AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D Productivity Benchmarks — The TLDR:
The first slides are simplified without the overclocking configs, while the remainder contains the full roster of tested configurations. We boil down productivity application performance into two broad categories: single- and multi-threaded. These slides show the geometric mean of performance in several of our most important tests in each category, but be sure to look at the individual benchmark results below.
We expect the Ryzen 9 7950X3D to lose some performance compared to the 7950X due to its lower power thresholds. We see that play out right away — the Ryzen 9 7950X is 6% faster than the 7950X3D in this cumulative measure of threaded applications, and 5% faster in single-threaded work. That’s comparable to the 5800X’s 7% advantage in single-threaded work over the previous-gen 5800X3D, but the loss in threaded work is more severe than the 1% loss we saw with the 5800X3D.
On paper, we’re looking at a 68W peak power reduction (42% less) for the 7950X3D compared to its vanilla 7950X counterpart. In contrast, the 5800X/3D maintained the same 105W TDP limit for both the 3D V-cache and non-V-Cache variants, though real-world measurements found that the 5800X3D consumed roughly 20% less power than the 5800X. Regardless, it’s obvious the 7950X3D’s proportionately larger power reduction has an impact here.
The Core i9-13900K is 17% faster than the standard Ryzen 9 7950X3D configuration in single-threaded work and 4% faster in threaded applications. We have two overclocked configs here for the 7950X3D — the auto-overclocked PBO, and PBO combined with undervolting (PBO UV). Notably, the PBO UV config narrows the 13900K’s lead in single-threaded work to 11% and reduces the disparity in threaded work to a mere 1%. That’s incredible, given the 7950X3D’s much lower power consumption level (you can see the 7950X3D’s incredible power efficiency metrics on the power page). Regardless of whether or not the chip is undervolted, the 7950X3D consumes far less power and will generate much less heat than the 13900K, but that doesn’t come with a huge performance loss.
The 8-core 5800X3D definitely isn’t the best comparison to the 16-core 7950X3D. Still, it does highlight just how much AMD has improved the performance of its X3D chips by bringing the tech to higher core count chips with a newer architecture — the 7950X3D is 28% faster in single-threaded and 127% faster in multi-threaded work than the Ryzen 7 5800X3D.
Undervolting the 7950X3D results in much better results, particularly in single-threaded apps, than we see with the auto-overclocking PBO alone. As such, we’ll use the undervolted configuration instead of PBO for the breakout tests below.
Tom's Hardware | Multi-Thread | Single-Thread |
$569 — Ryzen 9 7950X | 100% | 87.9% |
$699 — Core i9-13900KS | 99.5% | 100% |
$589 — Core i9-13900K | 98.6% | 98.0% |
$699 — Ryzen 9 7950X3D | 94.7% | 83.8% |
$409 — Core i7-13700K | 79.1% | 90.8% |
$358 — Ryzen 7 5800X3D | 41.5% | 65.9% |
Rendering Benchmarks on AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D
The Ryzen 9 7950X3D is significantly slower in heavily-threaded workloads than the vanilla 7950X, an unavoidable byproduct of its lower power thresholds. However, the chip still holds its own against Intel’s finest in several benchmarks, like Blender, Corona, C-Ray, and V-Ray. Other benchmarks aren’t as forgiving, like the single- and multi-threaded Cinebench and POV-Ray benchmarks, where the Intel chips take big leads.
Engaging PBO and undervolting the chip helps regain ground in a few of these benchmarks, particularly in single-threaded work. It even gives the 7950X3D the lead over the pricey 13900KS in Blender, Corona, and V-Ray. Regardless, these aren’t the clear leads we’ve seen in the past from AMD’s heavily-threaded chips, so you’ll need to be aware of the tradeoffs.
Encoding Benchmarks on AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D
Most encoders tend to be either heavily threaded or almost exclusively single-threaded — it takes an agile chip to master both disciplines. Handbrake, SVT-HEVC, and SVT-AV1 serve as our threaded encoders, while LAME, FLAC, and WebP are indicative of how the chips handle lightly-threaded engines.
It isn’t surprising to find the Ryzen 9 7950X3D trailing in the lightly-threaded applications — the Intel chips have much higher peak boost clock rates. The 7950X3D is more competitive in the threaded benchmarks, but it doesn’t score any convincing wins.
Adobe, Web Browsing, Office, and Productivity on AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D
The Ryzen 9 7950X3D scores a needed win in the Adobe Premier Pro and is competitive in the Lightroom and Photoshop benchmark but trails in the rest of these benchmarks.
Compilation, Compression, AI Chess Engines, AVX-512 Performance on AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D
This selection of tests runs the gamut from the exceedingly branchy code in the LLVM compilation workload to the massively parallel molecular dynamics simulation code in NAMD to encryption and compression/decompression performance.
The demanding Y-cruncher benchmark computes Pi with the AVX instruction set and has optimizations for both Intel and AMD’s architectures. The Ryzen 9 7950X3D takes a comfortable lead in the single-threaded workload due to its support for AVX-512, a luxury the Raptor Lake chips don’t enjoy due to the hybrid x86 architecture. However, Intel narrows the contest when we flip to the threaded y-cruncher benchmark, primarily because it has higher memory throughput when all cores are active.
The Ryzen 9 7950X3D trails in many of these workloads, though it is impressive in the AES and SHA3 workloads. Meanwhile, the Intel chips score convincing wins in the LLVM and NAMD workloads.
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