It looks like cryptocurrency mining is back in craze, as miners are firing up their old mining hardware from 2022 to cash in. Bitcoin is now north of $72,000, and is dragging up the value of several other cryptocurrencies, one such being Qubic (QBIC). Profitability calculators put 24 hours of Qubic mining on an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X 16-core processor at around $3, after subtracting energy costs involved in running the chip at its default 170 W TDP. "Zen 4" processors such as the 7950X tend to retain much of their performance with slight underclocking, and reducing their power limits; which is bound to hold or increase profitability, while also prolonging the life of the hardware.

And thus, the inevitable has happened—stocks of the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X have disappeared overnight across online retail. With the market presence of the 7950X3D and the Intel Core i9-14900K, the 7950X was typically found between $550-600, which would have added great value considering its low input costs. CPU-based cryptocurrency miners, including the QBIC miner, appear to be taking advantage of the AVX-512 instruction set. AMD "Zen 4" microarchitecture supports AVX-512 through its dual-pumped 256-bit FPU, and the upcoming "Zen 5" microarchitecture is rumored to double AVX-512 performance over "Zen 4." Meanwhile, Intel has deprecated what few client-relevant AVX-512 instructions its Core processors had since 12th Gen "Alder Lake," as it reportedly affected sales of Xeon processors. What about the 7950X3D? It's pricier, but mining doesn't benefit from the 3D V-cache, and the chip doesn't sustain the kind of CPU clocks the 7950X manages to do across all its 16 cores. It's only a matter of time before the 7950X3D disappears, too; followed by 12-core models such as the 65 W 7900, the 170 W 7900X, and the 7900X3D.

Wieland AIO CPU cooler is a prototype closed-loop liquid CPU cooler that lacks a pump, or any form of active coolant flow between the heat-source (the CPU block), and the sink (the radiator). The cooler works on the principle of thermosiphon, where the temperature differential between the source and sink cause coolant flow. This is essentially how solar water heaters work, as they drive coolant (water) between the heating panels and a storage tank. It's not like the cooler is without any moving parts, the radiator still needs ventilation from fans.

Der8auer tested a prototype Wieland cooler, and compared its cooling performance to that of a typical 240 mm AIO CLC (with a pump), on a machine with an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X processor with a 170 W TDP. During a 20-minute Cinebench R23 multithreaded stress test, the 240 mm AIO held temperatures to around 70 °C, while the Wieland AIO managed 78 °C. The power draw with the regular 240 mm AIO was higher, as the processor probably utilized the lower temperature to hold onto higher boost frequencies.

China's homegrown Loongson 3A6000 CPU shows promise but still needs to catch up AMD and Intel's latest offerings in real-world performance. According to benchmarks by Chinese tech reviewer Geekerwan, the 3A6000 has instructions per clock (IPC) on par with AMD's Zen 4 architecture and Intel's Raptor Lake. Using the SPEC CPU 2017 processor benchmark, Geekerwan has clocked all the CPUs at 2.5 GHs to compare the raw benchmark results to Zen 4 and Intel's Raptor Lake (Raptor Cove) processors. As a result, the Loongson 3A6000 seemingly matches the latest designs by AMD and Intel in integer results, with integer IPC measured at 4.8, while Zen 4 and Raptor Cove have 5.0 and 4.9, respectively. The floating point performance is still lagging behind a lot, though. This demonstrates that Loongson's CPU design can catching up to global leaders, but still needs further development, especially for floating point arithmetic.

However, the 3A6000 is held back by low clock speeds and limited core counts. With a maximum boost speed of just 2.5 GHz across four CPU cores, the 3A6000 cannot compete with flagship chips like AMD's 16-core Ryzen 9 7950X running at 5.7 GHz. While the 3A6000's IPC is impressive, its raw computing power is a fraction of that of leading x86 CPUs. Loongson must improve manufacturing process technology to increase clock speeds, core counts, and cache size. The 3A6000's strengths highlight Loongson's ambitions: an in-house LoongArch ISA design fabricated on 12 nm achieves competitive IPC to state-of-the-art x86 chips built on more advanced TSMC 5 nm and Intel 7 nm nodes. This shows the potential behind Loongson's engineering. Reports suggest that next-generation Loongson 3A7000 CPUs will use SMIC 7 nm, allowing higher clocks and more cores to better harness the architecture's potential. So, we expect the next generation to set a bar for China's homegrown CPU performance.

