AMD Ryzen 9 7900X and Ryzen 5 7600X review: welcome to the future - Eurogamer.net

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A broad upgrade, from features to performance.

AMD's Ryzen 7000 processors are here, with a caller 5nm process node and AM5 socket unlocking higher timepiece frequencies, greater powerfulness usage and successful crook amended performance. The 4 caller CPUs releasing connected September 27th besides see a caller 6nm I/O die, integrated graphics and enactment for DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 - it's a important diagnostic upgrade that reclaims parity with Intel's 12th-gen CPUs.

Of course, features often travel 2nd to fps, truthful show investigating has comprised the bulk of our efforts. So far, 2 chips person crossed our desks - the $549/£579 Ryzen 9 7900X and $299/£319 Ryzen 5 7600X - and we've enactment them up against our assortment of hand-picked games and a sprinkling of productivity benchmarks too. The question we privation to reply is simple: however bash these Zen 4 designs execute against Intel's 12th-gen Core counterparts and AMD's older Ryzen 5000 lineup?

The determination to DDR5 besides brings up a secondary question - what's the existent RAM saccharine spot for price/performance with Ryzen 7000? AMD suggest successful their documentation that DDR5-6000 is the perfect close now, truthful we've tested their CPUs - and Intel's closest equivalents - astatine some 6000MT/s (AMD's recommendation) and 5200MT/s (where we did our Intel 12th-gen testing).

Before we get into the results of our CPU benchmarks, let's instrumentality a little look nether the hood to recognize what AMD has wrought here.

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First up, AMD recorded a 13 percent betterment to IPC, instructions per clock, acknowledgment to a larger L2 cache, an improved execution engine, a amended subdivision predictor and different interior changes. That should construe into a akin magnitude of single-core show uplift astatine the aforesaid frequency, truthful combined with immoderate important frequence improvements and the displacement to higher-clocked DDR5, Ryzen 7000 ought to connection a better-than-average generational improvement.

The caller AM5 level is besides fascinating. AMD has shifted from a 'PGA' to an 'LGA' plan for their processors, meaning that alternatively of having golden pins connected the underside of the CPU, these are present connected the motherboard - truthful it's present overmuch harder to interruption a CPU, but easier to interruption a motherboard. The pin number has besides risen substantially, allowing much powerfulness to beryllium delivered to the CPU - up to 230W, with the Ryzen 9 designs moving from a default TDP of 105W last-gen to 170W this-gen.

CPU design Boost Base L3 cache TDP RRP Ryzen 9 7950X Ryzen 9 7900X Ryzen 7 7700X Ryzen 5 7600X Ryzen 9 5950X Ryzen 9 5900X Ryzen 7 5800X3D Ryzen 7 5800X Ryzen 5 5600X
Zen 4 16C/32T 5.7GHz 4.5GHz 64MB 170W $699/£739
Zen 4 12C/24T 5.6GHz 4.7GHz 64MB 170W $549/£579
Zen 4 8C/16T 5.4GHz 4.5GHz 32MB 105W $399/£419
Zen 4 6C/12T 5.3GHz 4.7GHz 32MB 105W $299/£319
Zen 3 16C/32T 4.9GHz 3.4GHz 64MB 105W $799/£750
Zen 3 12C/24T 4.8GHz 3.7GHz 64MB 105W $549/£509
Zen 3 8C/16T 4.5GHz 3.4GHz 96MB 105W $449/£429
Zen 3 8C/16T 4.7GHz 3.8GHz 32MB 105W $449/£419
Zen 3 6C/12T 4.6GHz 3.7GHz 32MB 65W $299/£279

That puts a greater absorption connected CPU cooling, but immoderate existing AM4 CPU coolers should besides enactment connected AM5 which is bully for anyone that's invested successful a high-end option. Basically, immoderate cooler that screwed into the default AMD AM4 backplate tin besides screw into the caller AM5 one, but designs that required a customized backplate to beryllium installed aren't compatible. Thankfully, our trial rig uses Alphacool's Eisbaer Aurora 240mm AiO, which does usage the default AMD backplate and truthful we tin support cooler compatibility crossed the generations - nice.

