The 9950X is equally disappointing in terms of productivity. Hardware Unboxed found a real performance regression for compression and decompression work, as well as minor improvements over the 7950X in tests like Cinebench, Blender, and image editing in Photoshop. On average, the 9950X is only 3% faster than the 7950X in these productivity tests.
The results are a far cry from AMD’s promises of “monster” performance gains in productivity and gaming. AMD described Zen 5 as a “huge leap forward” that it was “very proud of” during a press conference with The Verge earlier this year.
JayzTwoCents claims that AMD “missed this launch,” and it’s hard to disagree. With Intel’s 13th and 14th Gen processors plagued by crashing issues that have led to extended warranties, many are looking to AMD’s new Zen 5 processors to provide some serious competition to Intel. Now, all eyes are on Intel’s Arrow Lake desktop processors, which are expected to launch later this year.
On an average of 13 games running at 1080p with an RTX 4090, Hardware Unboxed found that the 9950X was just one percent faster than the existing 7950X. AMD’s new flagship Zen 5 CPU delivers the same level of performance it did two years ago, for the most part. There’s no real improvement in efficiency on the power side, either. “From a gaming perspective, the 9950X is a complete and utter failure,” concludes Hardware Unboxed’s Steve Walton.