A Reddit user has shared their experience of passively cooling an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X, with some modifications to the setup. Using the Streacom DB4 passively cooled case, the user u/AromaticImpress7778 pulled off cooling a processor with 16 cores and 32 threads with a TDP of 170 Watts. Interestingly, the Streacom DB4 case rates CPU support for only 65 Watts, meaning some modifications were in place. To support the high-TDP CPU, the user used two of the one-kilogram copper bars and attached them to the case. Heat is transferred to the two one-kilogram blocks using the case's default plate and an additional 233-gram copper plate for the CPU and motherboard. These big copper blocks are not soldered to the case, but instead, the user puts Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut liquid metal between copper parts and Arctic MX-6 between the case and copper.

To cool the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X and MSI B650I board, accompanied by HDPlex GaN 250 W and 64 GB of memory, the system did well enough for a passive build. After running the system at full load, the CPU reached 95 degrees Celsius for CCD1 and 95 degrees Celsius for CCD2. The external panels of the Streacom DB4 case were getting 50C to 60C of heat. Additionally, the user noted that the usage of this system will be more relaxed, as it will not run under full load for a prolonged period. Regarding the system's total weight, the entire build weighs around 13 KG, with 4.4 KG of that being only copper. The case weighs 7.5 KG, and the other parts weigh about one kilogram.

AMD's upcoming Ryzen 9 7950X3D processor will bring 16 cores and 32 threads along with 16 MB of L2 cache and 128 MB of L3 cache for 144 MB of 3D V-cache present on the package. Today, we get to see it in action for the first time in benchmarks like Blender for 3D content creation and Geekbench 5 for synthetic benchmarks, where we get to compare the scores to the already existing models. In Blender, the new AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D scores 558.59 points, while the regular Ryzen 9 7950X scores 590.28 points. This represents a 5.4% regression from the original model; however, we are yet to see how other content creation benchmarks suit the new CPU.

For Geekbench 5 synthetics, the upcoming Ryzen 9 7950X3D scores 2,157 points in the single-core score and 21,841 points in the multi-core score. The regular Ryzen 9 7950X can reach around 2246 points for single-core and 25,275 points for multi-core score, which is relatively faster than the new cache-enhanced Ryzen 9 7950X3D design. Of course, some of these benchmark results show that the 4.2 GHz base frequency of Ryzen 9 7950X3D plays a significant role in the overall performance comparison, given that the regular Ryzen 9 7950X is set to a 4.5 GHz base clock. Both designs share the same 5.7 GHz boost speed, so we have yet to see more benchmarks showing other differences induced by larger cache sizes.

AMD Ryzen 7000-series "Zen 4" desktop processors got their first round of price-cuts on leading retailer Newegg, as the company has a hard time justifying their launch-prices in the wake of Intel's 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" and declining demand in the PC components market. The new pricing sees the top Ryzen 9 7950X 16-core/32-thread chip priced at USD $574, down from $700 (an 18% price-cut). The 12-core/24-thread Ryzen 9 7900X sees its price go down from $550 to $474 (down 14%).

The 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 7700X gets a $50 price-cut sending its price down from $400 to roughly $350. The 6-core/12-thread Ryzen 5 7600X gets a similar $50 cut, which means the chip can now be had for roughly $250, down from its $300 launch price. All four SKUs face stiff competition from the aggressively priced 13th Gen Core SKUs, which include the i9-13900K, the i7-13700K, and the i5-13600K. Prices of Socket AM5 motherboards are another big put-off as they're a major contributor to platform costs, which is restricted to DDR5 memory. The Intel platform currently includes entry-level chipset options, as well as motherboards with DDR4 support.

