Watch our comprehensive AMD Ryzen 9000 review, focused on productivity

AMD’s next-gen Ryzen CPUs are huge, and… well, they’re a bit of a mixed bag. The delayed launch of the first chips — the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X — showed strong single-core performance, but multi-core performance lagged behind Intel.

Now that the top-tier Ryzen 9 9950X and Ryzen 9 9900X models are out, Gordon has taken a deep dive into the series’ performance on the PCWorld YouTube channel.

This is a long video that covers all of the new chips with exhaustive comparisons to both the previous-generation Ryzen 7000 CPUs and Intel’s 14th-generation competition.

If you don’t have 80 minutes to drink in every single point made in this review, then check the video description on YouTube for handy timecodes to all of the benchmark and game tests — or simply scroll down, right below, to where I’ve compiled them for your convenience:

00:00 – Intro 02:10 – Testing methods 10:34 – Cinebench multithread results 13:49 – Cinebench single thread results 16:49 – Blender results 19:59 – Handbrake results 26:13 – Adobe Premiere Pro results 36:12 – DaVinci Resolve results 42:08 – Adobe Photoshop results 47:06 – Microsoft Office results 50:49 – Geekbench results 54:43 – 3DMark Steel Nomad results 56:55 – Cyberpunk 2077 results 58:43 – F1 2023 results 1:01:07 – Rainbow Six Siege results 1:04:21 – Total War: Warhammer III results 1:06:57 – Pricelist 1:19:43 – Final thoughts

At launch, the Ryzen 9000 series is a tough sell. If you’re considering these CPUs, you might already have an AM5-based system and they won’t offer a ton of performance on top of Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 chips, at least at the same level.

And the current/older AMD chips are offered at such deep discounts, it might be hard to resist going with the cheaper option and waiting for the following generation, or maybe just the X3D version of the chips with extra V-cache that should boost game performance.

For more expert insights into all the latest PC hardware, be sure to subscribe to PCWorld on YouTube.

Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer, PCWorld

Michael is a 10-year veteran of technology journalism, covering everything from Apple to ZTE. On PCWorld he’s the resident keyboard nut, always using a new one for a review and building a new mechanical board or expanding his desktop “battlestation” in his off hours. Michael’s previous bylines include Android Police, Digital Trends, Wired, Lifehacker, and How-To Geek, and he’s covered events like CES and Mobile World Congress live. Michael lives in Pennsylvania where he’s always looking forward to his next kayaking trip.

Recent stories by Michael Crider:

AM4-ever: AMD Ryzen 5500X3D CPU shows up in listingsMillions of AMD CPUs vulnerable to hacks, and some won’t get patchedFirst BIOS fixes for crashing Intel CPUs are finally rolling out