AMD have released their new 16 core Ryzen 9 3950X CPU, but is it worth paying more compared
to their 12 core 3900X? In this video we’ll check out the differences between them in
games and various applications, both at stock and while overclocked to help you decide which
to get.
Let’s start out with the specs. The major difference between the two is that the 3950X
has 4 more cores than the 3900X. The 3950X has a lower base clock, however the max boost
clock is slightly higher, but we’ll only approach that in lighter workloads. Otherwise
the 3950X has some extra cache.
The 3900X comes with the Wraith Prism cooler, however the 3950X doesn’t come with a cooler,
so you’ll have to factor in extra money for a decent one to keep those 16 cores cool.
I’m comparing these two CPUs because the 3950X is basically the next step up from the
3900X, so the goal is to help you decide which to pick. The 3900X launched at $500 USD, while
the 3950X launched for 50% more money at $750 USD, however availability has been scarce
on both due to high demand so higher prices are typical.
Both CPUs were tested in the same system. I’m testing with the MSI x570 Unify motherboard
which can handle either of these CPUs without issue. Steve over at Hardware Unboxed has
done VRM testing with the Unify with the 3900X and it was performing quite well compared
to alternatives. Unlike most of the other MSI boards I’ve used on the channel, there’s
no RGB here which I’m sure will please some. The board is on the more premium side at $300
USD, updated prices are linked in the description, but it includes some great features like 2.5
gigabit ethernet, WiFi 6, and 3 PCIe gen 4 M.2 slots.
For the other components I’m using 16gb of DDR4-3200 CL14 memory running in dual channel
and an Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti to reduce GPU bottlenecks. I’m using the Deepcool Castle 240ex all-in-one
liquid cooler for both CPUs with Noctua NT-H1 paste, so we should be able to get a good
apples to apples comparison.
I’ve tested both CPUs at stock and with Precision Boost Overdrive enabled, which I’ll
refer to as PBO, so we can get an idea of how performance can be improved with a simple
change. Essentially this is like an overclock, however results will vary based on things
like motherboard and cooling solution.
With that in mind we’ll first check out the differences in various applications, as
well as power draw and thermals, followed by gaming tests at 1080p and 1440p resolutions
afterwards, then finish up by comparing some performance per dollar metrics.
Let’s start out with Cinebench R20. I’ve got the results with PBO enabled through the
Ryzen Master software on the upper half of the graph, while the stock results are on
the lower half. As expected the 3950X is ahead in the multicore result, it’s got 4 more
cores after all. At stock it’s 27% faster than the 3900X, rising up to a 30% lead once
both have PBO enabled. The single core results are different, the 3950X is still ahead with
a 4.5% lead at stock, however with PBO enabled I found the single core result on the 3950X
to suffer a little while the 3900X gained some ground, meaning the 3950X was just 3.3%
ahead.
Although Cinebench R15 has been replaced by the newer R20 just covered, I wanted to also
include the results of this one too as many others still use it, that way I’ve got more
comparable numbers. This time the single core result with the 3950X was unchanged with PBO
enabled, while the 3900X saw a 3.3% improvement with PBO. Of course multicore is where the
3950X really shines, scoring 26.5% higher than the 3900X at stock, increasing to a 29%
improvement with PBO enabled.
I’ve tested the Blender BMW and Classroom benchmarks, and as another workload that loves
higher core count it’s a nice win for the 3950X, which was 26% ahead of the 3900X at
stock. With PBO enabled the 3950X was now around 30% faster than the 3900X, however
we can see the 3900X results didn’t really change very much by activating PBO.
Handbrake was used to convert a 4K file to 1080p, and then a different 1080p file to
720p. This is another workload that benefits from more cores, however I wasn’t seeing
as big of a difference when compared to the other multicore tests covered so far. At stock
the 1080p file was 10% faster than the 3900X, while the 4K file was just 3% faster with
the 3950X. With PBO the 4K file was still 3% faster on the 3950X, while the 3900X gained
more ground here, reducing the 3950X’s lead to being 8.5% quicker.
Adobe Premiere was used to export one of my laptop review videos at 4K. At stock the 3950X
was completing the task 7% faster than the 3900X, however enabling PBO only improved
the 3900X by 1 second, whereas the 3950X was now 1.4% faster than itself with PBO off.
This means when PBO is enabled on both chips, the 3950X was able to complete the video export
task 8.4% quicker than the 3900X.
I’ve also tested the warp stabilizer effect in Adobe Premiere, basically this processes
a video file to smooth it out, however it tends to be a less threaded process. At stock
the 3950X was 5% faster, however interestingly with PBO enabled the 3950X actually started
performing a little worse, just like we saw in the Cinebench R20 single core result. This
means that once both have PBO enabled I was seeing no measurable difference between the
two.
