AMD Ryzen 9 7900X Review: Zen 4 Has a Pricing Problem
AMD’s 12-core Ryzen 9 7900X carries a $549 price tag that slots in between Intel’s flagship Core i9 and Core i7 chips, but its performance defies the middle ground placement. Given its price point and gaming performance that matches or exceeds Intel’s finest, paired with strong performance in desktop PC applications, the Ryzen 9 7900X appears to be a contender for our list of Best CPUs and our CPU Benchmark hierarchy. But there’s a lot more at play than just chip pricing.
Like the other Ryzen 7000 ‘Raphael’ processors, the 7900X comes armed with the new Zen 4 architecture, which increases IPC by ~13%, etched on the TSMC 5nm process. That combo delivers incredible peak clocks of 5.6 GHz — a mere 100 MHz shy of the 5.7 GHz you’ll get with the 16-core flagship Ryzen 9 7950X. It’s also surprisingly a higher clock speed than we see with even Intel’s fastest chips, at least until the company’s 6 GHz Raptor Lake chips come to market.
| Price | Cores / Threads (P+E) | Base / Boost Clock (GHz) | Cache (L2+L3) | TDP / Max | Memory | |
| Ryzen 9 7950X | $699 | 16 / 32 | 4.5 / 5.7 | 80MB | 170W / 230W | DDR5-5200 |
| Ryzen 9 7900X | $549 | 12 / 24 | 4.7 / 5.6 | 76MB | 170W / 230W | DDR5-5200 |
| Ryzen 7 7700X | $399 | 8 / 16 | 4.5 / 5.4 | 40MB | 105W / 142W | DDR5-5200 |
| Ryzen 5 7600X | $299 | 6 / 12 | 4.7 / 5.3 | 38MB | 105W / 142W | DDR5-5200 |
Other advances make the Ryzen 7000 chips compelling. AMD has even developed its own EXPO DDR5 memory profiles for overclocking, rivaling Intel’s XMP standard. The Ryzen 7000 chips also come loaded with other new tech, like a new Radeon RDNA 2 iGPU for basic display output and support for AVX-512 and AI instructions.
Paired with vastly improved power delivery, courtesy of a new platform, AMD’s process and architecture advances deliver truly explosive performance gains — but there are a few gotchas.
AMD’s Zen 4 chips drop into the new AM5 socket on 600-series motherboards. The platform supports the latest interfaces, like DDR5 and PCIe 5.0, largely matching Intel’s connectivity options. However, in contrast to Intel’s platform, which supports either pricey DDR5 or more affordable DDR4, the AM5 platform only supports DDR5 memory. That adds cost to your build.
AMD’s initial launch includes AM5 motherboards with the X670 and X670E chipsets, but they carry heavy premiums compared to similar Intel boards — and that’s with direct comparisons of DDR5 motherboards. The picture becomes even more lopsided when we compare DDR4 options. And it doesn’t look like the B-series motherboards will be as affordable as we’ve seen in the past, adding another layer of additional cost over similar Intel-powered systems.
Despite its impressive performance in a wide range of apps, these pricing factors conspire to make the Ryzen 9 7900X less appealing than the sticker price suggests — this chip is certainly ripe for a big price reduction.
Ryzen 9 7900X Specifications and Pricing
| Price | Cores / Threads (P+E) | P-Core Base / Boost Clock (GHz) | E-Core Base / Boost Clock (GHz) | Cache (L2/L3) | TDP / PBP / MTP | Memory | |
| Core i9-13900K / KF | $589 (K) – $564 (KF) | 24 / 32 (8+16) | 3.0 / 5.8 | 2.2 / 4.3 | 68MB (32+36) | 125W / 253W | DDR4-3200 / DDR5-5600 |
| Ryzen 9 7950X | $699 | 16 / 32 | 4.5 / 5.7 | – | 80MB (16+64) | 170W / 230W | DDR5-5200 |
| Core i9-12900K / KF | $589 (K) – $564 (KF) | 16 / 24 (8+8) | 3.2 / 5.2 | 2.4 / 3.9 | 44MB (14+30) | 125W / 241W | DDR4-3200 / DDR5-4800 |
| Ryzen 9 7900X | $549 | 12 / 24 | 4.7 / 5.6 | – | 76MB (12+64) | 170W / 230W | DDR5-5200 |
| Ryzen 9 5900X | $398 ($549) | 12 / 24 | 3.7 / 4.8 | – | 70MB (6+64) | 105W | DDR5-5200 |
| Core i7-13700K / KF | $409 (K) – $384 (KF) | 16 / 24 (8+8) | 3.4 / 5.4 | 2.5 / 4.2 | 54MB (24+30) | 125W / 253W | DDR4-3200 / DDR5-5600 |
| Core i7-12700K / KF | $409 (K) – $384 (KF) | 12 / 20 (8+4) | 3.6 / 5.0 | 2.7 / 3.8 | 37MB (12+25) | 125W / 190W | DDR4-3200 / DDR5-4800 |
| Ryzen 7 7700X | $399 | 8 / 16 | 4.5 / 5.4 | – | 40MB (8+32) | 105W / 142W | DDR5-5200 |
| Ryzen 5 7600X | $299 | 6 / 12 | 4.7 / 5.3 | – | 38MB (6+32) | 105W / 142W | DDR5-5200 |
| Core i5-13600K / KF | $319 (K) – $294 (KF) | 14 / 20 (6+8) | 3.5 / 5.1 | 2.6 / 3.9 | 44MB (20+24) | 125W / 181W | DDR4-3200 / DDR5-5600 |
| Core i5-12600K / KF | $289 (K) – $264 (KF) | 10 / 16 (6+4) | 3.7 / 4.9 | 2.8 / 3.6 | 29.5MB (9.5+20) | 125W / 150W | DDR4-3200 / DDR5-4800 |
The 12-core 24-thread Ryzen 9 7900X lands at $549, the same launch price as its predecessor, positioning it to compete with both the $589 Core i9-12900K and the $409 Core i7-12700K that are already on the market. Intel has surprisingly kept its pricing for its new Raptor Lake Core i9 and i7 similar to the existing models, so the 7900X will also eventually compete with the Core i9-13900K and Core i7-13700K when they arrive this month.
