Zen 5 performs significantly better than Zen 4 on Linux without consuming any more power
One of the most significant enhancements in AMD’s Zen 5 CPU architecture is the introduction of a 512-bit AVX-512 pipeline, which is featured in the new Ryzen 9000 series processors. To assess the impact of this upgrade, Phoronix conducted benchmark tests on the Ryzen 9 9950X, comparing its performance and efficiency with the previous generation Ryzen 9 7950X.
Phoronix’s testing involved 90 different applications and benchmarks on Linux, with both the Ryzen 9 9950X and 7950X evaluated with AVX-512 enabled and disabled. The goal was to measure the performance gains and power efficiency offered by AVX-512 acceleration.
The results showed that with AVX-512 enabled, the Ryzen 9 9950X delivered a substantial 27% overall performance improvement over the 7950X. When AVX-512 was disabled, the performance gap narrowed, with the 9950X outperforming the 7950X by 15%.
The Ryzen 9 9950X showed significant AVX-512 performance gains, particularly in the Cpuminer-opt CPU mining benchmark across various algorithms. The benefits of AVX-512 were also clearly evident in PyTorch performance on the Ryzen 9 9950X.
Zen 5’s AVX-512 capabilities have been delivering impressive results without any negative side effects, which bodes well for the upcoming AMD EPYC Turin processors.
