If you hang around spaces on the ‘net full of PC builders, there’s usually a never-ending war of FUD and fanboyism, fueled by old memes and outdated preconceived notions. Depending on who you listen to, AMD’s upcoming Ryzen 9000 desktop CPUs are either going to be the greatest thing ever or a sad disappointment. The reality is probably somewhere in between, of course, but leaks to the Geekbench database are definitely fueling some hype.
That’s because a series of leaks, culminating in a score for the top-end Ryzen 9 9950X, have painted the picture that AMD’s Zen 5 processors are going to offer scorching single-threaded performance. There are all kinds of factors that go into Geekbench performance, so there’s no need to try and draw any conclusions from a 1% difference in a leaked score, but the results are still exciting nonetheless.
Even with that handicap, Zen 5 looks to handily outstrip Zen 4 in the single-threaded tests, and even give a solid whooping to Intel’s 14th-gen Core chips that usually dominate Geekbench ST results. These are undoubtedly impressive results, and it’s likely that finely-tuned machines running final firmware will offer up even better performance. We’ll know once the chips launch, which is supposed to happen late this month.