AMD's Ryzen 9 7950X shows improved performance with new BIOS version, crushes competition in SiSoft Sandra review

Even if AMD’s Ryzen 7000 desktop processors are a week away from retailer availability, independent reviews and tests are already available online for certain models. The Ryzen 9 7950X flagship, for instance, has already been tested by the SiSoftware Sandra team, while reliable leaker Tum Apisak on Twitter also spotted new Geekbench results that were provided via an X670E AORUS Master motherboard with new BIOS, and it looks like Intel’s Raptor Lake could be in serious trouble.

According to the latest Geekbench 5 results, the Ryzen 9 7950X managed to score 2279 points in single-core tests, whereas multi-core loads turned in an impressive 24810 score. The new BIOS version appears to offer better performance than previous versions, but the difference is only noticeable in multi-core loads.  Even so, the AMD flagship manages to crush the Intel Alder Lake i9-12900KS by around 10% in single-core loads and by more than 30% in multi-core loads.

On the other hand, the SiSoft Sandra review awards the Ryzen 9 7950X with a 10/10 score and proclaims it “a powerhouse of a CPU.” This review notes that DDR5 may have a hand in the overall performance boost, but the most important addition is the support for AVX512 512-bit SIMD extensions, which are not supported by Intel in full capacity anymore due to the hybrid design. Even without the new extensions, the Zen 4 processor is 40 to 100% faster than the Ryzen 9 5950X, but in AVX512 loads, the Ryzen 9 7950X shines with 2.5X performance gains. As the only real downside, the review mentions the TDP increase from 105 to 170 W.

Intel may need to further adjust the Raptor Lake pricing, as the price for the Ryzen 9 7950X is set at US$699. The Ryzen 7000 3D-VCache variants from AMD are on the horizon, as well, so Intel also needs to take these into consideration.

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