The 7900X comes with four fewer cores than the 16-core Ryzen 9 7950X flagship, but has a 4.7 GHz base clock and a 5.6 GHz boost. It also has 64MB of L3 cache, like the flagship model, and an identical 170W/230W TDP/peak power rating. That’s a 65W increase over the previous-gen Ryzen 9 5900X and a record for AMD’s Ryzen family. This increased power consumption is partially due to AMD’s drastically improved power delivery with the AM5 socket — it delivers much more power to keep the cores fully powered during heavy load — but it results in higher chip temperatures.
The Ryzen 9 7900X doesn’t come with a bundled cooler; instead, AMD recommends a 240-280mm liquid cooler or equivalent. Even if you use a powerful cooler, you should expect the highest-end Ryzen processors to run at higher temperatures than we’re accustomed to. Loaded temperatures regularly reach 90C to 95C, even with a powerful cooler. AMD says this is expected behavior — the chip is designed to consume all available thermal headroom to provide faster performance. The 95C thermal threshold is within safe operating limits, so it won’t result in degradation. If you’re concerned about chip temperatures, AMD has an easily-activated ECO mode that reduces the TDP of any given processor to its most efficient point on the voltage/frequency curve. That significantly reduces temperatures, but it does reduce performance.
The Raphael processors drop into a new AM5 socket that supports the PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 interfaces, matching Alder Lake on the connectivity front. The Socket AM5 motherboards can expose up to 24 lanes of PCIe 5.0 to the user. We have an extensive roundup of twenty 600-series motherboards here.
Ryzen 7000 supports DDR5-5200 if you install one DIMM per channel (1DPC), but that drops to DDR5-3600 for 2DPC. AMD also introduced the new EXPO memory overclocking spec to compete with Intel’s XMP. EXPO profiles are designed for AMD processors to allow one-click memory overclocking to predefined speeds. You can find EXPO kits with speeds reaching up to DDR5-6400.
The Ryzen 7000 processors come with the N5 TSMC 5nm process node for the core compute die (CCD) and the TSMC 6nm process for the I/O Die (IOD). The Ryzen 9 7900X has two active CCDs, but AMD disables four cores to create the 12-core design. You can learn more about this design in our Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 all we know article.
The RDNA 2 iGPU is designed to provide basic display output capabilities only. The RDNA 2 iGPU comes with two compute units, 4 ACE, and 1 HWS, so gaming is off the table. You can see the iGPU gaming results in our Ryzen 9 7950X review, but the short version is that they’re the slowest integrated graphics on a modern processor that we’re aware of, but they work great for regular display duties.
The integrated graphics are appealling for troubleshooting and OEM systems, though, and it has other redeeming qualities. For example, the iGPU supports AV1 and VP9 decode, H.264 and HVEC encode and decode, USB Type-C with DisplayPort Alt Mode, DisplayPort 2.0, and HDMI 2.1. You also get support for 4K60 and hybrid graphics.
Ryzen 9 7900X Benchmark Test Setup
We tested the Ryzen 7000 processors with an ASRock X670E Taichi motherboard. We tested all Intel configurations with DDR5 memory, but you can find performance data for DDR4 configurations in our CPU Benchmark hierarchy. We also tested with secure boot, virtualization support, and fTPM/PTT active to reflect a properly configured Windows 11 install.
Our overclocks were rather straightforward — we enabled the auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) feature with ‘advanced motherboard’ settings and adjusted the scalar setting to 10X. For our overclocked AMD configurations, we enabled the DDR5-6000 EXPO profile for the memory kit. This also automatically enables the AMD-recommended Auto setting for the fabric and a 1:1 ratio for the memory frequency and memory controller (Auto:1:1 is the recommended setting for memory overclocking with Ryzen 7000). You can find further details in the table at the end of the article.
Gaming Performance on Ryzen 9 7900X — The TLDR
Below you can see the geometric mean of our gaming tests at 1080p and 1440p, with each resolution split into its own chart. Be aware that a different mix of game titles could yield somewhat different results (particularly with the Ryzen 7 5800X3D), but this serves as a solid overall indicator of gaming performance. As usual, we’re testing with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 to reduce GPU-imposed bottlenecks as much as possible, and differences between test subjects will shrink with lesser cards or higher resolutions. You’ll find further game-by-game breakdowns below.
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The $549 Ryzen 9 7900X is plenty impressive in gaming, effectively matching the $699 Ryzen 9 7950X at 1080p with both stock and overclocked settings. The Ryzen 9 7900X also fares well against the more expensive $589 Core i9-12900K, leading it by 5% at stock settings, and tying after overclocking.
The Ryzen 9 7900X is also 9% faster than the stock $409 Core i7-12700K, and 2.7% faster after tuning. But remember it also costs 34% more, meaning the 12700K is the better bang for your gaming buck. And that’s before we factor in the higher DDR5 and motherboard costs associated with the AM5 platform.
We typically recommend Ryzen 5 or Core i5 for most dedicated gaming rigs, and the $299 Ryzen 5 7600X and $399 Ryzen 7 7700X are the perfect examples of why. Both of these chips provide within 1 to 2 percent of the performance of the Ryzen 9 7900X but are much less expensive. That means the 7900X is not a good value if you’re strictly interested in gaming.
The 7900X does represent a big generational improvement, though — the Ryzen 9 7900X is 15% faster than its prior-gen counterpart, the Zen 3-powered Ryzen 9 5900X, which also comes with 12 cores.
