AMD Ryzen 9 7900X & Ryzen 5 7600X Review: Reclaiming The Performance & Value Crown!

With the release of the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X and Ryzen 5 7600X processors, AMD’s AM5 era has begun. Since the release of their Ryzen series processors, they have managed to recapture a good chunk of the market share from Intel. Today, we are going to take a look at two of their latest offerings: the Ryzen 9 7900X and the Ryzen 5 7600X. These CPUs represent AMD’s top-of-the-line performance and value options, respectively.

Built on the latest 5nm process node & AM5 socket, AMD has ditched the now ageing DDR4 and PCIe 4.0 in support of DDR5 and PCIe 5.0. This should unlock higher performance ceilings to compete with Intel’s 13th generation processors and latter generations for years to come. The Ryzen 9 7900X retails for RM 2,699, while the Ryzen 5 7600X retails for RM 1,399.

Our Test Bench

To test out the latest generation of AMD Ryzen processors, we have to swap out our usual test bench for the latest AM5 and DDR5 hardware, which AMD had kindly provided us. The test bench we used for both Ryzen 9 7900X and Ryzen 5 7600X are as below:

Specifications

AMD Ryzen 9 7900X

The AMD Ryzen 9 7900X is based on the recently announced Zen 4 architecture. It has a based clock of 4.7GHz, with a boost clock of up to 5.6Ghz. The processor comes with 12 Cores and 24 threads, and has a TDP of 170W (the previous generation Ryzen 9 5950X has a TDP of 105W for comparison).

Unlike the predecessors, the Ryzen 9 7900X has an integrated AMD Radeon Graphics GPU, though I am sure that 99.99% of owners would pair this processor with discrete ones instead.

AMD Ryzen 5 7600X

Just like the Ryzen 9 7900X, the Ryzen 5 7600X is also built on the latest 5nm process and AM5 socket. However, it comes with a more sensible 6 cores and 12 threads specification. Base clock is 4.7Ghz with a boost of up to 5.3Ghz. The integrated Radeon Graphics is also present here.

Performance

For our benchmark, we ran both Ryzen processors on stock configuration with no overclocking applied. Here are the results from using our new test bench:

Flight Simulator 2020

We start off with a CPU heavy title, where we took a flight around LAX in a densely populated city area. As FPS matters less for flight simulators, we cranked up the settings to as high as we can and had great results. The bottleneck is more or less on the GPU as the performance difference is less than we initially expected.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Next we tried running CS:GO with all settings maxed out. Both the Ryzen 9 7900X and Ryzen 5 7600X easily managed above 300 FPS throughout our tests. Competitive gamers would usually max out the framerates by dropping most of the graphical features and settings, and should get stellar results from either one processor.

Hitman III

We tested both Ryzen CPUs with the Dartmoor benchmark, mainly due to an overall higher CPU load, and achieved pretty impressive results here. Switching to faster DDR5 RAM greatly improved overall performance over the previous generation.

Far Cry 6

Far Cry games are notorious for reliance on single-core CPU performance, and it shows in our test. The performance delta from both CPUs are only less than 10 frames apart, nevertheless it is a great improvement from previous generations.

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Crysis 3 Remastered

But… Can it run Crysis? We tried to answer that question and threw in DLSS for good measure. Despite the generational improvement in architecture and clock speed, the difference in performance is far less than we expected, around 2-5% improvement over the Zen 3 counterparts.

Cyberpunk 2077

We tried running the game with Ray Tracing on, to add more load to the CPU which often caused bottlenecking on older models. This game also benefitted from DDR5 memory, gaining heaps more framerates over DDR4.

PassMark

The Ryzen 9 7900X outperformed the Ryzen 9 5950X by about 10%, which is around what we would expect considering the 5950X is one of AMD’s best chips from the previous generation. The Ryzen 5 7600X however, outperformed its predecessor, the Ryzen 5 5600X by 25%.

Cinebench R23

This is where we see the most improvements in performance for both processors. The Ryzen 9 7900X improved on Ryzen 9 5950X’s performance by around 16%. The Ryzen 5 7600X has seen a 50% improvement!

CPU Temperatures

Both Ryzen chips ran pretty cool throughout our testing. While having a high TDP of 170W, the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X maintained an average temperature of 64°C, while the Ryzen 6 7600X managed 52°C. Since both processors are designed to run normally under 95°C, we never had any throttling issues while running our tests.

Conclusion

This is an important milestone for AMD as it finally catches up to Intel’s 12th generation Alder Lake CPUs. It had been lagging behind with the lack of DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 support, and with the new AM5 socket motherboards, they bridged the generational gap and can now bring the fight to Intel. The processors are definitely faster than the 5000 series, and paired with fast DDR5 memory, the performance leap is a significant one with improvements of 20-45% over the previous generation..

However, AMD had to forfeit the cost benefits of using AM4. Customer who want to upgrade to the latest CPUs would need to change their entire system, and as it stands right now, DDR5 RAM and AM5 series motherboards are not affordable to most. Only time will tell if the price of parts will drop as the production increases with wider mainstream adoption.

There is also one thorn on AMD’s side, Intel’s 13th generation Raptor Lake CPUs are looming in the horizon and could potentially leapfrog AMD when it releases, and early leaks show promising results.

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So what do you think of AMD’s latest lineup of CPUs? Let us know in the comments of what processor reviews you want to see next. For more cost-conscious buyers, do check out our review of the Ryzen 5 5600, which is more affordable and widely available than before.