AMD Ryzen 9 9950X

The Ryzen 9 9950X offers performance improvements across the board and the highest performance available on a mainstream PC platform in multi-threaded workloads. However, it lags behind competing chips in gaming, and the generational gains are small enough in some productivity workloads that the previous-gen Ryzen 9 7950X is an attractive alternative.

For productivity and content creation workloads, the Ryzen 9 9950X is second to none in the desktop market. It's no slouch in gaming but if that's all your PC is used for, then there are far cheaper options to go for that perform just as well.

Now that all the (expected) AMD Zen 5 processors are released, the Ryzen 9 9950X is likely to remain the flagship for this generation. While a Ryzen 9 9950X3D is anticipated later this year, it's unlikely to exceed the application performance of the standard 9950X.

In creative workloads, the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X is absolutely the fastest processor on the market right now. However, it does fall behind a bit in gaming, making it hard to recommend to even the most dedicated PC gamer.

All told, we like the Zen 5-based AMD Ryzen 9000 series. These CPUs are generally faster and more efficient then their predecessors, and they arrive at more affordable introductory prices as well. That’s all good stuff that ultimately is a win-win for consumers, though the Ryzen 9000 series doesn’t offer the kind of generational performance leaps we’ve been seen from AMD in the last couple of major processor releases.