It's only been a day since the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and 9950X were released, but it seems that some people are already starting to push these new Zen 5 chips to their limits. As one of the most powerful processors on the market (if not the best CPU for gaming), it stands to reason that it can clock very high when the time comes.

MSI noted (via Wccftech) that the AMD Ryzen 9000 series has set a world record for clock speed. This appears to refer to the clock speeds of 7.4 GHz for the 12-core 9900X and 7.44 GHz for the 16-core 9950X, as submitted by overclocker TSAIK to overclocking score aggregation site HWBot. For reference, the stock boost clock for both chips is 5.6 GHz, which is more than 2 GHz higher than their respective base clocks.

The big score is for the 9950X. This 7.44 GHz is roughly comparable to the 7.47 GHz top frequency of the previous generation AMD Ryzen 9 7950X I found on HWBot (achieved by overclocker rog-fisher). But the fact that these new chips have only been on the market for a day and are already approaching the previous generation's record is amazing.

Of course, these scores fall short of the highest frequencies achieved with overclocking. Last year, for example, Asus broke the world record for clock speed with the Intel Core i9 14900KF, exceeding 9 GHz. But apples and oranges are different. Besides, who would want to go above the default for an Intel chip these days when even the previous default settings had stability issues?

Overclocking these AMD chips obviously could not have been accomplished with anything like a standard cooling setup. As with all extreme overclocks, the chips are cooled using liquid nitrogen. Everything would have to be waterproofed, and cooling the chips too rapidly could cause them to crack.

While you can't expect anything close to these record-breaking clock speeds with normal overclocking, it's nice to know that the chip has that capability when push comes to shove. However, that's not too surprising given Zen 5's architectural improvements in power and thermal efficiency. [Given that the mid-range AMD Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X are shipping in what can only be considered eco-mode by all accounts, it is certainly nice to see what the Zen 5 chips are capable of when pushed into a corner. In fact, AMD is even rumored to be raising the TDP of these mid-range chips after their launch.

It is unfortunate, however, that the 9900X and 9950X are equally expensive, at least for now. Once the Intel Arrow Lake CPUs are released, there may be a price drop.