In the desktop processor market, performance is often the most critical criterion for comparison, but it isn’t the only important factor. Price plays a role too, naturally, and power consumption, heat generation, and other considerations matter. This is important to keep in mind with the subject of today’s review: the $499 AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and its fierce competition with Intel’s competing Core i7-14700K. Neither processor truly has the edge on performance alone, but with these other factors in mind (and Intel’s current stumbles with its 13th and 14th Gen chips), the Ryzen 9 9900X has a lot going for it that the Intel competition isn’t built to match.Detailing the Ryzen 9 9900X: A Dozen Lean Zen 5 CoresAMD’s Ryzen 9 9900X is based on AMD’s new “Zen 5” microarchitecture. It contains a dozen CPU cores spread between two of AMD’s Core Complex Dies (CCDs). These dies contain eight cores each, but four out of those 16 have been disabled, likely due to slight defects in the underlying dies during the fabrication process—a selection process often referred to as “binning.” Thanks to simultaneous multi-threading (SMT) technology, each core can operate two processing threads simultaneously, giving it support for up to 24 concurrent threads total.
(Credit: Michael Justin Allen Sexton)
These specs also match the Ryzen 9 9900X’s predecessor, with the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X having the same number of cores and threads. With similar clock speeds and both chips having the same amount of L3 cache at 64MB, you might expect them to perform quite similarly. However, the Ryzen 9 9900X gets a boost from architectural improvements, with more L1 and L2 cache as well as increased internal bandwidth that gives it a leg up in terms of performance. Its CPU cores were also built on a 4-nanometer (nm) manufacturing process, which should help efficiency.
Also unchanged between the Ryzen 9 9900X and the Ryzen 9 7900X is the I/O die. AMD opted for the same I/O die built on a 6nm process for the Ryzen 9000 series of processors as it used for the Ryzen 7000 series. This means that the PCIe 5.0 controller, the memory controller, and the Radeon integrated graphics processor (IGP) implemented on that die are the same between series. However, thanks to minor improvements from manufacturing the I/O die for an extended period, AMD has increased the max official DDR5 memory speed supported by the 9900X from 5,200MHz to 5,600MHz.
(Credit: Michael Justin Allen Sexton)
The most exciting aspect of the Ryzen 9 9900X by far is its listed thermal design power (TDP) of 120 watts (W). This is 50W lower than the TDP set on the Ryzen 9 7900X, suggesting that the processor draws less power and generates less heat. Power consumption isn’t always a key concern for desktop system builders, but heat certainly is. Take it from someone running hardware tests all day: You can sometimes tangibly feel the difference in room temperature when you have a particularly power-hungry component running beside you.Aside from not wanting to heat your home, excess heat isn’t ideal for the long-term lifespan of your components or their performance, and higher power consumption can add up on your power bill over time, too. Simply put, lower power consumption and heat generation are always beneficial, so long as they don’t come with a similarly significant drop in performance. With that, let’s get onto the tests to see how this wattage reduction pans out.Test Setup and CompetitionFor testing purposes, we paired the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X with an ASRock X670E Taichi motherboard and 32GB of DDR5 RAM clocked at the processor’s max official memory speed of 5,600MHz. A Cooler Master MasterLiquid PL240 Flux water cooler actively cooled the processor during the benchmarking process. The system also has a 1TB NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD and a SilverStone DA850 850W power supply—all built into a Praxis Wetbench chassis. We performed all tests inside Windows 11 with all of the most recent Windows updates installed.We also added an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card to the system, which was used for all tests except those focused on testing the IGP performance.
(Credit: Michael Justin Allen Sexton)
Before diving into the test results, we must acknowledge the current turmoil in the desktop processor market. Intel’s 13th Gen and 14th Gen desktop processors have been experiencing voltage delivery and stability issues, leading to potential chip degradation. (It’s complicated; see the details in our explainer.) Intel is working on fixing this issue, but it may come at the cost of performance. Intel’s desktop motherboard partners were just starting to roll out the first BIOS updates with microcode fixes at this writing.In light of this, it’s difficult to recommend any 13th and 14th Gen desktop processors right now. It also makes it challenging to compare those processors with AMD’s fairly, as we don’t know what the performance impact of Intel’s patch may be (or that of any underclocking you may perform to avoid damaging your own processor). We have retained the scores achieved by the affected Intel processors unaltered in our results here. Until Intel’s patch comes out and we can test it, this is our fairest means for evaluating these processors.However, given Intel’s current issues, we will give AMD the benefit of the doubt here in the event of any near ties and expand our margin of error for what we consider a tie to 5% versus our usual 3%.AMD Ryzen 9 9900X Tests: CPU PerformanceThe Ryzen 9 9900X’s main competitor, the Intel Core i7-14700K, has a clear advantage on overall core count and threads. With 20 cores to the 9900X’s 12, and 28 threads to the 9900X’s 24, it’s not particularly surprising that the Core i7-14700K was faster than the Ryzen 9 9900X in the multi-threaded Cinbench R23 test. However, it was only faster by 3%, and the Ryzen 9 9900X had better single-threaded performance, also by a bit more than 2%, which speaks volumes to the performance of AMD’s new Zen 5 CPU cores. Given Intel’s current issues, I’d give the win to the 9900X on both fronts here, though the two chips’ performance was undoubtedly close. And the last-generation Ryzen 9 7900X was notably slower.