However, Intel only needs to gain ~5% with Raptor Lake to match the 7900X in gaming, setting the stage for quite the competition next month.
AMD’s own $430 Ryzen 7 5800X3D remains the fastest gaming chip on the market by a fair margin, but this highly-specialized chip comes with caveats — its 3D V-Cache doesn’t boost performance in all games. Additionally, the 5800X3D is optimized specifically for gaming, but it can’t keep pace with similarly-priced chips in productivity applications. AMD will bring at least one Zen 4-powered Ryzen 7000 processor with 3D V-cache to market this year, so you might want to consider waiting a few more months if you’re after a specialized gaming chip.
| Tom’s Hardware | 1080p Game Benchmarks – fps %age |
| $430 — Ryzen 7 5800X3D | 100% |
| $699 — Ryzen 9 7950X | 93.4% |
| $549 — Ryzen 9 7900X | 92.9% |
| $399 — Ryzen 7 7700X | 92.4% |
| $299 — Ryzen 5 7600X | 91.3% |
| $589 — Core i9-12900K | 82.3% |
| $409 — Core i7-12700K | 85.2% |
Naturally, the differences between the chips shrink when we switch over to 1440p and bring a GPU bottleneck into play, but the story remains largely similar, with scant differences between the chips at the top of the leaderboard. The competition between Intel and AMD is even closer now, so it’s best to make an informed decision based on the types of titles you play frequently.
3D Mark DX11, DX12, and Chess Engines on AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
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Synthetic benchmarks don’t translate well to real-world gaming, but they show us the raw amount of computing power exposed to game engines. It’s too bad most games don’t fully exploit it.
The VRMark benchmark is exceptionally sensitive to single-threaded performance and memory latency. Here the Ryzen 7000 series shines, with lower core count models taking the lead while the beefier 7950X and 7900X fill out the ranks, maintaining a noticeable lead over the Intel comparables.
The Ryzen 9 7900X is faster than the Core i9-12900K in the DX11 CPU tests, but Intel’s Core i9 and i7 still hold the lead in DX12. The heavily-threaded chess engine benchmarks also profit from Ryzen 7000’s improved multi-threaded performance. The 7900X easily beats the 12900K in both benchmarks.
Far Cry 6 on AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
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The Ryzen 9 7900X lives up to what we expect, which is 7950X-rivaling performance in some games, particularly after overclocking. Surprisingly, the 7900X outperforms the Ryzen 7 5800X3D in this title, but that’s a rare occurrence in this suite of game benchmarks. The Ryzen 9 7900X is 8% faster than the 12900K and 14.6% faster than the 12700K.
We see roughly the expected uptick from overclocking the Ryzen 7000 models, but you’ll notice the Alder Lake chips suffer from lower 99th percentile measurements after tuning. That’s an interesting and repeatable condition, but it seems to be confined to this title in our suite.
F1 2021 on AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
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The Ryzen 7 5800X3D takes the overall lead, which we’ll see a lot as we flip through these titles, but remember that this chip can be finicky — some titles see little to no uplift.
The Ryzen 7000 chips take the top of the chart in overall framerates, but like their prior-gen counterparts, they have proportionally lower 99th percentile framerates than the Alder Lake processors. However, we didn’t notice any outwardly visible rough play, and we are looking at framerates in excess of 300 fps, so this is more of an interesting tendency than something that manifests as noticeably poor performance.
The Zen 4 chips take a big lead over the stock Intel comparables — even the heavily-overclocked Core i9-12900K struggles to keep pace with the stock Ryzen 7000 processors. We’re pushing past 300 fps with this title, though, so the differences won’t be noticeable during gameplay.
Hitman 3 on AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
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Intel used to enjoy a sizeable lead over Ryzen in Hitman 3 because the game is specifically tuned to leverage the E-cores by offloading low-priority tasks like physics to the small cores. Ryzen 7000 improves AMD’s standing drastically, with the stock Ryen 9 7900X running neck-and-neck with the more expensive Core i9-12900K at stock settings. Intel still holds the advantage after overclocking, though.
Horizon Zero Dawn on AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
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Horizon Zero Dawn doesn’t scale exceptionally well with more host processing power, so like many of the titles you’ll see in the real world, the delta between the highest-end chips can be slight.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2021 on AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
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The Ryzen 7 5800X3D is simply outstanding in this title, highlighting that the chip can provide huge speedups in some titles. However, that can skew overall rankings. This is why the chip is, on average, the fastest gaming chip in the world, but be aware that it can change drastically based on the game you’re playing.
The Ryzen processors, including the previous-gen models, beat Intel’s Alder Lake at stock settings. Despite Intel’s big overclocking gains, the tuned Ryzen chips land within a few percent of their price-comparable competitors.
Red Dead Redemption 2 on AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
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The Zen 4 Ryzen 9 chips don’t gain much from overclocking in this title, but they don’t need much help as they beat even the heavily-overclocked Core i9-12900K when they’re at stock settings.
Watch Dogs Legion on AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
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Watch Dogs Legion brings a much-needed win for the 12900K as we close out our gaming benchmarks. However, the 12900K’s lead over the 7900X is slim.
Desktop PC Application Benchmarks on Ryzen 9 7900X — the TLDR
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The 16-core Ryzen 9 7950X absolutely dominates our cumulative measurement of multi-threaded performance, but the $549 Ryzen 9 7900X is also impressive, with a 14% lead over the $598 Core i9-12900K. The 7900X is also 35% faster than the previous-gen Ryzen 9 5900X, an impressive gen-on-gen improvement given that both chips have 12 cores.
Intel’s Alder Lake took a pronounced lead in single-threaded performance over the prior-gen Ryzen 5000 processors, but the Zen 4 architecture takes a big step forward, matching or exceeding the price-comparable Alder Lake chips.
