Ryzen 9 9950X supercharged with 6 GHz overclock — extra 250 MHz increases multi-core performance by 27% in Geekbench

It looks like those who received their AMD Ryzen 9000 samples early are continuing to test them, as an interesting new benchmark result has been shared online. Twitter’s HXL, an Asus system packing an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X engineering sample (ES), was checked in Geekbench 6. Moreover, this Zen 5 16C/32T consumer flagship was overclocked to 5.95 GHz. That’s a modest 300 MHz faster than the stock maximum clock.

The overclocked Zen 5 desktop chip achieved a 3,706-point single-core score and 26,047 in the multi-core tests built into Geekbench 6. The system included 32GB of DDR5 memory, and as we see, the test run was completed yesterday.

Over recent weeks, we have seen many leaked AMD Ryzen 9 9950X tests. One Anandtech forum user has been busy benchmarking an ES model using Cinebench R23 and a wide range of power targets. It has shed light on this chip’s potential and the diminishing benefits of applying higher power targets.

Back to today’s result from an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X ES overclocked to 6 GHz, we are going to assume that this wasn’t an LN2-cooled feat but someone more casually pushing their chip with an off-the-shelf air or AiO cooler. Importantly, this may be a better indication of the overclock ability and performance that the average buyer will experience. However, please add salt for a leaked benchmark and understand that this is just a sample that may not represent the average retail released 9950X.

AMD’s Ryzen 9 9950X, overclocked to 6 GHz, is at the top of the table, and it certainly looks like it will be an impressive performer. The second result in the table came from a July 10 entry to the Geekbench database, and its 5.7 GHz max clock precipitates a 10% slower single-core score and a gaping 26% slower multi-core score. Something else must be going on, not mentioned in the Geekbench 6 data we can see, that creates such a gulf between the systems.

Another enlightening view of the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X came from an official source, the firm’s in-house Extreme Overclocking team. They cooled the upcoming Zen 5 flagship with LN2 to demonstrate impressive performance in popular benchmarks like Cinebench R23 and R15. The team broke records along the way, thanks to the Zen 5 architecture IPC benefits and lashings of LN2 enabling clock speeds up to 6.75 GHz.

Sadly, we will have to wait a little longer than expected to get chips like the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X in Tom’s Hardware labs. Yesterday the news broke that these Zen 5 desktop chips would start to roll out in August due to unspecified quality issue(s).