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.
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
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.
Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.
-
mdd1963 Lots of fanfare about 5 GHz...as though this arbitrary number in and of itself is significant.Reply
The delivered performance is what is significant.
If the 5800X at 'only' 4.3 or 4.4 GHz sustained all-core clock speeds can defeat the 10700K at all core 4.8 GHz at a majority of applications/gaming benchmarks, that is what matters... -
1_rick "Officially, the Ryzen 9 5950X comes with a 4.9-GHz base clock "Reply
Where can I get one of these 4.9GHz-base 5950Xs? I'd pay a premium for that. -
1_rick More seriously, I'd love to know how long the chip can sustain that speed. My 3600X can't hit it's 4.4GHz max boost at all, although 4 cores are capable of 4.35GHz, but even then they can generally only do it for a second or two.Reply -
King_V Replymdd1963 said:Lots of fanfare about 5 GHz...as though this arbitrary number in and of itself is significant.
The delivered performance is what is significant.
If the 5800X at 'only' 4.3 or 4.4 GHz sustained all-core clock speeds can defeat the 10700K at all core 4.8 GHz at a majority of applications/gaming benchmarks, that is what matters...
Absolutely agreed.
Yet, how many times have we seen the hand-wringing complaints from the pro-Intel crowd about how terrible AMD is because they can't hit 5GHz.
Of course, I expect now that they're going to simply change all that and say "because they can't hit 5.3GHz" -
TerryLaze Reply
significantYes, yes it is.mdd1963 said:Lots of fanfare about 5 GHz...as though this arbitrary number in and of itself is significant.
But even in all seriousness, anything a CPU can do at 4Ghz it can do 25% faster at 5Ghz so yes clocks are important.
What you wanted to say is that when comparing different CPUs that don't belong to the same family THEN this number is insignificant. -
TerryLaze Reply
Meh, if ZEN 3 is actually going to be good intel will finally release rocket lake on 14nm, rocket lake will have 20% more compute units(ports go from 8 to 10) and whatever more cache than skylake so it will keep up the status quo we have now.King_V said:Of course, I expect now that they're going to simply change all that and say "because they can't hit 5.3GHz"
Sunny is the arch before rocket so rocket will be at least that.
https://www.servethehome.com/intel-sunny-cove-microarchitecture-details/Intel has made the reservation station structures much wider at four instead of two. Ports have gone from eight to ten. L1 caches on Intel CPUs are getting 50% bigger.
-
JamesSneed Replymdd1963 said:Lots of fanfare about 5 GHz...as though this arbitrary number in and of itself is significant.
The delivered performance is what is significant.
If the 5800X at 'only' 4.3 or 4.4 GHz sustained all-core clock speeds can defeat the 10700K at all core 4.8 GHz at a majority of applications/gaming benchmarks, that is what matters...
While I don't disagree its arbitrary its still neat if we are going see these high clocks and this type of performance. This is pretty huge for AMD to take the crown across the board. -
NightHawkRMX Reply
Then why havent they already?TerryLaze said:Meh, if ZEN 3 is actually going to be good intel will finally release rocket lake on 14nm, rocket lake will have 20% more compute units(ports go from 8 to 10) and whatever more cache than skylake so it will keep up the status quo we have now.
https://www.servethehome.com/intel-sunny-cove-microarchitecture-details/
-
TerryLaze Reply
Because if ZEN 3 isn't that good we will get another round of skylake tweaks.NightHawkRMX said:Then why havent they already?
Also there are certain cycles to go through, intel always releases new CPUs in the beginning of a new year. -
NightHawkRMX If it was ready they would release it as soon as possible. It must not be ready.Reply
They are loosing significant market share in the enthusiast segment to AMD currently. You would think if they had any way to fight back available they would rather than purposely not innovate and loose market share.
They are a business, they aren't going to purposely hold back on releasing it since they are already loosing a lot of marketshare in the segment to amd, regardless of if you think zen is that good or not.