AMD Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X review roundup : All hail the efficiency kings

Ignore those drama queens saying that Zen 5 is flop or failure. There are two key factors that many reviews are not stressing on.

1. Efficiency. The 9700x matches or beats 7700X while consuming up to 40% less power. Bloody 9700x aced Cinebench multi core test and did not even hit 60 degrees while my 5800X hits 90 degrees in few seconds. Compare these chips to 14600K and you will see how good and efficient they are going to be.
2. Massive overclock headroom. Level1techs and der8auer shows the overclocking potential of the 9700x and 9600x. PBO is going to be massive this time around.

At this point of time, reviews are all over the place and I am suspecting that it is due to BIOS. All reviewers are using X670 based boards and it looks like AMD and board makers do not have the most efficient BIOS update. X870 and B850 will come out in a month and by then they will sort out all inconsistencies with BIOS in X670. The reviewers that say that this is a flop must take a look at themselves in the mirror. These same guys used to salivate over efficiency 'tocks' when Intel used tick-tock cycle (tick for architecture change

Der8auer : Very efficient 9700x held back by power limits

Level1techs: Reviews and benchmarks

Phoronix: AMD Ryzen 5 9600X & Ryzen 7 9700X Offer Excellent Linux Performance. On average across the nearly 400 benchmarks the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X were consuming 73 Watts on average and a peak of 101~103 Watts. The Ryzen 5 7600X meanwhile had a 92 Watt average and a 149 Watt peak while the Ryzen 7 7700X had a 99 Watt average and 140 Watt peak. The Core i5 14600K with being a power hungry Raptor Lake had a 127 Watt average and a 236 Watt peak. The power efficiency of these Zen 5 processors are phenomenal!

Anandtech: Zen 5 is alive. Overall, Zen 5's performance in single-threaded workloads, especially in rendering, certainly takes things up a notch. And from an architectural perspective, Zen 5 is clearly an improvement over Zen 4 in virtually every way possible. Now we're just waiting to see what Zen 5 can do in its fastest desktop configurations, with the Ryzen 9 9950X (16C/32T) and the Ryzen 9 9900X (12C/24) set to launch next week. So stay tuned!
Source:

This will always be there. 5800x3D will continue to be the best VFM CPU followed by 7800x3D.

n1r0 said:

The CPU itself is good no doubt, but the price hike makes it a less VFM product.

Efficiency is meaningless when the price difference is so much, and the performance difference so little.

If it were priced close to the CURRENT market price of 7000 counterparts, then the extra efficiency would be worth a slight premium.

That said, if you want a CPU that has good gaming + single threaded performance + efficiency, then this is the best all rounder yet.

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These are not 'gaming chips'. AMD's stance has been clear in last few years. If you want gaming, go for x3D parts. if you want productivity, look at non-x3d parts. Coming to price, there is no way AMD is going to price them close to previous gen chips. Especially given that people are avoiding Intel's CPUs.

Coming to performance, these chips can get up to 30% better performance when you use PBO. Right now, this is the only detailed PBO based testing. There is a massive headroom for those who can make good use of PBO and EXPO. And it is only going to get better as drivers/BIOS gets better.


We re-ran the benchmarks and checked the performance increase compared to the default operation. The results are when compared to stock settings. All this on previous gen boards and half baked BIOS.

• Geomean: +11.15%
• PYPrime 32B: +40.13%
• 7-Zip: +17.83%
• IndigoBench (bedroom): +17.48%
• Geekbench 6 (single): +7.88%
• Geekbench 6 (multi): +23.26%
• Cinebench R23 Single: +8.96%
• Cinebench R23 Multi: +21.99%
• CPU-Z V17.01.64 Single: +4.80%
• CPU-Z V17.01.64 Multi: +12.39%
• V-Ray 5: +23.55%
• Corona 10: +21.49%
• AI Benchmark: +29.04%
• 3DMark Night Raid: +10.53%
• 3DMark Solar Bay: +2.65%
• Returnal: +1.85%
• Tomb Raider: +6.19%
• Final Fantasy XV: +8.71%

Here are the 3DMark CPU Profile scores:

• CPU Profile 1 Thread: +5.19%
• CPU Profile 2 Threads: +5.17%
• CPU Profile 4 Threads: +4.84%
• CPU Profile 8 Threads: +11.39%
• CPU Profile 16 Threads: +17.03%
• CPU Profile Max Threads: +17.16%

Here are the AIDA64 memory benchmark scores:

• Memory Read Bandwidth: +33.98%
• Memory Write Bandwidth: +48.91%
• Memory Copy Bandwidth: +35.05%
• Memory Latency: +31.28%

kartikoli said:

I hate you @desiibond my 5600X bought in Dec 2022 is going just fine and now I have already started checking price (thats not a good sign financially)

I'll wait for reviews after BIOS update and indian prices

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wait for x3D parts if you want it for gaming. Given efficiency improvements, if 9800X3D comes, it is going to obliterate every other chip.