You’ll notice that the overclocked configurations offer little to no benefit for the Ryzen processors, as expected, while both Intel processors actually lose some performance in this metric. It isn’t surprising to see the 12900K lose a bit of steam — the all-core 5.1 GHz overclock is lower than its peak 5.2 GHz boosts on a single core — but the 12600K and 12700K’s decline is a bit unexpected because the overclock matches the peak clock rate. After quite a bit of analysis and repeated testing, it appears that thread targeting isn’t working as effectively with the overclocked Intel configurations, resulting in quite a bit of thread migration during single-threaded tasks.
The Ryzen 9 7900X makes a compelling case for creators and prosumers, but high memory and motherboard pricing remain a fly in the ointment. Intel’s existing chips are much more competitive on a performance-per-dollar basis when we factor in those costs, and we expect Intel’s continued aggressive pricing with Raptor Lake to significantly reduce the appeal of the Ryzen 9 7900X and 7950X at their current pricing. Intel has a pricing advantage with its coming platform, even on a like-for-like basis with DDR5 motherboards. That is amplified with Intel’s option for DDR4 platforms.
| Tom’s Hardware | Multi-Thread | Single-Thread |
| $699 — Ryzen 9 7950X | 100% | 100% |
| $549 — Ryzen 9 7900X | 79.3% | 98.7% |
| $589 — Core i9-12900K | 69.4% | 99.6% |
| $409 — Core i7-12700K | 59.4% | 96% |
| $399 — Ryzen 7 7700X | 57.2% | 97.6% |
| $299 — Ryzen 5 7600X | 45.1% | 95.7% |
| $430 — Ryzen 7 5800X3D | 41.7% | 74.9% |
Rendering Benchmarks on AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
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It was initially surprising to see Alder Lake’s hybrid architecture largely beat Ryzen in threaded workloads after AMD had dominated these types of benchmarks for years. The Ryzen 9 7950X quashed that uprising on the high end — at least until Raptor Lake arrives — but the Ryzen 9 7900X vs Core i9-12900K battle isn’t quite as clear cut in some benchmarks.
For instance, the Ryzen 9 7950X is 5% faster than the 12900K in the multi-threaded Cinebench benchmarks, but the 12900K is 11% faster in POV-Ray. The Ryzen 9 7900X leads in the Blender renders, being 16% to 23% faster than the 12900K. Overclocking the Intel chip isn’t enough to change the picture, either.
Encoding Benchmarks on AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
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Most encoders tend to be either heavily threaded, like HandBrake and SVT-AV1, or almost exclusively single-threaded, like the LAME and FLAC applications. The Ryzen 7900X leads the Core i9-12900K in both types of applications, sweeping this series of tests, though often not by large margins.
Adobe Premiere Pro, Photoshop and Lightroom on AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
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The UL Benchmarks Procyon suite runs complex Adobe Premiere Pro, Photoshop, and Lightroom workflows with the actual software, making for a great real-world test suite. The Ryzen 9 7900X beats Alder Lake handily in Premiere Pro and the Lightroom and Photoshop benchmarks.
Web Browsing, Office and Productivity on AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
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The ubiquitous web browser is one of the most frequently used applications. These latency-sensitive tests tend to be lightly threaded, so a fast response time is critical. Intel typically dominated these benchmarks, but Ryzen 7000 flips the tables and takes the lead in every browser test. AMD has also improved its standing in the Application Start-up benchmark, which compares how long it takes to open various applications and is a great measure of system snappiness.
Compilation, Compression, AVX-512 Performance on AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
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This selection of tests runs the gamut from the exceedingly branchy code in the LLVM compilation workload to the massively parallel molecular dynamics simulation code in NAMD to encryption and compression/decompression performance.
Y-cruncher computes Pi with the AVX instruction set, making for an exceedingly demanding benchmark. We employed the latest version of y-cruncher that has added support for Zen 4, and here we can see the benefits of AVX-512 become apparent in the single-threaded benchmark. Spreading the workload out among the cores in the threaded portion of the y-cruncher test reduces the magnitude of the lead over Intel (per-core memory throughput and/or fabric throughput are likely barriers here), but the Ryzen 9 7900X leads over Alder Lake. The generational performance improvement is also readily apparent compared to the Ryzen 9 5900X.
Ryzen has long had an uneven performance in compression/decompression workloads, with decompression being a strength while compression suffered compared to other chips. The Zen 4 architecture delivers impressive performance in both workloads, reducing the disparities.
Power Consumption and Efficiency Ryzen 9 7900X
AMD worked with TSMC to tune the 5nm process for its design goals, resulting in a specialized 15-layer N5 process node. Unfortunately, we don’t know the specifics of the custom node. However, TSMC’s N5 generally provides 15% more performance at a given power level, or 20% lower power consumption at any given clock rate compared to the 7nm process AMD used for its previous-gen Ryzen 5000 chips.
Paired with the Zen 4 architectural advances and SoC improvements, AMD says Ryzen 7000 delivers up to 40% more performance-per-watt at its standard TDP levels. However, the company has significantly dialed up its TDP levels so that extra efficiency is largely lost in a bid to fend off the coming Raptor Lake chips. This isn’t entirely unexpected as companies dial up to the upper end of the voltage/frequency curve — the last few percentage points of performance often come at the expense of double-digit percentage increases in power consumption.
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As expected, our power measurements find the Ryzen 7000 chips drawing significantly more power than the previous-gen Ryzen 5000 models, and that’s by design. However, we have to keep things in perspective — despite Ryzen’s gen-on-gen increase in power consumption, Alder Lake processors still consume more power while delivering less performance.
AMD’s highest-end 7950X is equally power efficient to its predecessor, the 5950X, in the renders-per-day-per-watt efficiency metric, showing that AMD has sacrificed potential extra efficiency in the name of increased performance.