It's besides worthy bringing up the remainder of the trial rig we're using. AMD provided ASRock's X670E Taichi motherboard, which provides a plethora of M.2 slots, beefy powerfulness transportation and conveniences similar on-board powerfulness and reset buttons, and an LED readout for mistake codes and existent CPU temperature.

This is combined with high-spec G.Skill's Trident Z5 Neo DDR5-6000 CL30 RAM, Corsair's Dominator Platinum DDR5-5200 CL40 for supplementary investigating and of people Asus' RTX 3090 ROG Strix OC for the all-important GPU broadside of things. For storage, we're utilizing 3 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs to clasp each of our games - a 4TB Kingston KC3000, a 1TB PNY XLR8 CS3140 and a 1TB Crucial P5 Plus. Our rig was completed with a 1000W Corsair RM1000x powerfulness supply.

Elsewhere, we utilized an Asus ROG Crosshair 8 Hero for Ryzen 5000 testing, an Asus ROG Maximus Z590 Hero for 11th-gen Intel investigating and an Asus ROG Z690 Maximus Hero for 12th-gen testing; each of these are high-end boards for their respective platforms. DDR4 motherboards utilized G.Skill 3600MT/s CL16 memory, the sweetspot for DDR4.

Before we get into the gaming benchmarks that marque up pages 2 to five, let's whet our appetite with immoderate speedy and soiled contented instauration benchmarks: a Cinebench R20 3D render and a Handbrake video transcode.

CB R20 1T CB R20 MT HB h.264 HB HEVC HEVC Power Use Core i9 12900K Core i7 12700K Core i5 12600K Core i5 12400F Core i9 11900K Core i5 11600K Ryzen 9 7900X Ryzen 9 7600X Ryzen 9 5950X Ryzen 7 5800X3D Ryzen 7 5800X Ryzen 5 5600X
760 10416 70.82fps 29.26fps 373W
729 8683 57.64fps 25.67fps 318W
716 6598 44.27fps 19.99fps 223W
652 4736 31.77fps 14.70fps 190W
588 5902 41.01fps 18.46fps 321W
541 4086 29.00fps 13.12fps 250W
791 11324 79.38fps 33.77fps 288W
750 6063 44.35fps 20.28fps 236W
637 10165 70.28fps 30.14fps 237W
546 5746 42.71fps 19.10fps 221W
596 6118 44.18fps 19.50fps 229W
601 4502 31.75fps 14.43fps 160W

As with the past 2 Ryzen generations, we bash get a bully show uplift successful productivity that besides spells retired the maximum gains we could expect to spot successful gaming. There's a steadfast 25 percent leap successful single-core speeds from the 5600X to the 7600X, arsenic measured by Cinebench R20, and we spot a akin borderline astatine the top-end too. Impressively, that boost allows the 7900X to outperform the 5950X successful the multi-threaded Cinebench trial contempt having 4 less cores and 8 less threads; the 7950X ought to beryllium an implicit titan. Moving implicit to the Handbrake transcode results, and the 7900X is 13 percent faster than the 5950X erstwhile it comes to H.264 encoding and conscionable a tad shy of that for H.265. The 7600X, for its part, outperforms the 5800X and 5800X3D with an mean transcode framerate of 20fps, compared to ~19 for the last-gen Ryzen 7 parts.

Power usage, measured astatine the partition for a speedy comparison, is accrued for Ryzen 7000 compared to its predecessor - but it's rather modest, information beryllium told. The caller 6900X + X670E strategy drew 288W astatine its maximum, compared to 237W for the 5950X + X570 - a 21 percent summation that is much oregon little in-line with the accrued speeds we're getting here. It'll beryllium absorbing to spot whether mammoth coolers and further powerfulness unlock immoderate meaningful show gains; connected Ryzen 5000 the spot seemed to connection afloat utilisation retired of the container but a displacement to a caller socket, higher powerfulness targets and truthful connected could mean there's immoderate overclocking headroom to discover.

With those retired of the way, let's determination onto the amusive stuff: checking retired however the 7600X and 7900X execute successful a scope of games. Click the speedy links beneath to determination onto the titles you're astir funny in, oregon deed the 'next page' fastener to instrumentality it each in!

AMD Ryzen 9 7900X and Ryzen 5 7600X analysis

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