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Ryzen 9 9950X will be the flagship release of the 9000 series this month. It will compete with the likes of Intel i9 14900K and 14900KS in the market. These CPUs target consumers who require extreme multi-core processing mainly for productivity. They are not specifically meant for gaming but do deliver extreme gaming performance with their high clock speeds if used for gaming.
The i9 14900K is from Intel's Raptop Lake Refresh series launched in October 2023. Its competitor, the Ryzen 9 9950X, is based on the newer Zen 5 architecture manufactured on the 4nm process. Not only is the Ryzen 9 9950X going to be more efficient, but it also comes with performance increments of about 16% over the last generation.
The Ryzen 9 is evidently going to be faster in productivity as well as gaming. But it's going to launch at a premium price which may be marked up for a few months at least. The Intel i9 currently retails at a massive discount of $519. So will it be worth it to pay a premium for the new 9950X or would it be wiser to get the i9 14900K? Let's look into it.
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Note: Some aspects of this article are subjective and reflect the writer's opinions.
i9 14900K or Ryzen 9 9950X: Which one should you go for?
It is absolutely not recommended to go for the i9 14900K for gaming. The chip is infamous for overvolting under heavy workloads like gaming, which will result in frequent game crashes. To use it, you need to severely underclock the CPU or limit the maximum TDP and the amount of current that is supplied to the ICC. So essentially you need to sacrifice performance to save the chip.
You can obviously still game using this CPU. It comes with enough power to handle any modern game even being underclocked. But you would be wasting your money. You are paying a premium price so you should be able to use the CPU at its maximum power.
The only scenario where it is recommended would be for productivity where you need to use Intel's quick sync technology for video editing. This chip is bad for gaming and therefore the Ryzen 9 9950X should be the one you opt for.
Specs comparison
Take a look a the side-by-side comparison of their specs.
Intel's i9 14900K is blazingly fast with its 6 GHz clock speed, but sadly, it gets too hot if you don't set limits. The CPU can get damaged if it is used for extensive periods at that temperature. You can limit the TDP going into BIOS. Further, if you don't limit the TDP, many games will instantly crash on launch. The game will be stuck on the "optimizing shaders" screen and will ultimately brick your PC.
Ryzen 9 9950X stands at an advantage as you can overclock this CPU further to increase its already high 5.7 GHz clock speed. In a recent extreme overclocking demo by AMD covered by GamersNexus, the 9950X was overclocked to 6.4 GHz scoring 55K points in Cinebench.
It could be further overclocked to 6.7 GHz demonstrating the huge overclocking potential of the Ryzen 9 9950X. Gaming, which mainly utilizes a single-core, will hugely benefit from the fast clock speeds.
Performance comparison
According to a test done by Hardware Unboxed after setting the limits on the CPU in BIOS, the i9 14900K scored 2071 in multi-core and 137 in single-core benchmarks in Cinebench 2024. AMD announced that the new Ryzen 9 9950X scores 21% higher than the i9 14900K.
AMD further said that the 9950X is going to have a 56% improvement in Blender over the i9 14900K. However, according to Tom Hardware the Ryzen 9 9950X performance isn't as impressive in Blender. The gap between the newer generation and older generations narrows down with a decrease in TDP. This trend was noticed in the recent tests done using the 9950X CPU.
AMD has promised a 13% improvement over 14900K's gaming performance in Cyberpunk 2077 using the Ryzen 9 9950X. The i9 14900K faces a 6% decrease in performance when limiting the CPU in BIOS. So a 13% improvement on stock settings would mean 150 FPS on Ultra settings. Factoring in the 6% decrease the AMD chip will be 17% faster than the limited i9 14900K.
Based on these data AMD is predicted to be 10% to 20% faster in games. So the AMD chip can be predicted to be the best choice for gaming between the two chips. We have to wait till the launch to actually if the numbers given by AMD are actually true.
Intel Core i9 14900K vs Ryzen 9 9950X: Final Verdict
Ryzen 9 9950X is obviously the better choice for gaming between the two CPUs. With its Zen 5 improvements, it performs better in both gaming and productivity. For your next gaming CPU, you should go for the Ryzen 9 9950X.