Those efforts seem largely confined to the flagship, though. As we can see with the previous-gen Ryzen 9 5900X, the lesser Zen 4 models, like the Ryzen 9 7900X, are more efficient than their predecessors even though they consume more power overall. They also chew through the workloads faster, as you can see below.
In the end, this boils down to AMD making a run at the overall performance crown at the expense of efficiency with the 7950X, while the other models show generational efficiency gains.
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Here we take a slightly different look at power consumption by calculating the cumulative energy required to perform x264 and x265 HandBrake workloads, respectively. We plot this ‘task energy’ value in Kilojoules on the left side of the chart.
These workloads are comprised of a fixed amount of work, so we can plot the task energy against the time required to finish the job (bottom axis), thus generating a really useful power chart.
Remember that faster compute times, and lower task energy requirements, are ideal. That means processors that fall the closest to the bottom left corner of the chart are the best. Here we can see that the Ryzen 9 7900X is far faster than the previous-gen 5900X while consuming less power.
AMD Ryzen 9 7900X Boost Frequencies and Temperatures
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As part of our normal test regimen, we tested performance in lightly-threaded work to record the peak boost speeds and thermals. We ran through our standard series of lightly-threaded tests (LAME, PCMark10, Geekbench, VRMark, and single-threaded Cinebench).
As with the previous-gen chips, some Ryzen 7000 chips can boost above their rated speeds if they have sufficient cooling and power. As always, the silicon lottery could apply. The Ryzen 9 7900X regularly peaked at 5.7 GHz, above the rated 5.6 GHz.
We also ran through a spate of standard heavily threaded applications (Cinebench, HandBrake, POV-Ray, Blender, AVX-heavy y-cruncher) to measure power and thermals. We used a Corsair H115i 280mm AIO with the fans cranked to 100% to keep the chip as cool as possible during this test run.
The 7950X hovered around 5.2 GHz through the most intense workloads when all cores were fully loaded. Peak power consumption reached 215W. The 7950X peaked at 90C during the test run but mostly hovered around 87C, which AMD assures us is expected behavior — the chip is designed to consume all available thermal headroom to provide faster performance. AMD assigns a 95C thermal threshold as the safe operating limit.
It’s often forgotten, but the Ryzen 5000 processors also operate in a similar fashion — 95C is a normal operating condition with stock coolers, which we wrote about in our original Ryzen 5000 reviews. By design, Intel’s latest chips also often run at 100C for extended periods. Both vendors are locked in intense competition for performance leadership, so we can expect this trend to continue.
Conclusion
AMD’s Ryzen 9 7900X delivers impressive performance gains that beat Alder Lake in most types of workloads, including gaming. However, the chip, motherboard, and memory pricing conspire to reduce its appeal against Alder Lake, and we expect that disparity to become far more pronounced when Raptor Lake arrives later this month.
Below, we have the geometric mean of our gaming test suite at 1080p and 1440p and a cumulative measure of performance in single- and multi-threaded applications. We conducted our gaming tests with an RTX 3090, so performance deltas will shrink with lesser cards and higher resolution and fidelity settings — and might grow if you’re using a future next-gen RX 7900 XT or RTX 4090.
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If the Ryzen 9 7900X were a chip designed specifically for gaming, it would be a wonderful option with its Core i9-12900K-beating performance. However, as we see with most higher-tier chips, the 7900X’s $549 price tag removes this chip from the picture if you’re only interested in gaming — the $299 Ryzen 5 7600X and $399 Ryzen 7 7700X both offer nearly identical gaming performance.
The Ryzen 9 7900X is designed for the productivity-minded, and here its raw performance metrics shine. The 7900X was 14% faster than the $589 Core i9-12900K in our multi-threaded tests, but for $50 less. The Zen 4 architecture also closes the gap with Alder Lake in single-threaded applications, addressing a particularly glaring deficiency.
But the raw performance and the chips’ price tag aren’t the only factors in your build. AMD’s 600-series motherboards offer modern connectivity options, like DDR5 and PCIe 5.0, and also bring other additives, like USB4. However, they’re significantly more expensive than comparable DDR5 motherboards for Intel systems, which we chalk up to the dual-chipset design. However, the B-series motherboards also don’t appear as price-competitive with Intel’s comparables, which is an inexplicable bummer.
And that’s before we factor in the impact of AMD’s decision to only support DDR5 memory with Ryzen 7000. Intel also has DDR4 motherboards available that are even cheaper, magnifying the price disparities between the two platforms.
DDR5 memory is also simply more expensive than DDR4. AMD’s decision to fully commit to DDR5 could be a liability if pricing remains higher than DDR4, but memory pricing is volatile, so this could change (you should check current pricing). AMD expects DDR5 pricing to improve as we enter the last part of the year, but this market can be unpredictable.
We think the thermal ‘issues’ with AMD’s Ryzen 7000, while not ideal in a perfect world, are a bit overblown. The Ryzen 7000 chips consume more power than their predecessors, but that is by design. AMD has improved its power delivery and uses that to turn the thermal headroom into extra performance that cuts through work quicker. Intel’s high-end chips are also designed to run at higher levels of power consumption, and thus heat, so this tactic isn’t unheard of. In fact, AMD’s prior-gen flagships also ran at similar temperatures with stock coolers.
AMD’S ECO Mode feature will reduce power consumption and thermals for those interested in a cooler and quieter system, but it does reduce performance. It also boosts efficiency. In that vein, AMD didn’t make any efficiency strides with its flagship Ryzen 9 7950X because it sacrificed potential extra efficiency in the name of increased performance. This isn’t entirely unexpected as companies dial up to the upper end of the voltage/frequency curve — the last few percentage points of performance often come at the expense of double-digit percentage increases in power consumption. However, the lower-tier models, like the Ryzen 9 7900X, offer better power efficiency than their prior-gen counterparts in the tests we’ve conducted.
