90
Michael Justin Allen Sexton
PCMag
“Though competition between AMD and Intel is always fraught, the Ryzen 9 9950X has what it takes to stand for the moment as the best consumer desktop processor on the market.”
Critical Assessment
What Critics Praise
- 16‑core design with high clock speeds
- Runs significantly cooler than the 7950X
- Cheaper than last‑generation flagship
- Excellent Multi-threaded Performance
- Native AVX-512 Support
- Competitive Pricing
Points of Contention
- Power‑hungry (170 W TDP)
- Modest Gaming Gains
- Core Parking Issues
- High temperature operation
- Expensive price tag
Professional Reviews
3 reviews from 3 critics70
Jacqueline Thomas
IGN
“In fact, in many of my tests, the Ryzen 9 9950X has proven to be the fastest CPU on the market right now – which definitely makes the $649 asking price a little easier to swallow.”
60
Paul Alcorn
Tom's Hardware
“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.”