A reliable source with CPU and platform leaks, ECSM_Official, made some new predictions about release timelines of upcoming desktop processors, and how 2023 could play out for Intel and AMD. 2022 is done, with no new desktop processor SKUs expected to launch from either brands. Intel is expected to flesh out its 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" desktop processor family in Q1 2023, with the addition of "locked" non-K SKUs spanning all four brand extensions (i3/i5/i7/i9). Besides these, Intel is expected to launch its new flagship, the Core i9-13900KS, with boost frequencies hitting the 6 GHz mark, in an attempt to ward off the threat from "Zen 4" with 3D Vertical Cache, a technology that springboarded "Zen 3" gaming performance to match that of "Alder Lake."

Both the i9-13900KS and AMD Ryzen 7000X3D processors are expected to launch toward the middle of H1-2023 (March-April). AMD is only expected to launch 6-core/12-thread and 8-core/16-thread SKUs with the 3DV cache technology. These would be single-CCD packages. There's no word on dual-CCD ones with 12-core or 16-core counts, so a Ryzen 9 7950X3D is not on the horizon. AMD is expected to debut its entry-level A620 motherboard chipset in Q2-2023. This chipset reportedly lacks CPU overclocking capability, is expected to lack PCIe Gen 5, and caps memory speed to DDR5-4800.

AMD released the latest version of the AGESA microcode for Socket AM5 platform. The new version 1.0.0.3 most notably reintroduces a Precision Boost C-state limiter that [accidentally?] got removed with version 1.0.0.2. This limiter prevents the CPU cores from boosting above 5.50 GHz when more than 4 cores are active (i.e. experiencing heavy workload). SkatterBencher demonstrated how this affects performance on Ryzen 7000-series desktop processors.

NopBench, a utility developed by ElmorLabs, lets you figure out the maximum boost frequency obtainable as workload scales across available CPU cores (i.e. starting from 1-thread, to n-thread). NopBench invokes the NOP instruction, and measures the number of NOP instructions can be processed per second. To make the NOP throughput comparable among processors of different microarchitectures, an architecture-specific factor is used, which for "Raphael" is 2.5x. By comparing the NOP throughput of a Ryzen 9 7950X processor tested with AGESA 1.0.0.2 to 1.0.0.3 (ASUS ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme BIOS versions 0611 vs. 0705); SkatterBencher was able to confirm that that the boost limiter is back in place, and limits Precision Boost frequency to 5.50 GHz when the NopBench load exceeds 4 cores.

Intel has been busy briefing its customers about its 13th gen Core processors and courtesy of a reader over at Videocardz, we now know a little bit more about Intel's positioning of its Core i9-13900K processor. In the slides, Intel is pitching its upcoming flagship CPU against AMD's current flagship, the Ryzen 9 7950X, which is hardly surprising, since it'll be its main competitor. Intel put the two CPUs through 12 game benchmarks using an unknown graphics card and on average, the Core i9-13900K leads by around 11 percent. As always, take the numbers with a sprinkle of salt, especially as we don't know the system configuration, or even what resolution was used, but we'd hazard a guess that it's 1080p or lower. Intel only allowed for one game win for AMD, with Intel being as much as 22 percent ahead in The Riftbreaker.

Intel also claims to lead in content creation, but this doesn't appear to be quite true, as AMD either comes out on top or ties with Intel in all of the Pugetbench tests. Intel is somewhat ahead in AutoCAD Catalyst and a healthy 16 percent ahead in Autodesk Revit, but as we know, the type of scene being rendered can have a huge impact in these types of tests, as we've seen from both camps. On the plus side, here it appears that content creators shouldn't have to worry too much about which CPU is in their system, as both should be performing exceptionally well. Intel is set to launch its 13th gen Core processors tomorrow, so it won't be long until we'll have some third party benchmarks comparing the two CPUs.

