AMD Ryzen 9 9950X Prices Slashed by a Third Over MSRP, Drops to $434

AMD Ryzen 9 9950X 16-core/32-thread processor powered by the “Zen 5” microarchitecture saw its price on Amazon Prime reduced to $434. This implies a 33% reduction over the chip’s launch MSRP of $649. At this price, the chip ends up around $100 cheaper than the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K. Our testing shows that the 9950X beats the 285K in productivity workloads, and matches it in 4K Ultra HD gaming. The 9950X was AMD’s flagship desktop processor until it was supplanted by the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, which sells for roughly $700 owing to its gaming performance that’s second only to the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, while retaining productivity performance comparable to the 9950X. The Ryzen 9 9950X is a 16-core/32-thread part with two 8-core CCDs, each with 32 MB of on-die L3 cache. The processor ticks at 4.30 GHz base, with a maximum boost frequency of 5.70 GHz, and a TDP of 170 W.