AMD’s biggest problem comes in the form of pricing, and that’s before we account for the looming Raptor Lake launch on October 20. Intel has made confident performance claims of a 15% improvement in single-threaded, 41% improvement in threaded, and a 40% ‘overall’ performance gain, which means that Raptor Lake and Ryzen 7000 will be closely matched.
Given AMD’s pricing challenges surrounding its AM5 motherboard ecosystem and DDR5 memory, not to mention Intel’s aggressive Alder and Raptor Lake pricing, the Ryzen 9 7900X will need a meaningful price reduction to be competitive with other modern offerings.
| AMD Socket AM5 (X670E) | Ryzen 9 7950X, Ryzen 9 7900X, Ryzen 5 7600X |
| ASRock X670E Taichi | |
| G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo DDR5-6000 – Stock: DDR5-5200 | OC/PBO: DDR5-6000 | |
| Intel Socket 1700 DDR5 (Z690) | Core i9-12900K, i7-12700K, 15-12600K, i5-12400 |
| MSI MEG Z690 Ace | |
| G.Skill Trident Z5 DDR5-6400 – Stock: DDR5-4400 | OC DDR5-6000 | |
| AMD Socket AM4 (X570) | Ryzen 9 5950X, 5900X, 5700X, 5600X, 5800X3D |
| MSI MEG X570 Godlike | |
| 2x 8GB Trident Z Royal DDR4-3600 – Stock: DDR4-3200 | OC/PBO: DDR4-3800 | |
| All Systems | Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3090 Eagle – Gaming and ProViz applications |
| Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FE – Application tests | |
| 2TB Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus, Silverstone ST1100-TI, Open Benchtable, Arctic MX-4 TIM, Windows 11 Pro | |
| Cooling | Corsair H115i, Custom loop |
| Overclocking note | All configurations with overclocked memory also have tuned core frequencies and/or lifted power limits. |
AMD’s 12-core Ryzen 9 7900X carries a $549 price tag that slots in between Intel’s flagship Core i9 and Core i7 chips, but its performance defies the middle ground placement. Given its price point and gaming performance that matches or exceeds Intel’s finest, paired with strong performance in desktop PC applications, the Ryzen 9 7900X appears to be a contender for our list of Best CPUs and our CPU Benchmark hierarchy. But there’s a lot more at play than just chip pricing.
Like the other Ryzen 7000 ‘Raphael’ processors, the 7900X comes armed with the new Zen 4 architecture, which increases IPC by ~13%, etched on the TSMC 5nm process. That combo delivers incredible peak clocks of 5.6 GHz — a mere 100 MHz shy of the 5.7 GHz you’ll get with the 16-core flagship Ryzen 9 7950X. It’s also surprisingly a higher clock speed than we see with even Intel’s fastest chips, at least until the company’s 6 GHz Raptor Lake chips come to market.
| Price | Cores / Threads (P+E) | Base / Boost Clock (GHz) | Cache (L2+L3) | TDP / Max | Memory | |
| Ryzen 9 7950X | $699 | 16 / 32 | 4.5 / 5.7 | 80MB | 170W / 230W | DDR5-5200 |
| Ryzen 9 7900X | $549 | 12 / 24 | 4.7 / 5.6 | 76MB | 170W / 230W | DDR5-5200 |
| Ryzen 7 7700X | $399 | 8 / 16 | 4.5 / 5.4 | 40MB | 105W / 142W | DDR5-5200 |
| Ryzen 5 7600X | $299 | 6 / 12 | 4.7 / 5.3 | 38MB | 105W / 142W | DDR5-5200 |
Other advances make the Ryzen 7000 chips compelling. AMD has even developed its own EXPO DDR5 memory profiles for overclocking, rivaling Intel’s XMP standard. The Ryzen 7000 chips also come loaded with other new tech, like a new Radeon RDNA 2 iGPU for basic display output and support for AVX-512 and AI instructions.
Paired with vastly improved power delivery, courtesy of a new platform, AMD’s process and architecture advances deliver truly explosive performance gains — but there are a few gotchas.
AMD’s Zen 4 chips drop into the new AM5 socket on 600-series motherboards. The platform supports the latest interfaces, like DDR5 and PCIe 5.0, largely matching Intel’s connectivity options. However, in contrast to Intel’s platform, which supports either pricey DDR5 or more affordable DDR4, the AM5 platform only supports DDR5 memory. That adds cost to your build.
AMD’s initial launch includes AM5 motherboards with the X670 and X670E chipsets, but they carry heavy premiums compared to similar Intel boards — and that’s with direct comparisons of DDR5 motherboards. The picture becomes even more lopsided when we compare DDR4 options. And it doesn’t look like the B-series motherboards will be as affordable as we’ve seen in the past, adding another layer of additional cost over similar Intel-powered systems.
Despite its impressive performance in a wide range of apps, these pricing factors conspire to make the Ryzen 9 7900X less appealing than the sticker price suggests — this chip is certainly ripe for a big price reduction.
