AMD has today launched the 16 core Ryzen 9 3950X, claiming the performance crown from Intel, beating the Core i9-9900K. As per official numbers from team red, the Ryzen 9 3950X performs almost on par with or better than the 9900K, refuting Intel’s long-held claim that its chips are the best for gamers.

Yes, these are official figures and might be somewhat exaggerated, but even so, it means that Intel will have to look elsewhere to claim an advantage over AMD’s latest and greatest. Gaming, however, isn’t the main focus of the 16 core Ryzen 9 3950X. The flagship Matisse CPU offers unparalleled levels of performance when it comes to content creation, rendering, and video editing.

The Ryzen 9 3950X is almost 80% faster than the Core i9-9900K in Cinebench R20 and ~70% faster in V-Ray. Granted, it costs a whole $250 more than the Coffee Lake part, even then it offers more performance per dollar. This is the fastest consumer chip to ever make its way to mainstream PC, and best of all it costs less than $1,000. Just a few years back, Intel’s Skylake parts that offered performance in this sphere costed a fortune.

AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Specs

I left the specifications for the last because, well, they are already known. The Ryzen 9 3950X will come with 16 cores and 32 threads and a boost clock of 4.7GHz. Seeing the other Zen 2 chips we’re not sure how many parts will actually hit this speed though. The L2+L3 cache size comes in at 72MB and a TDP wall of 105W.

Eco-Mode: Low Power with Performance ~Par

With the Ryzen 9 3950X, AMD is introducing something called Eco-Mode that drastically reduces the power draw while retaining most of the performance.

For example, in Cinebench the 3950X reduces the power by 44% while taking a hit of less than 25% to performance. The temperatures also drop by 7 degrees when Eco-Mode is enabled.

AIO Cooling Recommended and X570 Chipset

AMD is recommending water-cooled AIO coolers for the Ryzen 9 3950X. Not surprising considering that you’ve got 16 high-performance cores running north of 4GHz. 280mm AIO Liquid Cooling is going to be standard for the 3rd Gen Ryzen flagship.

As expected, the X570 chipset is prepped and ready for the 16 core Matisse part, and with all the gorgeous motherboards out there, it’s only logical that the best consumer chip is paired with them.