I’ve used 7-Zip to test compression and decompression speeds, and this was the only
test where the 3900X was actually beating the 3950X, granted it was only by 1% in compression
at stock, and only just barely in front with PBO enabled. Decompression is a totally different
story though, at stock the 3950X was performing this operation 30% faster than the 3900X,
and 34% faster when both have PBO enabled, which was the biggest performance improvement
out of all the applications I’ve tested.
The V-Ray benchmark is another workload that heavily favours higher core counts, which
is why at stock there was almost a 31% higher score with the 3950X. Once PBO is enabled
the 3950X is now 32% ahead of the 3900X, again one of the biggest improvements seen out of
all tests.
The Corona benchmark is similar in the sense that it also uses CPU cores to render out
a scene, so at stock there’s a big 28% improvement with the 3950X. With PBO enabled both are
just a second faster, so the 3950X maintains that 28% lead.
I’ve also thrown in Geekbench due to a few requests, the 3950X wasn’t even 1% faster
in terms of single core, and the multicore score was about 13% higher with the 3950X
both at stock and with PBO enabled.
These are the differences between the 3950X and 3900X CPUs in all of these applications,
as we can see it really depends on the specific workload. I’m aware that I’m mixing single
and multicore tests here, so the 15% average improvement doesn’t really mean much. We
can see those rendering applications like Blender, Cinebench, Corona and V-Ray are absolutely
loving the extra CPU cores available from the 3950X, and the single core results aren’t
too bad either.
With precision boost overdrive enabled the single core results lower a bit, as we saw
in some cases the 3950X seemed to do a little worse here, however it makes up for it in
multicore workloads where PBO was able to boost it up further.
I haven’t bothered testing with manual overclocks, as I’ve found PBO to generally work better
on average, as we’re not capping all cores to a speed that would otherwise be lower than
what they can boost to in less core heavy workloads.
I’ve also measured total system power draw from the wall while running the Blender benchmark.
At stock the 3950X is actually using less power than the 3900X, despite it having 4
extra cores and completing the test significantly faster. This is a seriously impressive result,
it seems that due to the higher quality silicon the 3950X is able to run with a lower voltage.
When we enable PBO though the 3950X blows up, whereas I saw minimal difference with
my 3900X, which would explain why there were usually larger improvements with PBO enabled
on the 3950X.
These are the CPU temperatures with the same blender tests running, and the results kind
of mirror the power draw results that we just saw. At stock the 3950X was also running cooler
despite having 4 extra cores being hit with load, again as it’s able to run with a lower
voltage than the 3900X. The temperature rose a fair bit comparatively with PBO on though,
but as I’m only using a 240mm radiator we could definitely improve that further with
better cooling.
If I didn’t see others like hardware unboxed also report the 3950X as using less power
and running cooler then I probably would have thought that I was going crazy.
Next let’s get into the gaming results, I’ve tested these games at both 1080p and
1440p resolutions. These are just stock results, we’ll check out PBO afterwards.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested using the game’s built in benchmark tool. I’ve got
the 1080p results towards the bottom and the 1440p results in the upper section of the
graph. It doesn’t look like much of a difference, but this game saw one of the largest changes
out of all titles tested, with a 2.3% increase to average frame rate on the 3950X at 1080p,
and a 3.2% higher average FPS at 1440p.
Battlefield V was tested in campaign mode. Again it doesn’t look like much of a difference,
but at 1080p this game saw the biggest improvement on the 3950X with a 3.1% higher average FPS
over the 3900X, however there was a larger 6% boost to the 1% low. At 1440p the results
were similar, again around a 3% higher average frame rate with the 3950X.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was tested with the built in benchmark, and typically I find
this to be a CPU heavy test, however it doesn’t seem that the extra cores with the 3950X are
giving much of an edge, with just a 2.2% improvement to average frame rate at 1080p and 2% at 1440p.
Control was tested with the high setting preset, once more the results are quite close together,
realistically I don’t think you’d be able to tell which CPU you were using in a blind
gaming test. At 1080p the 3950X was 2.3% higher than the 3900X, lowering a little to a 1.7%
lead at 1440p.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the game’s benchmark tool. Just a small
1.5% improvement to average FPS at 1080p, and an even smaller 0.9% increase at 1440p,
nothing major at all.
Fortnite was tested using the replay feature with the exact same replay file on both CPUs.
The differences are even less interesting here, with just a 0.6% improvement seen to
average FPS at 1080p with the 3950X, and almost zero difference seen once we step up to 1440p.
