The Ryzen 9 5950X was just a few megahertz shy of 5 GHz in yesterday's leaked benchmarks. However, the 16-core monster (via @Tum_Apisak) has redeemed itself today by shattering the 5 GHz mark.
AMD advertises its Ryzen 5000 (codename Vermeer) processors with their maximum boost clock speeds. However, the value doesn't take into the chipmaker's own Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) technology. Under the right conditions, PBO allows the processor to boost beyond AMD's specifications. That feature is probably why the Ryzen 9 5950X, Ryzen 9 5900X and Ryzen 7 5800X are ticking faster than their advertised values in the newly uncovered Geekbench 5 submissions.
Officially, the Ryzen 9 5950X comes with a 4.9 GHz boost clock, however, the 16-core chip peaked as high as 5.04 GHz. It's impressive given that, despite having many chips on our list of best CPUs, AMD has never hit 5 GHz on a Ryzen before, let alone a chip with 16 cores.
The Ryzen 9 5900X and Ryzen 7 5800X seem to benefit from PBO as well. The 12-core and octa-core chips are rated with a 4.8 GHz and 4.7 GHz boost clocks, respectively. Nonetheless, the Ryzen 9 5900X got as high as 4.94 GHz, while the Ryzen 7 5800X maxed out at 4.84 GHz.
| Processor | Cores / Threads | Highest Sighted Clock (GHz) | Base / Boost Clocks (GHz) | L3 Cache (MB) | TDP (W) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ryzen 9 5950X | 16 / 32 | 5.04 | 3.4 / 4.9 | 64 | 105 |
| Ryzen 9 5900X | 12 / 24 | 4.94 | 3.7 / 4.8 | 64 | 105 |
| Ryzen 7 5800X | 8 / 16 | 4.84 | 3.8 / 4.7 | 32 | 105 |
It's funny how prior to Zen 3, Ryzen processors would always get slack about not flaunting huge boost clocks. As a matter of fact, AMD itself admitted during one time that the current Zen 2-based Ryzen 3000 (codename Matisse) offerings don't have any manual overclocking headroom. Now we see a more mature Zen 3 opening the door for higher clock speeds as shown by the trio of Ryzen 5000 parts that are dancing around the 5-GHz line.
There are many factors to take into consideration, but better clock speeds usually convey higher performance. Early Geekbench 5 benchmarks already revealed how the Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X stand as testimony to AMD's promise of an instructions per cycle (IPC) improvement of up to 19% on Ryzen 5000 in comparison to Ryzen 3000. Obviously, this means that the Ryzen 5000 will upset the current CPU hierarchy as we know it.
| Processor | Multi-Core Score | Single-Core Score |
|---|---|---|
| Ryzen 9 5950X | 15,782 | 1,663 |
| Core i9-10980XE | 14,762 | 1,158 |
| Ryzen 9 3950X | 14,100 | 1,292 |
| Ryzen 9 5900X | 12,869 | 1,605 |
| Ryzen 9 3900XT | 12,396 | 1,336 |
| Core i9-10900K | 11,100 | 1,413 |
| Core i7-10700K | 9,017 | 1,355 |
Bear in mind that the Ryzen 5000 results correspond to the best scores out of the limited submissions so far. On the contrary, the scores for the other processors are the average performance based on every submission. Primate Labs Inc. updated the scores around 12 hours ago.
The Ryzen 9 5950X is the current champ in Geekbench 5's single-core charts. The 16-core processor blew past the Core i9-10900K in the single-core test by 17.7% even though Intel's chip flexes a 5.3 GHz maximum boost clock. In regards to multi-core performance, the Ryzen 9 5950X was up to 6.9% faster than Intel's Core i9-10980XE. Intel Xeon and AMD's own Ryzen Threadripper processors were the only ones to beat the Ryzen 9 5950X.
The excitement for Ryzen 5000 processors builds up with every leaked benchmark result. The Zen 3 processors have shown substantial IPC enhancements and now the potential to boost close to or past 5 GHz. There was even an alleged AMD slide suggesting that DDR4-4000 could be the new standard for Ryzen 5000. All things considered, Zen 3 might be one of the most exciting processor launches in the last couple of years.
