Intel Core i7-3960X vs AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

Compare Intel Core X-series 6 core CPU vs AMD Ryzen 9000 Series 16 core processor, specs and benchmark score. Which is the better CPU for gaming?

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Other Benchmarks
Specifications
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AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 250.00

$ 417.80 significantly less expensive

$ 667.80

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

A combined score of all workloads

3693 points

16302 points

341% significantly better overall score

Gaming Score

The raw gaming performance with a fast GPU

4998 points

14590 points

191% significantly better gaming score

Multitasking Score

Performance in workloads using up to 8 cores

3261 points

16961 points

420% significantly better multitasking score

Heavy Workload Score

Performance in workloads using up to 16 cores

3155 points

17329 points

449% significantly better heavy workload score

Free CPU Benchmark

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Other Benchmarks

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

69.62 points

643.21 points

823% significantly higher Blender score

Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

3209 points

22134 points

589% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Geekbench 6 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

661 points

3395 points

413% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (single) score

Specifications

Cores

Number of physical processing units

166% significantly more cores

Threads

Number of logical processing units

166% significantly more threads

Clock Speed

Base frequency at which the chip operates

3.3 GHz

4.3 GHz

30% slightly higher clock speed

Turbo Speed

Higher frequency used for heavy workloads

3.9 GHz

5.7 GHz

46% significantly higher turbo speed

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the CPU

130 W

30% slightly lower TDP

170 W

Memory Channels

Lanes for simultaneous memory access

100% significantly more memory channels

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

464th of 1,089

14th of 1,089

Family

The product line

Core X-series

Ryzen 9000 Series

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2011 November

2025 March

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

DDR3-1066

DDR5

Is Unlocked

Can this CPU can be overclocked

Yes

Supports ECC memory

Does this CPU support error correcting memory

Core i7-3960X vs Ryzen 9 9950X3D comparison

According to the hardwareDB Benchmark tool, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D is faster than the Core i7-3960X. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i7-3960X in all gaming tests too.

With info from our database, we find that the Ryzen 9 9950X3D has significantly more cores with 16 cores whereas the Core i7-3960X has 6 cores. It also has more threads than the Core i7-3960X. With our hardware info, we find that the Ryzen 9 9950X3D has a slightly higher clock speed than the Core i7-3960X. Also, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D has a significantly higher turbo speed. A Core i7-3960X CPU outputs less heat than a Ryzen 9 9950X3D CPU because of its slightly lower TDP. This measures the amount of heat they output and can be used to estimate power consumption.

Most CPUs have more threads than cores. This technology, colloquially called hyperthreading, improves performance by splitting a core into multiple virtual ones. This provides more efficient utilisation of a core. Indeed, the Core i7-3960X has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.