AMD Ryzen 9 3950X vs Apple M2. Specifications, performance, tests

Background information about the processors being compared, series, generation and market segment.

• Segment
  Desktop / Server Mobile
• Family
  AMD Ryzen Apple M series
• Generation
  3 2
• CPU group
  AMD Ryzen 3000 Apple M2
• Successor
  AMD Ryzen 9 5950X --

Basic parameters such as number of cores, number of threads, base and turbo frequency, and cache size. These parameters indirectly tell about the speed of the processor, the higher they are the better.

• Frequency
  3.50 GHz 3.50 GHz
• CPU Cores
  16 8
• Turbo (1 Core)
  4.70 GHz No turbo
• CPU Threads
  32 8
• Hyperthreading
  Yes No
• Overclocking
  Yes No
• Core architecture
  normal hybrid (big.LITTLE)
• A core
  -- 4x Avalanche
• B core
  -- 4x Blizzard

Internal Graphics does not affect the performance of the CPU, performs the work of the graphics card in its absence or on mobile devices.

• GPU name
  no iGPU Apple M2 (8 Core)
• GPU frequency
  3.50 GHz
• GPU (Turbo)
  No turbo No turbo
• Execution units
  128
• Max. GPU Memory
  -- 16 GB
• Max. displays
  3
• Generation
  2
• Technology
  5 nm
• Release date
  Q1/2022

Built-in codecs used to encode and decode content. Significantly speeds up the required operations.

• h265 / HEVC (8 bit)
  No Decode / Encode
• h265 / HEVC (10 bit)
  No Decode / Encode
• h264
  No Decode / Encode
• VP9
  No Decode / Encode
• VP8
  No Decode
• AV1
  No Decode
• AVC
  No Decode
• VC-1
  No Decode
• JPEG
  No Decode / Encode

Types, channel quantity of RAM supported by Apple M2 and AMD Ryzen 9 3950X. Depending on the motherboards, higher or lower memory frequencies may be supported.

• Memory type
  DDR4-3200 LPDDR5-5500
• Max. Memory
  128 GB 16 GB
• ECC
  Yes No
• Memory channels
  2 2
• PCIe version
  4.0 4.0
• PCIe lanes
  20

• AES-NI
  Yes Yes

Compare the TDP requirements of TDP AMD Ryzen 9 3950X and Apple M2 to select a cooling system. Note, the TDP value refers to thermal watts, not electrical watts.

• TDP (PL1)
  105 W 15 W
• TDP up
  -- 20 W
• TDP (PL2)
  142 W --
• TDP down
  -- 10 W
• Tjunction max.
  95 °C --

Architecture, interfaces, additional instructions supported by AMD Ryzen 9 3950X and AMD Ryzen 9 3950X, virtual machine technologies and process technology.

• Instruction set (ISA)
  x86-64 (64 bit) ARMv8-A64 (64 bit)
• Virtualization
  AMD-V, SVM None
• ISA extensions
  SSE4a, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, AVX2, FMA3 Rosetta 2 x86-Emulation
• L2-Cache
  -- 16.00 MB
• L3-Cache
  64.00 MB --
• Architecture
  Matisse (Zen 2) M2
• Technology
  7 nm 5 nm
• Socket
  AM4 N/A
• Release date
  Q3/2019 Q1/2022