AMD Ryzen 9 9900X Takes Performance Crown In Geekbench's Single-Core Benchmark
AMD's Ryzen 9000 series of desktop processors based on Zen 5 will be releasing to retail later this month and as we wait, leaked benchmarks have begun piling up. One of the latest unofficial benchmark runs pertains to AMD's upcoming second-fastest consumer SKU, the Ryzen 9 9900X—it made an appearance on Geekbench with a single-core score that, if it holds up, will put it at the top of the stack.
The Ryzen 9 9900X is a 12-core/24-thread processor with a 4.4GHz base clock, up to a 5.6GHz max boost clock, 12MB of L2 cache, 64MB of L3 cache, and a 120W default TDP. Those same specifications are represented in the early benchmark run on Geekbench, which shows the chip accompanied by an ASUS ROG Crosshair X670E motherboard and 32GB of DDR5 RAM.
Rumor has it that we won't see motherboards based on AMD's upcoming X870E chipset until September, so it's possible that even more performance is on tap. That said, AMD stuck with socket AM5 for the Ryzen 9000 series, so existing motherboards can run the new silicon, as is the case here. Have a look...
The Ryzen 9 9900X posted a single-core score of 3,401 and a multi-core score of 19,756. To see how those scores compare, we can look at Geekbench's 'Processor Benchmark Chart', which is essentially a ranking of average scores "with at least five unique results in the Geekbench Browser."
As things stand right now in Geekbench's single-core rankings, Intel's Core i9-13900KS sits at top with a score of 3,107. Yes, there are higher scores out there, but those represent overclocks, and sometimes heavy ones with LN2 cooling.
What about the Core i9-14900KS? In theory, that should score a little bit higher since it sports faster clock speeds almost across the board (and certainly at the top end at 6.2GHz versus 6GHz), compared to the Core i9-13900KS. Its comparatively low availability in the wild is likely why it's not included in this chart.
Looking at the data that is available, however, shows the Ryzen 9 9900X scoring around 9.5% higher than the Core i9-13900KS in the single-core test, and over 16% higher than the Ryzen 7 7900X (2,925) based on Zen 4.
The multi-core score isn't quite as impressive, though still very good overall—based on the average scores, it would slide in between the Core i9-13900KF (19,949) and Ryzen 9 7950X3D (19,608). It also outpaces the Ryzen 7 7900X (17,849) by nearly 11%.
This is the only showing for the Ryzen 9 9900X on Geekbench so far, which is an important caveat. Likewise, it's not known if this benchmark run was made with any PBO features enabled. Looking at it from a high-level overview, however, this is a promising leak. We'll have to wait and see if it holds up.
