AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and Intel Rocket Lake face off in UserBenchmark — Rocket Lake leads single-core tests but trails in multi-core and overall scores

In the past few days, we've seen several leaked benchmarks showing how the Ryzen 5000 Zen 3 CPUs have managed to get ahead of the Intel Comet Lake processors in single-threaded workloads. When Intel offered an overview of the upcoming Cypress Cove-based Rocket Lake processor last week, it promised a double-digit percentage IPC improvement from Comet Lake.

Topping-out at 8C/16T at 125 W and featuring 10 nm Ice Lake CPU cores backported to 14 nm, Rocket Lake seemed somewhat underwhelming at first glance. However, things may not be so bad after all.

Known leaker @TUM_APISAK has unearthed a UserBenchmark listing of the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X and an unnamed Intel Rocket Lake CPU. A comparison of scores from both the processors shows that Rocket Lake is not too far behind the Ryzen 9 5950X. According to the benchmark, the Ryzen 9 5950X has a score of 108% while the Rocket Lake CPU manages to come very close at 103%.

The UserBenchmark comparison shows Rocket Lake gaining an edge in 1-core and 2-core tests while the Ryzen 9 5950X had clear leads in all multi-core tests. The benchmark lists the Ryzen 9 5950X as attaining a 4.5 GHz average boost while the Rocket Lake chip could muster 4.2 GHz average.

It will be interesting to see how Rocket Lake would fare against other Ryzen 5000 processors, particularly the Ryzen 7 5800X, in single-core tests.

@TUM_APISAK shared another UserBenchmark entry in which the Ryzen 9 5950X scores 138% compared to the Ryzen 9 3950X's 122% in the memory benchmark when tested with the same DDR4-3600 G.SKILL CL16 RAM modules.

While surely interesting, we would advise readers from reading too deep into these results. UserBenchmark had its own share of controversies in the past wherein it was deemed that the benchmark was biased towards Intel. This led to UserBenchmark posts being banned in popular subreddits such as r/hardware and r/intel. r/AMD, too, has imposed an AutoModerator restriction on UserBenchmark posts.

All that being said, it is probable that Intel would not like conceding 2021 fully to AMD. Rocket Lake may possibly have a pleasant surprise in store.