AMD Ryzen 9 7950X 16-core processor exhibits some strange behavior with regards to the max boost frequency spread among its cores. A multi-chip module with two 8-core CCDs (CPU complex dies); we noticed early on in our review that the cores located in CCD-1 boost to a higher frequency than the ones in CCD-2, with differences as high as 300 MHz. CapFrameX noticed that when CCD-2 is disabled on a machine running Windows 11 22H2, the processor actually puts out higher gaming performance, by as much as 10%. This is mainly because the cores in CCD-2, with a lower maximum boost frequency no longer handle processing load from the game; and with CCD-2 disabled, CCD-1 has all of the processor's power budget—up to 230 W—to itself, giving it much higher boost residency across its 8 cores.

be quiet!, the German manufacturer for premium PC components, declares that all its AM4-compatible CPU coolers with top-mounting are compatible with AMD's recently introduced Socket AM5 for Ryzen 7000 processors. Thanks to AMD's efforts to keep the same dimensions between sockets AM4 and AM5, a conversion kit is not necessary.

The flagship models Ryzen 9 7950X and Ryzen 9 7900X require a high-performing cooling solution, such as the water cooler be quiet! Silent Loop 2 360 mm or Silent Loop 2 280 mm. For the Ryzen 7 7700X and Ryzen 5 7600X, be quiet! recommends any AM5-compatible be quiet! water cooler or air cooler, except Pure Rock Slim 2 and Shadow Rock LP. It should be noted that bigger cooling surfaces leave more headroom for overclocking or use in cases with restricted air flow, so when in doubt, users should opt for a larger CPU cooler.

Shortly after its announcement along with an "early next year" launch timeline, benchmarks of the upcoming Core i9-13900KS are beginning to trickle down. The first such sees an alleged CPU-Z Bench score of 18453.4 points multi-threaded score, and 982.5 points single-threaded. We have no clue about the clock-speeds, but assuming it's running at stock settings, the multi-threaded score is around 15% higher than that of the Ryzen 9 7950X, which scores around 16000 points in the multi-threaded test at stock settings (i.e. 5.10 GHz all-core boost).

The world-records set by those with access to AMD Ryzen 9 7950X "Zen 4" 16-core/32-thread processors, keep tumbling in. The latest such is a Cinebench R23 nT score of a stunning 50395 points. This was achieved with a 6.70 GHz overclock under extreme cooling using an LN2 evaporator. Another feat from the same source sees a 6.45 GHz all-core overclock under extreme cooling, which yields an impressive 48235 points in the same test. Both feats come from Sampson, who's been leading HWBot charts under the AMD Overclocking team.

The highest known/leaked Cinebench R23 score yielded with a Core i9-13900K "Raptor Lake" sample so far, is 40616 points, although serious official OC feats with the processor are yet to start. The Intel chip is already in the news for an 8 GHz frequency record. Any attempt to take the crown from the 7950X will involve pushing the 8 P-cores to insane frequencies, but then it will boil down to the 16 E-cores, and just how far those can be pushed. The highest post-launch CB R23 score obtained on a current-gen i9-12900K is 26299, and for the 5950X this is 26291.

The first reliable benchmark figures of AMD's Ryzen 7000-series CPUs have arrived, courtesy of SiSoftware. The benchmark suite software developer has released benchmark figures for the Ryzen 5 7600X and Ryzen 9 7950X. Keep in mind that these benchmarks are limited to the different tests in SiSoftware Sandra. Also note that the graphs for the Ryzen 5 7600X have typos, as the SiSoftware wrote Ryzen 5 7760X instead of 7600X and the Core i5-12600K is listed as a Core i7 CPU. Starting with the 7600X, the CPU appears to perform similar to, or slightly slower than the Intel Core i5-12600K in the arithmetic tests. On the other hand, it handily crushes the older Ryzen 5 5600X in every test here, by somewhere between 17 and 36 percent depending on the test.