Ryzen 9 7900X Specifications and Pricing
| Price | Cores / Threads (P+E) | P-Core Base / Boost Clock (GHz) | E-Core Base / Boost Clock (GHz) | Cache (L2/L3) | TDP / PBP / MTP | Memory | |
| Core i9-13900K / KF | $589 (K) – $564 (KF) | 24 / 32 (8+16) | 3.0 / 5.8 | 2.2 / 4.3 | 68MB (32+36) | 125W / 253W | DDR4-3200 / DDR5-5600 |
| Ryzen 9 7950X | $699 | 16 / 32 | 4.5 / 5.7 | – | 80MB (16+64) | 170W / 230W | DDR5-5200 |
| Core i9-12900K / KF | $589 (K) – $564 (KF) | 16 / 24 (8+8) | 3.2 / 5.2 | 2.4 / 3.9 | 44MB (14+30) | 125W / 241W | DDR4-3200 / DDR5-4800 |
| Ryzen 9 7900X | $549 | 12 / 24 | 4.7 / 5.6 | – | 76MB (12+64) | 170W / 230W | DDR5-5200 |
| Ryzen 9 5900X | $398 ($549) | 12 / 24 | 3.7 / 4.8 | – | 70MB (6+64) | 105W | DDR5-5200 |
| Core i7-13700K / KF | $409 (K) – $384 (KF) | 16 / 24 (8+8) | 3.4 / 5.4 | 2.5 / 4.2 | 54MB (24+30) | 125W / 253W | DDR4-3200 / DDR5-5600 |
| Core i7-12700K / KF | $409 (K) – $384 (KF) | 12 / 20 (8+4) | 3.6 / 5.0 | 2.7 / 3.8 | 37MB (12+25) | 125W / 190W | DDR4-3200 / DDR5-4800 |
| Ryzen 7 7700X | $399 | 8 / 16 | 4.5 / 5.4 | – | 40MB (8+32) | 105W / 142W | DDR5-5200 |
| Ryzen 5 7600X | $299 | 6 / 12 | 4.7 / 5.3 | – | 38MB (6+32) | 105W / 142W | DDR5-5200 |
| Core i5-13600K / KF | $319 (K) – $294 (KF) | 14 / 20 (6+8) | 3.5 / 5.1 | 2.6 / 3.9 | 44MB (20+24) | 125W / 181W | DDR4-3200 / DDR5-5600 |
| Core i5-12600K / KF | $289 (K) – $264 (KF) | 10 / 16 (6+4) | 3.7 / 4.9 | 2.8 / 3.6 | 29.5MB (9.5+20) | 125W / 150W | DDR4-3200 / DDR5-4800 |
The 12-core 24-thread Ryzen 9 7900X lands at $549, the same launch price as its predecessor, positioning it to compete with both the $589 Core i9-12900K and the $409 Core i7-12700K that are already on the market. Intel has surprisingly kept its pricing for its new Raptor Lake Core i9 and i7 similar to the existing models, so the 7900X will also eventually compete with the Core i9-13900K and Core i7-13700K when they arrive this month.
The 7900X comes with four fewer cores than the 16-core Ryzen 9 7950X flagship, but has a 4.7 GHz base clock and a 5.6 GHz boost. It also has 64MB of L3 cache, like the flagship model, and an identical 170W/230W TDP/peak power rating. That’s a 65W increase over the previous-gen Ryzen 9 5900X and a record for AMD’s Ryzen family. This increased power consumption is partially due to AMD’s drastically improved power delivery with the AM5 socket — it delivers much more power to keep the cores fully powered during heavy load — but it results in higher chip temperatures.
The Ryzen 9 7900X doesn’t come with a bundled cooler; instead, AMD recommends a 240-280mm liquid cooler or equivalent. Even if you use a powerful cooler, you should expect the highest-end Ryzen processors to run at higher temperatures than we’re accustomed to. Loaded temperatures regularly reach 90C to 95C, even with a powerful cooler. AMD says this is expected behavior — the chip is designed to consume all available thermal headroom to provide faster performance. The 95C thermal threshold is within safe operating limits, so it won’t result in degradation. If you’re concerned about chip temperatures, AMD has an easily-activated ECO mode that reduces the TDP of any given processor to its most efficient point on the voltage/frequency curve. That significantly reduces temperatures, but it does reduce performance.
The Raphael processors drop into a new AM5 socket that supports the PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 interfaces, matching Alder Lake on the connectivity front. The Socket AM5 motherboards can expose up to 24 lanes of PCIe 5.0 to the user. We have an extensive roundup of twenty 600-series motherboards here.
Ryzen 7000 supports DDR5-5200 if you install one DIMM per channel (1DPC), but that drops to DDR5-3600 for 2DPC. AMD also introduced the new EXPO memory overclocking spec to compete with Intel’s XMP. EXPO profiles are designed for AMD processors to allow one-click memory overclocking to predefined speeds. You can find EXPO kits with speeds reaching up to DDR5-6400.
The Ryzen 7000 processors come with the N5 TSMC 5nm process node for the core compute die (CCD) and the TSMC 6nm process for the I/O Die (IOD). The Ryzen 9 7900X has two active CCDs, but AMD disables four cores to create the 12-core design. You can learn more about this design in our Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 all we know article.
The RDNA 2 iGPU is designed to provide basic display output capabilities only. The RDNA 2 iGPU comes with two compute units, 4 ACE, and 1 HWS, so gaming is off the table. You can see the iGPU gaming results in our Ryzen 9 7950X review, but the short version is that they’re the slowest integrated graphics on a modern processor that we’re aware of, but they work great for regular display duties.
The integrated graphics are appealling for troubleshooting and OEM systems, though, and it has other redeeming qualities. For example, the iGPU supports AV1 and VP9 decode, H.264 and HVEC encode and decode, USB Type-C with DisplayPort Alt Mode, DisplayPort 2.0, and HDMI 2.1. You also get support for 4K60 and hybrid graphics.
Ryzen 9 7900X Benchmark Test Setup
We tested the Ryzen 7000 processors with an ASRock X670E Taichi motherboard. We tested all Intel configurations with DDR5 memory, but you can find performance data for DDR4 configurations in our CPU Benchmark hierarchy. We also tested with secure boot, virtualization support, and fTPM/PTT active to reflect a properly configured Windows 11 install.
Our overclocks were rather straightforward — we enabled the auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) feature with ‘advanced motherboard’ settings and adjusted the scalar setting to 10X. For our overclocked AMD configurations, we enabled the DDR5-6000 EXPO profile for the memory kit. This also automatically enables the AMD-recommended Auto setting for the fabric and a 1:1 ratio for the memory frequency and memory controller (Auto:1:1 is the recommended setting for memory overclocking with Ryzen 7000). You can find further details in the table at the end of the article.