We ran into an issue with Adobe Photoshop that prevented us from testing the Ryzen 9 9900X or Ryzen 9 9950X with this app. The problem appears to be related to a software issue and not due to the Ryzen 9 processors, so we’ll press on. In Premiere Pro, the Ryzen 9 9900X and the Core i7-14700K achieved near-identical scores; in HandBrake, the Intel chip finished just 6 seconds sooner, and the two processors finished with almost the same completion times in the Blender and POV-Ray tests.Overall, you’ll see little difference in the CPU tests between the Core i7-14700K and the Ryzen 9 9900X, but as we mentioned, we’ve counted these as wins for the Ryzen 9 9900X. This is due to the current crashing issue affecting Intel CPUs and the likelihood that the patch to fix that issue will ultimately hurt the performance of Intel CPUs by at least a small margin—enough to split these ties and widen these narrow spreads. These ties and tiny margins are more remarkable by the 9900X running at just 120W compared with the i7-14700K’s 253W—less than half the wattage for comparable performance.Likewise, though we haven’t crunched the numbers to give an exact percentage increase for all tests, the Ryzen 9 9900X showed notable improvements over the Ryzen 9 7900X in many benchmarks, showing a decent uplift over the previous generation.AMD Ryzen 9 9900X Tests: Gaming PerformanceOn 3DMark, we saw some unusually low-performance results for the Ryzen 9 9900X, but this is a synthetic test, and the results we got on that test don’t reflect the relative results we recorded from in-game benchmarks.
The GeForce RTX 3080 caused our results to bunch up slightly in these tests, but the Ryzen 9 9900X still showed a 4% improvement over the Ryzen 9 7900X in F1 22 at the 1080p resolution. The Ryzen 9 9900X scored lower at all resolutions than the Core i7-14700K in F1 22, but it was well within the margin of error on all counts.Guardians of the Galaxy showed the 9900X with a slight 3% lead over the Core i7-14700K at 1080p, and at 1440p, it did slightly better with a 4% lead over the Core i7-14700K and the Ryzen 9 7900X. The 9900X landed a noticeable win with Total War: Three Kingdoms with an 8% faster frame rate, while Tomb Raider scared up a small win for the Blue Team rival.AMD Ryzen 9 9900X Tests: Integrated Graphics PerformanceThe Radeon IGP inside the Ryzen 9 9900X has 128 shaders and is clocked at 2.2GHz. It’s identical to the IGP found in the other Ryzen 9000-series and 7000-series processors in the chart below, but it performed generally worse than the Ryzen 7000-series chips in these IGP tests.
Hitting near 60 frames per second in a relatively modern game like F1 22 is decent for an integrated graphics solution, even if this was only possible at the 720p resolution. Though it’s a poor option for gaming, it can play in a pinch, particularly running older titles like Bioshock: Infinite and Tomb Raider if you turn the graphics settings down a ways. In these tests, we used max settings for those two games, and both were arguably playable at that with the 720p resolution, but at 1080p, playability should also be attainable with lower settings.AMD Ryzen 9 9900X Tests: Power and ThermalsHere’s where we get to put the Ryzen 9 9900X and its lower 120W TDP to the test for real. We test the power consumption using a Kill-A-Watt wall meter to gauge the system’s power draw during select tests.
