for me :D)

[Jens]

cheers marchik, good insight! Should (in theory) any 6000mhz cl 30 48gb modules work in a 4x configuration? If having to lower ram speeds as you did, does that have a real life performance slow down in production work or is it just for gamers? (I don't care about the gaming performance).

Reason I ask is that the modules I saw by other reddit user who managed to run 4x48gb at 6000mhz, is currently sold out.