Moving on to the vector SIMD tests, AMD's Zen 4 architecture shows much greater performance improvements, beating the Intel Core i5-12600K in all but one of the tests, where it loses by a fairly small margin. Here it beats the Ryzen 5 5600X by anything from 28 to a massive 86 percent. Where AMD's Zen 4 architecture really kicks things up a notch is in the image processing test, at least compared to the Zen 3 architecture, thanks to its AVX512 capabilities. As such, it's over twice as fast in many of the tests, but it still loses out in half of the tests to Intel's Core i5-12600K. AMD has also improved the inter-thread/core latency in the same module, by a not insignificant amount. Where the Ryzen 5 7600X doesn't fare so well is when it comes to performance vs. power, largely due to the fact that AMD moved the TDP from 65 to 105 W, but it still offers better performance per Watt than Intel's current models.

Update 17:31 UTC: Updated with the Ryzen 7 7700X results.

It's game on for clock-speed records, as some of the first ones are being set with the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X "Zen 4" processors. The first such feat is an absolute clock-speed record of 7.25 GHz (7247 MHz), set without disabling any cores. This is probably the highest clock achieved on a single core for "Zen 4," set using a multiplier value of 72.5x, and a scorching 1.506 V juice. The second feat is even more impressive, even though it's a lower-clock speed in absolute terms. The 7950X was overclocked to 6.50 GHz across all cores (that's all 16 of its cores). This was set using a core voltage of 1.465 V. In both feats, extreme cooling solutions such as liquid-nitrogen evaporators were used, and this only the first round of OC feats with these chips. Interesting times ahead for 7950X vs. i9-13900K overclocking and benchmark feats. The 6.50 GHz all-core OC in particular could pose a formidable challenge to the i9-13900K, which can sustain its maximum (5 GHz+) all-core OC clocks only on its 8 P-cores.

An AMD Ryzen 9 7950X 16-core processor was spotted by TUM_APISAK hitting an impressive 5.80 GHz all-core overclock. This was made possibly by running the chip at 1.4 V, something that should normally scorch the chip close to its 95°C Tjmax point, but the CPU-Z Validation page reveals a temperature of 39.5°C. It's highly likely that some exotic cooling method is being used, such as a chiller (a cooler that uses pressurized refrigerant to cool. Sadly there's no CPU-Z Bench run associated with the validation to confirm if the setup is stable. Elsewhere, we see Sampson post an impressive 5.45 GHz all-core OC, and this time it's stable with a Cinebench R23 score of 40498 points in the multi-threaded test.

Ahead of its September 27 market availability, AMD Ryzen 9 7950X "Zen 4" has already hit the gray-markets in China. Some retailers in Europe even started listing them. Chinese online gray-markets (peer to peer commerce) sites, list the 7950X at RMB ¥5,999 (around USD $850). None of these listings show a box, so it's likely that the sellers bought a tray of these chips in the OEM or SI channels, and is selling them off piecemeal. OEM-only AMD SKUs usually land in the retail channel this way. Over in Europe, French retailer Cdiscount has the 7950X listed at 1,099€ including taxes ($1,102). The store also lists the 7900X at 749€ ($751), the 7700X at 589€ ($591), and the 7600X at 409€ ($410).

AMD's upcoming Ryzen 9 7950X 16-core processor can boost at speeds of up to 5.85 GHz, even though its maximum boost frequency in the specs is 5.70 GHz. The processor needs temperatures below 50°C to boost up to 5.85 GHz. Above these temperatures, it will only boost up to the 5.70 GHz on the tin. There are four frequencies to keep in mind about the 7950X. First is the base frequency, of 4.50 GHz. Next up, is the all-core boost frequency, of 5.10 GHz. This is the frequency at which the processor can run all 16 of its cores, provided it stays away from the 95°C temperature throttle. 5.70 GHz is the maximum boost frequency you'll get on "some" of the cores if the temperature is maintained between 50-95°C. If you're able to keep temperature below 50°C, the processor can boost up to 5.85 GHz. AMD refers to 5.85 GHz as the "peak clock."