Though they were higher than expected, the Ryzen 9 9900X achieved pretty decent power numbers. It pulled a bit less power during the Adobe Premiere Pro test than its main competitor, the Core i7-14700K. That’s not bad, given the similar performance, but the Cinebench R23 result was even better. Here, the Ryzen 9 9900X consumed 31% less power while achieving near-identical performance. That’s considerable and something you might notice long-term on your power bill if you run many CPU-intensive applications.Idle power draw was much more disappointing, but the power consumption of other components, like the individual motherboard, plays a bigger role here, and we cannot say this difference is entirely down to the processor. Ideally, we’d be able to test both chips on the same platform to better gauge the idle power draw, but that simply isn’t possible between CPUs on two different socket types.The Ryzen 9 9900X consumed about the same amount of power as the Ryzen 9 7900X at peak, which was also a bit of a surprise. Heat generation is way down on the Ryzen 9 9900X, though. During our Cinebench R23 test, it achieved a max temperature of 80 degrees Celsius, far better than the 95 degrees Celsius of its predecessor or the 100 degrees Celsius that the Core i7-14700K hit with the same cooler.The lower temperature that the Ryzen 9 9900X achieved calls the processor’s power consumption into question. Typically, we see a direct correlation between power draw and heat generation, but with the Ryzen 9 9900X, we observed a similar power draw to the Ryzen 9 7900X and reduced heat generation. The most likely explanation? While the Ryzen 9 9900X hit a similar peak power consumption, its average power consumption was lower, enabling it to stay cooler.Still, if your chip is hitting 80 degrees Celsius with a 240mm water cooler, we’d advise you to stick with a similar 240mm water cooler or a large air cooler to use with this processor. Though you might be able to use a less expensive cooler, 80 degrees Celsius is a comfortable operating temperature, and using a lesser cooler that might make it run hotter under load isn’t ideal.Verdict: Edging Out Intel With EfficiencyAMD’s Ryzen 9 9900X may not have scored a clean performance kill against its main competitor, the Intel Core i7-14700K, but it racked up decisive wins in at least two key areas: power consumption, and heat generation. Not everyone will be concerned about these two variables, and some may only care about performance. From a pure performance standpoint, neither chip gets the outright win, though. Both are near-identical in that regard, at least until Intel’s patch for its crashing issue is available for all new motherboards and we and other outlets can assess its performance impact.That means we must rely on other factors to determine which processor is best. If we go with the financial difference, then the Core i7-14700K would win. It’s available for around $399 from multiple retailers and has an MSRP of $409. Saving that $100 is tempting, but so is having a computer that runs cooler and draws less power. You’ll likely save some of that $100 back with the AMD processor via your electric bill, but it will take time, so one could easily argue for either option.
(Credit: Michael Justin Allen Sexton)
You could also lean toward the AMD option due to Intel’s 13th and 14th Gen voltage debacle. However, we won’t pin this review entirely on one likely temporary issue affecting Intel, which the company is addressing. We simply haven’t evaluated the impact of that patch yet to know what, if any, performance difference it makes. Regardless, you might have more peace of mind going with AMD given the circumstances. Understandably so; Intel has extended its warranty on its 13th and 14th Gen boxed processors, but no one really knows the long-term effiicacy of the emerging microcode fixes.Ultimately, personal preference will play a role in deciding which is better. You’ll find compelling and valid arguments in either direction. As someone who needs their PC to work, I’m inclined toward the AMD option. It’s more reassuring to avoid the Intel issue, and I have a Mini-ITX system that makes AMD more alluring due to its better heat generation numbers. The genuine difference in room temperature from hotter-running processors also makes me lean toward the AMD option, as I need less AC and fan power to cool my office. (If you’re in Alaska, your mileage may vary.)On the whole? Go with the Core i7-14700K if you really can’t spend the extra $100 or are Intel brand-loyal (and you’re sure there is an available microcode patch for the LGA1700 motherboard you own or are buying). Otherwise, I’d recommend the Ryzen 9 9900X as the better option.
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About Michael Justin Allen Sexton
Analyst
For as long as I can remember, I’ve had love of all things tech, spurred on, in part, by a love of gaming. I began working on computers owned by immediate family members and relatives when I was around 10 years old. I’ve always sought to learn as much as possible about anything PC, leading to a well-rounded grasp on all things tech today. In my role at PCMag, I greatly enjoy the opportunity to share what I know.I wrote for the well-known tech site Tom’s Hardware for three years before I joined PCMag in 2018. In that time, I’ve reviewed desktops, PC cases, and motherboards as a freelancer, while also producing deals content for the site and its sibling ExtremeTech. Now, as a full-time PCMag analyst, I’m focusing on reviewing processors and graphics cards while dabbling in all other things PC-related.
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