As spotted by Videocardz, the 12-core Ryzen 9900X processor achieved a score of 3,401 in Geekbench 6's single-core test. That's a substantial 10.1 per cent lead over the Intel Core i9-14900K and a significant 15.6 per cent jump over the flagship AMD Ryzen 9 7950X.

This leak also revealed another notable detail, showing the 9900X exceeding a boost speed of 5.6GHz.

The Ryzen 9 9900X's supposed multi-core performance is nearly as impressive. The CPU managed a score of 19,756 in Geekbench 6 multi-core, again surpassing the current AMD flagship but falling just short of Chipzilla's 14900K.

A second leak supports this, showing the 9900X's multi-core performance in Cinebench R23 with a total score of 33,000 in its 120W TDP mode and 34,500 in 170W mode, as reported by Wccftech. The high-end Ryzen 9 CPU falls just behind the Intel Core i7-14700K (which has more cores and threads at a higher boost clock speed) by about 2 per cent, so the margins are slim.

These benchmarks are an encouraging early sign of strength from the soon-to-be-released Ryzen 9000 series, which is rumoured to be arriving on 31 July worldwide.

The 9900X isn't the most powerful of the next-gen range—that title belongs to the 16-core AMD Ryzen 9 9950X. However, from what we've seen, these two chips may rank among the best processors on the market.

From these early benchmarks, the Ryzen 9900X seems more powerful than expected—the uplift in single-core and multi-core performance is certainly notable.

Note that unlike Ryzen 9000, Intel's next-gen desktop CPUs will use an entirely new socket, so upgrading existing PCs to a new motherboard will be an extra expense.