To be able to hit peak clocks, you should ideally need some serious cooling, such as a 360 mm DIY liquid cooling setup, or a 420 mm AIO CLC; however in some circumstances, such as the system starting up from a cold-boot in a room with low ambient temperatures, the processor should hit peak clocks as it's approaching the 50°C-mark. AMD is making no pretenses that the 7950X is a high-power chip. Its TDP is rated at 170 W, and its PPT (package power tracking) limit at 230 W. By setting the TDP at 170 W from the get go, AMD is hinting that one can forget about aftermarket tower-type air-cooling, and head straight to AIO liquid cooling.

Intel's upcoming Core i9-13900K "Raptor Lake" flagship desktop processor continues to amaze with its performance lead over the current i9-12900K "Alder Lake," in leaked benchmarks of the processor tested in a number of synthetic benchmarks. The 8P+16E hybrid processor posts a massive 30% lead in multi-threaded performance with Cinebench R23, thanks to higher IPC on the P-cores, the addition of 8 more E-cores, higher clock speeds, and larger caches all around. These gains are also noted with CPU-Z Bench, where the i9-13900K is shown posting a similar 30% lead over the i9-12900K.

In gaming benchmarks, these leads translate into a roughly-10-15 percent gain in frame-rates. Games still aren't too parallelized, Intel Thread Director localizes gaming workloads to the P-cores, which remain 8 in number. And so, the gaming performance gains boil down mainly to the IPC increase of the "Raptor Cove" P-cores, and their higher clock-speeds, compared to the 8 "Golden Cove" P-cores of the i9-12900K. From the looks of it, the i9-13900K will maintain a competitive edge over the upcoming AMD Ryzen 9 7950X mainly because the high IPC of 8 (sufficient) P-cores sees it through in gaming benchmarks, while the zerg-rush of 24 cores clinches the deal in multi-threaded benchmarks that scale across all cores.

A Cinebench R23 picture of AMD's recently announce Ryzen 9 7950X CPU having been put through its paces have appeared online via a post on Baidu, which has been taken down since the picture was posted. However, courtesy of @harukaze5719 it lives on, on Twitter and gives us a first glimpse into the Cinebench R23 performance of the upcoming CPU. The CPU is said to have been air cooled, so it's possible that we'll see even higher benchmark numbers with better cooling, so take these numbers with a pinch of sodium chloride, just to be on the safe side. The test system was also using Windows 10, so there's the potential of some extra performance by changing to Windows 11 here as well.

In the single score test, the Ryzen 9 7950X scores 2,205 points, which is in line with Cinebench R23 leaks for Intel's upcoming Core i9-13900K CPU, if a smidgen slower. The multi-core score is obviously not going to compete with Intel's Core i9-13900K due to the overall lower core count, but at 29,649, but it's ahead of the Core i9-12900K by a decent margin. It'll be interesting to see how AMD positions the 7000-series of CPUs, as although it seems like the company has done a good job in improving the overall performance compared to the 5000-series, it's not quite enough to take the performance crown this time around, if these early benchmark leaks from both sides are anything to go by.

Update 10:27 UTC: A new picture hjas appeared where the CPU has been kitted out with better cooling at the multi-core score has jumped from 29,649 to 36,256, which makes it competitive with the Core i9-13900K scores that have leaked in the past.

An AMD Ryzen 9 7950X "Zen 4" 16-core/32-thread processor was put through the Geekbench 5.4.5 benchmark, and it's becoming all too clear that AMD has a highly competitive product on its hands. The 7950X yielded a single-threaded score of 2217 points, and 24396 points in the multi-threaded tests. With these scores, the 7950X is about 14% faster than the "Golden Cove" P-cores of the i9-12900K "Alder Lake" processor in the single-threaded tests, and comes out as being 41% faster than it in the multi-threaded test. Against the leaked i9-13900K "Raptor Lake," the 7950X is shown being about 4% slower in the single-threaded test (against the "Raptor Cove" P-cores); and about 7.8% slower in the multi-threaded test.

