The Ryzen 9 7950X
The Ryzen 9 7950X is the flagship CPU from the Zen4 lineup. This CPU is packed with 16 cores and 32 threads. You can experience an out-of-the-box base frequency of 4.5GHz and the boost clock goes up to 5.7GHz (F-max of 5.85GHz). The TDP is rated at 170W (230W PPT). As for the cache, the CPU ships with 80MB of L2 (16MB) + L3 (64MB) cache. The Ryzen 9 7950X will cost you less than last-gen’s flagship, coming in at $699. Performance wise, the CPU is on-par or sometimes even better than Intel’s i9-13900K multi-core wise. In single-core testing, the performance is neck to neck against the 13900K with Intel in lead at times. The R9 7950X faces slight over-heating issues due to a decreased surface area. You can read more about this here.
Early Chinese Listing
The R9 7950X can be found at Goofish for around ~850 USD which is $150 more expensive than the retail price. Now as many would know, the Ryzen 7000 CPUs only support AMD’s AM5 socket which is featured on the new -600 series motherboards. One can wait for just 1 more week and get the chip from AMD themself, which in addition comes with official warranty and support. If support for AM4 was still here, this offer might have been decent. Although, it wont hurt to take a look at the chip for 1 week because how often do you see your CPU? To top it off, this might not even be a retail variant so you may face driver issues along with decreased performance. All in all, best to opt for the official way because the 7950X is not a ‘Limited Edition‘ variant that will be produced in limited quantities.
