AMD Ryzen 9 9950X CPU Tested With Unlimited PPT Mode: 320W Power, Over 5.5 GHz Clocks Across All Cores, 40% Faster Vs 14900K

AMD’s Ryzen 9 9950X CPU has been tested with a 5.5 GHz all core overclock and again, using an unlimited power profile pushing 320W power.

AMD Ryzen 9 9950X Overclocked To 5.5 GHz Across All 16-Cores At 253W, Also Tested With Unlimited PPT Settings With 320W Power Consumption

The final bombs of the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X CPU tests has been dropped by Anandtech forum member, Igor_kavinski who has been showing us how the 16-core flagship scales at various TDP limits within the Blender benchmark. So far, he has shown 60W,90W,120W,160W, 230W PPT results, and now, we have two new entries, one with a 5.5 GHz overclock at 253W and one with unlimited PPT.

The chip being used by Igor’s source is an engineering sample which should have slightly lower clocks than the retail chip. At 60W, the chip was able to come close to the Intel Core i9-12900K while boosting up to 4084 MHz, and at 90W, it was able to outperform the Ryzen 9 5950X while boosting up to 5053 MHz. At 120W, the chip beats all of the top current-gen processors from Intel and AMD while boosting up to 5555 MHz and the same is the case with the 230W result which takes things up a notch with the frequency now hitting above 5.6 GHz.

With the unlimited PPT mode, the maximum frequency didn’t see any change but the clock speeds across all cores were higher, going beyond 5.5 GHz which in the case of the 230W PPT were around 5.4 GHz. There is also the 5.5 GHz static overclock which was achieved at a PPT of 253W to match Intel’s maximum power limit for its Core i9 CPUs. Do keep in mind that the other chips tested here are running at their peak power ratings. It’s only the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X ES CPU that has been tuned. To summarize it all:

• Ryzen 9 9950X (Unlimited PPT) – 5621 MHz Peak Clock / 80C Temps
• Ryzen 9 9950X (253W PPT / 5.5 GHz OC) – 5500 MHz Peak Clock / 61C Temps
• Ryzen 9 9950X (230W PPT) – 5620 MHz Peak Clock / 62C Temps
• Ryzen 9 9900X (160W PPT) – 5555 MHz Peak Clock / 58C Temps
• Ryzen 9 9950X (120W PPT) – 5220 MHz Peak Clock / 55C Temps
• Ryzen 9 9950X (90W PPT) – 5050 MHz Peak Clock / 49C Temps
• Ryzen 9 9950X (60W PPT) – 4084 MHz Peak Clock / 41C Temps

It should be mentioned that these results were achieved using a water-cooling setup. AMD has officially recommended an AIO with its Ryzen 9 9000 CPUs such as the 9950X and 9900X & we did mention earlier that Ryzen 9000 chips should run a bit cooler than the Ryzen 7000 “Zen 4” CPUs. The cooling appears to be custom and very powerful since keeping a chip under 90C at a 320W TDP is quite an impressive feat in itself.

With the unlimited PPT, the CPU hit a maximum temperature of 80C while achieving 5621 MHz at peak and an average 5378 MHz frequency. With the static 253W PPT overclock, the CPU hit peak temperatures of 61C while averaging 5.5 GHz across all cores.

As you might expect, the 253W PPT and 5.5 GHz overclock were as fast as the unlimited PPT configuration since all cores were running stable at a higher frequency and had lots of thermal room to work with whereas the unlimited PPT was not only consuming more power but also ran much hotter.

As such, the final performance of the CPU saw up to a 40% improvement over the Core i9-14900K and a 38% improvement over the Ryzen 9 7950X at their stock configurations. The performance per power scaling beyond 230W is minimal and it is better to stick with the 230W PPT if you are aiming for the best performance or if you want that extra 5%, then going for the 5.5 GHz overclock across all cores should be good enough rather than going for an unlimited PPT.

AMD has been leading the efficiency race with its strong Zen portfolio in the past releases and that is looking to be true for the next-generation lineup too. We are fast approaching the launch of the AMD Ryzen 9000 “Zen 5” Desktop CPUs which are expected to hit retail later this month and we can expect many more tests and reviews in the coming weeks.