AMD in its Ryzen 7000 launch event teased its next-generation Radeon graphics card based on the RDNA3 graphics architecture. Built on an advanced process node just like "Zen 4," AMD is hoping to repeat the magic of the RX 6000 series, by achieving a 50% performance-per-Watt gain over the previous generation. which allows it either to build some really efficient GPUs, or consume the power headroom to offer significantly higher performance at power levels similar as the current-gen.

AMD's teaser included a brief look at the air-cooled RDNA3 flagship reference-design, and it looks stunning. The company showed off a live demo of the card playing "Lies of P," a AAA gaming title that made waves at Gamescom for its visuals. The game was shown playing on an RDNA3 graphics card running on a machine with a Ryzen 9 7950X processor at 4K, with extreme settings. AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su confirmed a 2022 launch for RDNA3.

A screenshot of an alleged AMD Ryzen 9 7950X "Zen 4" processor surfaced on the web, courtesy of OneRaichu, and this time there's no blur-out with the score field—15645 points. When compared to the alleged CPU-Z Bench scores of the Core i9-13900K "Raptor Lake" from last week, the Intel 8P+16E hybrid processor ends up 7.9% faster than this score, but still a very close second.

The Ryzen 9 7950X ends up a significant 23.47% faster than the leaked score of the Core i7-13700K (8P+8E), and the AMD flagship scores 33.5% faster than the previous-gen Intel flagship Core i9-12900K. While both the i7-13700K and i9-12900K are 8P+8E, the "Raptor Lake" gets ahead with higher IPC for the P-cores, slightly higher clocks, and more cache for the E-core clusters. The 7950X is also 32.12% faster than its predecessor, the Ryzen 9 5950X "Zen 3," and a whopping 58.39% faster than the Core i7-12700K (8P+4E).

Possible launch SEP pricing of AMD's Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" desktop processors leaked to the web by Wccftech, which appear to be similar to those of the Ryzen 5000 "Zen 3" at launch. AMD will launch a slim set of four SKUs in its first round of these processors—the flagship Ryzen 9 7950X (16-core/32-thread), followed by the second-best Ryzen 9 7900X (12-core/24-thread), the Ryzen 7 7700X (8-core/16-thread), and the mid-range Ryzen 5 7600X (6-core/12-thread).

Apparently, the series debuts with the Ryzen 5 7600X at $299, or the same SEP of the Ryzen 5 5600X at launch. The Ryzen 7 7700X launches at $449. The Ryzen 9 7900X comes in at $549, and the flagship Ryzen 9 7950X at $799, which again, is identical to that of the 5950X. Besides processors, motherboard vendors are expected to launch their first Socket AM5 motherboards, debuting with the AMD X670E and X670 chipsets. There's talk of mid-range chipsets such as the B650 and B650E, but we haven't seen any confirmed products show up on motherboard vendors' websites, yet. Pre-launch pricing for the X670E and X670 put them at a significant premium over the current Socket AM4 flagship boards based on the X570. Besides processors and motherboards, we could see announcements from memory vendors launching their first DDR5 memory products to feature AMD EXPO technology.

Fmax (or Frequency max), is the maximum clock speed an AMD "Zen" processor will automatically boost/overclock to, at stock multiplier settings. To go beyond this, you'll have to increase the multiplier value, and overclock the traditional way. The Fmax value for AMD's upcoming flagship desktop processor, the Ryzen 9 7950X "Zen 4," is reportedly set at 5.85 GHz. To facilitate this, you'll have to enable settings such as Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO), to eke out the power limits needed to get here. Competing Intel parts, such as the "Raptor Lake" Core i9-13900K, is reported to have a similar maximum boost frequency, of 5.80 GHz, but that's just for its 8 P-cores.