Early benchmarks for AMD’s upcoming Ryzen 9 9950X are starting to make the rounds, and they already show some impressive performance gains. Igor Kavinski, in the Anandtech forums, shared benchmarks in Cinebench using an engineering sample of the Ryzen 9 9950X, demonstrating that AMD’s upcoming CPU already manages to outpace Intel’s Core i9-14900KS, according to Wccftech. At 160 watts, the Ryzen 9 9950X achieved a multi-core score of 42,336 in Cinebench R23, while the Core i9-14900KS reached 41,285 in its default Performance power profile. Intel’s CPU regains a lead in its Extreme power mode, but this comes at the cost of consuming 320 watts—double the power consumed by the Ryzen 9 9950X.
However, there’s more to the story than just raw scores. Kavinski was testing an engineering sample of the Ryzen 9 9950X. These are validation models, often restricted in some way. For instance, the retail version of the Ryzen 9 9950X goes up to 170W. The CPU also reached a peak clock speed of 5.2GHz at 160W in Kavinski’s tests, while AMD claims the retail chip will be able to boost up to 5.7GHz. Furthermore, Kavinski’s tests utilized DDR5-4800 memory. The Ryzen 9 9950X supports up to DDR5-8000 memory with the new 800-series chipset, and faster RAM would certainly boost the score even more.
The result at 160W is particularly intriguing, as it offers the closest approximation to what actual buyers can expect from the CPU on release day. Kavinski also ran several other tests at different power modes, from 40W all the way up to unlimited power. In the unlimited mode, with the assistance of liquid nitrogen for cooling, the Ryzen 9 9950X achieved a score of 53,557 while consuming 309W. This is a significant power draw, but it still falls within the ballpark of the Core i9-14900KS in its Extreme power profile.
This performance is not entirely surprising. While the Core i9-14900KS is a powerful CPU, it hails from the lukewarm Raptor Lake refresh generation. As evidenced in our review of the Core i9-14900K, it wasn’t significantly faster than even AMD’s last-gen Ryzen 9 7950X. The comparison with the Ryzen 9 9950X will be against Intel’s current flagship at the time of release, but we’ll have to wait until later in the year for the real battle to commence. Intel is introducing its 15th-gen Arrow Lake CPUs in the second half of the year. The real comparison will be between Ryzen 9000 and Arrow Lake later in the year. With the Ryzen 9 9950X launching on July 31st, however, AMD will at least enjoy several months uncontested.
