The 9950X seems more exciting than the last week's 9700X/9600X. It is comfortably ahead of the previous gen (including X3D) in code compilation and video/image processing, which I care about more than performance in games, and it's also in a class of its own in workloads heavy on AVX-512, though they might be a bit niche.
I think the TDP on the 9700X and 9600X may have been set a bit too low (in fact, there are indications it will be raised in a future BIOS update [1]), which led to a relatively cool reception from reviewers focused on raw performance. When looking at performance-per-watt in Phoronix tests, 9700X and 9600X often fare better than the bigger chips with higher TDP, but for desktops I guess efficiency is just not that big of a concern.
I think the TDP on the 9700X and 9600X may have been set a bit too low (in fact, there are indications it will be raised in a future BIOS update [1]), which led to a relatively cool reception from reviewers focused on raw performance. When looking at performance-per-watt in Phoronix tests, 9700X and 9600X often fare better than the bigger chips with higher TDP, but for desktops I guess efficiency is just not that big of a concern.
[1] https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-set-to-boost-tdp-for-ryzen-5...