Home > CPU Comparison > Core i9 9900K or Ryzen 9 5950X: what's better?

Intel Core i9 9900K vs AMD Ryzen 9 5950X

Intel Core i9 9900K
VS
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X
Intel Core i9 9900K
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X

We compared two desktop CPUs: the 3.6 GHz Intel Core i9 9900K with 8-cores against the 3.4 GHz AMD Ryzen 9 5950X with 16-cores. On this page, you'll find out which processor has better performance in benchmarks, games and other useful information.

  1. Review
  2. Differences
  3. Performance
  4. Specs
  5. Comments (2)

Review

General overview and comparison of the processors
Single-Core Performance
Performance in single-threaded apps and benchmarks
Multi-Core Performance
Measure performance when all cores are involved
Power Efficiency
The efficiency score of power consumption
NanoReview Final Score
Generic CPU rating
The "iGPU" and "Power Efficiency" have a minor impact on the NanoReview Score when comparing desktop CPUs.

Key Differences

What are the key differences between 5950X and 9900K
Advantages of Intel Core i9 9900K
  • Includes an integrated GPU Intel UHD Graphics 630
  • 2% higher Turbo Boost frequency (5 GHz vs 4.9 GHz)
Advantages of AMD Ryzen 9 5950X
  • Has 49152 KB larger L3 cache size
  • More modern manufacturing process – 7 versus 14 nanometers
  • Has 8 more physical cores
  • Newer - released 2 years and 1 month later
  • 40% faster in a single-core Geekbench v6 test - 2276 vs 1621 points
  • Newer PCI Express version – 4.0
  • Around 6.08 GB/s (15%) higher theoretical memory bandwidth

Test in Benchmarks

Comparing the performance of CPUs across various tasks
CPU:
Core i9 9900K
vs
Ryzen 9 5950X

Cinebench R23

Reputable cross-platform benchmark for high-performance processors
Cinebench R23 (Single-Core)
Core i9 9900K
1331
Ryzen 9 5950X +21%
1607
Cinebench R23 (Multi-Core)
Core i9 9900K
12433
Ryzen 9 5950X +108%
25817
Cinebench R23 Ranking (149th and 31st place)
Submit your Cinebench result

GeekBench v6

The new version of this benchmark emulates common operations often used in real-world apps
Geekbench 6 (Single-Core)
Core i9 9900K
1621
Ryzen 9 5950X +40%
2276
Geekbench 6 (Multi-Core)
Core i9 9900K
8151
Ryzen 9 5950X +56%
12728
File compression 545.7 MB/sec 1120 MB/sec
Clang compilation 67.7 Klines/sec 147.1 Klines/sec
HTML 5 Browser 175.1 pages/sec 224.5 pages/sec
PDF Renderer 275.6 Mpixels/sec 372.1 Mpixels/sec
Text processing 159 pages/sec 222.5 pages/sec
Background blur 40.4 images/sec 28.4 images/sec
Photo processing 68.6 images/sec 85 images/sec
Ray tracing 14.5 Mpixels/sec 38.4 Mpixels/sec
Sources: GeekBench [1], [2]

PassMark

Synthetic test that focuses on raw computational performance for low-level functions
Passmark CPU (Single-Core)
Core i9 9900K
2932
Ryzen 9 5950X +18%
3468
Passmark CPU (Multi-Core)
Core i9 9900K
18313
Ryzen 9 5950X +149%
45666
Integer math 66.1 GOps/sec 188.4 GOps/sec
Floating point math 41.1 GOps/sec 100.2 GOps/sec
Find prime numbers 47M Primes/sec 235M Primes/sec
Random string sorting 36.6M Strings/sec 65.8M Strings/sec
Data encryption 6.6 GBytes/sec 39.9 GBytes/sec
Data compression 284.9 MBytes/sec 626.8 MBytes/sec
Physics 938 Frames/sec 1905 Frames/sec
Extended instructions 19B Matrices/sec 40.4B Matrices/sec
Sources: PassMark [3], [4]

Value for money

Enter the current prices of the CPUs and click "Calculate" to determine which one has a better value-to-performance ratio.
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Specifications

Full technical specification of Intel Core i9 9900K and AMD Ryzen 9 5950X

General

Vendor Intel Amd
Released October 8, 2018 October 8, 2020
Type Desktop Desktop
instruction set x86-64 x86-64
Codename Coffee Lake Zen 3 (Vermeer)
Model number i9-9900K -
Integrated GPU UHD Graphics 630 No

CPU

Performance Cores
P-Cores 8 16
P-Threads 16 32
Base Frequency (P) 3.6 GHz 3.4 GHz
Turbo Boost Frequency (P) 5 GHz 4.9 GHz
Total
Total Cores 8 16
Total Threads 16 32
Bus Frequency 100 MHz 100 MHz
Multiplier 36x 34x
Bus Bandwidth 8 GT/s -
L1 Cache 64K (per core) 64K (per core)
L2 Cache 256K (per core) 512K (per core)
L3 Cache 16MB (shared) 64MB (shared)
Unlocked Multiplier Yes Yes

Package

Transistors - 4.15 billions
Fabrication process 14 nm 7 nm
TDP (PL1) 95 W 105 W
Socket LGA-1151 AM4
Peak temperature 100°C 95°C

iGPU

Integrated Graphics Intel UHD Graphics 630 -
GPU Base Clock 350 MHz -
GPU Boost Clock 1200 MHz -
Shading Units 192 -
TMUs 24 -
ROPs 3 -
Execution Units 24 -
TGP 15 W -
Max. Resolution 4096x2304 - 60 Hz -
iGPU FLOPS
Core i9 9900K
0.38 TFLOPS
Ryzen 9 5950X
n/a

Memory Support

Memory types - DDR4-2666 - DDR4-3200
Memory Size 128 GB 128 GB
Max. Memory Channels 2 2
Max. Memory Bandwidth 41.6 GB/s 47.68 GB/s
ECC Support No Yes

Misc

Official site Intel Core i9 9900K official page AMD Ryzen 9 5950X official page
PCI Express Version 3.0 4.0
PCI Express Lanes 16 20
Extended instructions SSE4.1, SSE4.2, AVX-2 -

Cast your vote

Choose between two processors
17 (14.5%)
100 (85.5%)
Total votes: 117

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Comments

So which CPU will you choose: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X or Intel Core i9 9900K?
Avatar
mat 12 December 2020 18:01
With 95W TDP, the 9900k used for the benchmark is a stock version, not overclocked. Overclocked at 4.9-5GHz, it's 38-39% performance increase, hence the 9900k is better for all single core benchmarks.
+6 Reply
Avatar
zomb 05 November 2020 19:41
Is this compared with an overclocked i9 9900k or is it the standard?
+9 Reply
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