PUBG was also tested using the replay feature, again with the same replay in all instances.
Interestingly this time the 3900X was a little ahead at 1080p, but again like most of the
other game results we’ve looked at so far the difference is small, just a few frames.
At 1440p the 3950X was ahead again, granted by 0.23% which is honestly well within margin
of error anyway.
Rainbow Six Siege was tested with the game’s benchmark, and was the only other test where
the 3950X actually saw lower performance than the 3900X at 1080p, however again it was only
a small amount. At 1440p the two are so close that it honestly doesn’t really matter at
this point.
Borderlands 3 was also tested with the game’s benchmark tool, there was just a small 1%
improvement to average FPS at 1080p, and this rose up to a 3% lead with the resolution set
to 1440p.
It might not look like it, but Ghost Recon Breakpoint saw an above average 2.2% improvement
to average FPS at 1080p, although the 1% low was the same regardless of CPU. At 1440p the
average FPS is much closer together with no real noteworthy differences.
Over all 10 games tested we’re only looking at a 1.3% higher average frame rate with the
3950X at 1080p. A couple games worked slightly better with the 3900X, I’m not sure if that’s
simply due to the core count difference or something else like occasionally lower single
core performance on the 3950X like we saw earlier, but realistically even the best case
with Battlefield 5 is nothing significant.
At 1440p no games were ahead on the 3900X, and the average improvement with the 3950X
rose slightly to 1.4% higher average FPS, but again realistically none of these are
serious differences.
I think we can safely say that in terms of gaming it doesn’t seem to make sense to
spend more to get the 3950X, the 3900X is close enough in that regard, at least for
today anyway, that could change in future as games start taking more advantage of extra
cores. If your whole system is going to be dedicated to gaming, then you’d probably
be better served by something else like the Intel 9900K, you can see how that stacks up
using the link in the top right.
Either of these two higher core count CPUs would be better for productivity workloads
that will benefit from the extra cores, say some sort of rendering, however as we’ve
seen they can still game just fine even if it’s not the absolute best possible result.
I’ve also had a quick look at Battlefield V with and without Precision Boost Overdrive
enabled. There was a small improvement with PBO enabled to both, but it was only around
1 FPS or so, so nothing amazing. This would of course vary by game, but given we’re
already seeing such close results in all games I figured there wasn’t too much point redoing
them all with PBO too.
Next let’s check out value, these are the cost per frame values over all 10 games tested
at stock. Technically the 3900X comes with a cooler which you could use, and although
I expect the Deepcool AIO I’ve tested with will allow it to perform a little better,
you’d probably be able to get most of the results with the Wraith Prism cooler that
it comes with. For this reason I’ve listed the 3900X with stock cooler, and the 3950X
if you just bought it without a cooler, granted that one is a bit of a useless metric because
the 3950X doesn’t come with a cooler, so you have to buy one which will increase its
cost. If we budget in $100 for a decent AIO for the 3950X it’s costing us significantly
more than the 3900X. This is the case even if we also buy a cooler for the 3900X, this
is because the gaming performance between both was so close, yet the 3950X is at least
$250 USD more.
It’s not all about gaming though, this is a performance per dollar graph for Cinebench
R20 multicore, basically each number on the graph is how many points in Cinebench you
can get per dollar, so higher is better. The 3900X is still coming out ahead here in terms
of value for the performance you get, the 3950X costs at least 50% more money but performs
around 30% faster in heavily threaded applications like Cinebench. Basically if you really need
the extra multicore performance from the 3950X then you’re paying more to get it.
So with all of that in mind which of these two CPUs would you get, the 12 core 3900X
or 16 core 3950X?
For me personally as I don’t game I’d probably be leaning towards the 3950X for
video editing, however there wasn’t that big of a difference in my own Adobe Premiere
testing to really justify it, it would just be nice to have for the future. Being realistic,
the 3900X is better value and still performs great. For gaming either CPU will work well
with minimal differences, but if you’re only concern is gaming then you’re probably
not going to be picking between these two CPUs, and would instead be looking at something
else like the Intel i9-9900K. If you want something that’s a good all rounder, then
either the 3900X or 3950X should do well, it just comes down to how much you’re willing
to spend and how much you value the extra cores and performance. The 3900X is better
value and still performs great, and the 3950X is there if you’re willing to pay a bit
more and run heavily threaded applications.
Let me know which of these two AMD CPUs you’d pick and why down in the comments, the 3900X
or 3950X, and if you’re new to the channel consider getting subscribed for future comparisons
and tech videos like this one.