AMD Ryzen 9 9900X Review

Last week AMD’s Zen 5 architecture arrived to mixed reception on the desktop. KitGuru has reviewed the new Zen 5 Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X and now we are moving on to the grunty Ryzen 9, starting with the 12-core 9900X…

Timestamps:

00:00 Start
00:33 TDP, info and pricing
02:38 Quick run test / Curve optimiser
03:48 Cinebench 2024
04:46 Geekbench 6
05:28 Cinebench R23 multicore
06:06 CPU power consumption
07:18 Cinebench R23 Multi Core per watt
08:08 CPU Temp under full load
09:03 Cinebench R23 single core
09:37 Blender V4.2 Classroom
10:13 7Zip V24
10:33 AIDA64 Memory bandwidth
10:50 3DMark Time Spy
11:20 Gaming benchmarks
15:13 Leo's Closing thoughts

 

Pricing

• 9950X Official MSRP is $649 = £610 inc VAT
• 9900X Official MSRP is $499 = £460 inc VAT
• 9700X Official MSRP is $359 = £340 inc VAT
• 9600X Official MSRP is $279 = £270 inc VAT

Test systems

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 900 and Ryzen 7000
• Motherboard: MSI MEG X670E Ace
• RAM: 32GB G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo RGB DDR5-6000 C30

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5000, 3000 and 2000
• Motherboard: Asus TUF Gaming X570-Plus
• RAM: 32GB Corsair LPX DDR4-3600 C16 (DDR4-3200 for Ryzen 3000 and 2000)

• CPU: Intel Core i7-14700K and i5-14600K
• Motherboard: Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Master X
• RAM: 32GB G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo RGB DDR5-6000 C30

Shared parts for all test systems:

• Graphics: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4080 Gaming OC 16GB
• CPU cooler: Phanteks Glacier One 360D30
• SSD: 1TB Crucial T700
• Power Supply: Seasonic Prime GX-1600 ATX 3.0

Over the past few generations of AMD Zen technology the various 12-core Ryzen 9s have sometimes done well and other times pretty much been ignored. The reasons are fairly clear as a 12-core CPU can never out-perform a 16-core using the same architecture so it has to rely on something else, and that is usually a decent price.

The snag is that AMD has sometime priced the junior Ryzen 9 uncomfortably close to the senior partner, and that is fatal. Thankfully with Ryzen 9 9900X AMD has seen sense and prices the CPU in a rational manner.

The other question is the quality of the silicon. If a six-core chiplet is inferior to an eight-core it follows that 2×6 is much worse than 2×8. With Zen 5 the CPUs we have seen appear to be high quality and that closes the gap between the two versions of Ryzen 9 and swings us firmly in favour of the new Ryzen 9 9900X.

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You can buy the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X for £460.

Pros:

• Zen 5 Ryzen 9 is much more efficient than Zen 4.
• The new Ryzen 9s are superb all-rounders for both work and gaming.
• Ryzen 9 9900X is a sensible step up from Ryzen 7 is your focus is more on work than games.

Cons:

• We need to see X870E motherboards to figure out which DDR5 we should choose.
• AMD surely has plans for Ryzen 9 with 3D cache and that confuses the current picture.
• Software can potentially get confused by the dual chiplet design of Ryzen 9.

KitGuru says: Against all expectations, Ryzen 9 9900X is KitGuru’s pick of the Granite Ridge crop.

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