Gaming Performance on Ryzen 9 7900X — The TLDR
Below you can see the geometric mean of our gaming tests at 1080p and 1440p, with each resolution split into its own chart. Be aware that a different mix of game titles could yield somewhat different results (particularly with the Ryzen 7 5800X3D), but this serves as a solid overall indicator of gaming performance. As usual, we’re testing with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 to reduce GPU-imposed bottlenecks as much as possible, and differences between test subjects will shrink with lesser cards or higher resolutions. You’ll find further game-by-game breakdowns below.
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The $549 Ryzen 9 7900X is plenty impressive in gaming, effectively matching the $699 Ryzen 9 7950X at 1080p with both stock and overclocked settings. The Ryzen 9 7900X also fares well against the more expensive $589 Core i9-12900K, leading it by 5% at stock settings, and tying after overclocking.
The Ryzen 9 7900X is also 9% faster than the stock $409 Core i7-12700K, and 2.7% faster after tuning. But remember it also costs 34% more, meaning the 12700K is the better bang for your gaming buck. And that’s before we factor in the higher DDR5 and motherboard costs associated with the AM5 platform.
We typically recommend Ryzen 5 or Core i5 for most dedicated gaming rigs, and the $299 Ryzen 5 7600X and $399 Ryzen 7 7700X are the perfect examples of why. Both of these chips provide within 1 to 2 percent of the performance of the Ryzen 9 7900X but are much less expensive. That means the 7900X is not a good value if you’re strictly interested in gaming.
The 7900X does represent a big generational improvement, though — the Ryzen 9 7900X is 15% faster than its prior-gen counterpart, the Zen 3-powered Ryzen 9 5900X, which also comes with 12 cores.
However, Intel only needs to gain ~5% with Raptor Lake to match the 7900X in gaming, setting the stage for quite the competition next month.
AMD’s own $430 Ryzen 7 5800X3D remains the fastest gaming chip on the market by a fair margin, but this highly-specialized chip comes with caveats — its 3D V-Cache doesn’t boost performance in all games. Additionally, the 5800X3D is optimized specifically for gaming, but it can’t keep pace with similarly-priced chips in productivity applications. AMD will bring at least one Zen 4-powered Ryzen 7000 processor with 3D V-cache to market this year, so you might want to consider waiting a few more months if you’re after a specialized gaming chip.
| Tom’s Hardware | 1080p Game Benchmarks – fps %age |
| $430 — Ryzen 7 5800X3D | 100% |
| $699 — Ryzen 9 7950X | 93.4% |
| $549 — Ryzen 9 7900X | 92.9% |
| $399 — Ryzen 7 7700X | 92.4% |
| $299 — Ryzen 5 7600X | 91.3% |
| $589 — Core i9-12900K | 82.3% |
| $409 — Core i7-12700K | 85.2% |
Naturally, the differences between the chips shrink when we switch over to 1440p and bring a GPU bottleneck into play, but the story remains largely similar, with scant differences between the chips at the top of the leaderboard. The competition between Intel and AMD is even closer now, so it’s best to make an informed decision based on the types of titles you play frequently.
3D Mark DX11, DX12, and Chess Engines on AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
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Synthetic benchmarks don’t translate well to real-world gaming, but they show us the raw amount of computing power exposed to game engines. It’s too bad most games don’t fully exploit it.
The VRMark benchmark is exceptionally sensitive to single-threaded performance and memory latency. Here the Ryzen 7000 series shines, with lower core count models taking the lead while the beefier 7950X and 7900X fill out the ranks, maintaining a noticeable lead over the Intel comparables.
The Ryzen 9 7900X is faster than the Core i9-12900K in the DX11 CPU tests, but Intel’s Core i9 and i7 still hold the lead in DX12. The heavily-threaded chess engine benchmarks also profit from Ryzen 7000’s improved multi-threaded performance. The 7900X easily beats the 12900K in both benchmarks.
Far Cry 6 on AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
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The Ryzen 9 7900X lives up to what we expect, which is 7950X-rivaling performance in some games, particularly after overclocking. Surprisingly, the 7900X outperforms the Ryzen 7 5800X3D in this title, but that’s a rare occurrence in this suite of game benchmarks. The Ryzen 9 7900X is 8% faster than the 12900K and 14.6% faster than the 12700K.
We see roughly the expected uptick from overclocking the Ryzen 7000 models, but you’ll notice the Alder Lake chips suffer from lower 99th percentile measurements after tuning. That’s an interesting and repeatable condition, but it seems to be confined to this title in our suite.
F1 2021 on AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
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The Ryzen 7 5800X3D takes the overall lead, which we’ll see a lot as we flip through these titles, but remember that this chip can be finicky — some titles see little to no uplift.
The Ryzen 7000 chips take the top of the chart in overall framerates, but like their prior-gen counterparts, they have proportionally lower 99th percentile framerates than the Alder Lake processors. However, we didn’t notice any outwardly visible rough play, and we are looking at framerates in excess of 300 fps, so this is more of an interesting tendency than something that manifests as noticeably poor performance.
The Zen 4 chips take a big lead over the stock Intel comparables — even the heavily-overclocked Core i9-12900K struggles to keep pace with the stock Ryzen 7000 processors. We’re pushing past 300 fps with this title, though, so the differences won’t be noticeable during gameplay.
Hitman 3 on AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
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Intel used to enjoy a sizeable lead over Ryzen in Hitman 3 because the game is specifically tuned to leverage the E-cores by offloading low-priority tasks like physics to the small cores. Ryzen 7000 improves AMD’s standing drastically, with the stock Ryen 9 7900X running neck-and-neck with the more expensive Core i9-12900K at stock settings. Intel still holds the advantage after overclocking, though.
Horizon Zero Dawn on AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
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Horizon Zero Dawn doesn’t scale exceptionally well with more host processing power, so like many of the titles you’ll see in the real world, the delta between the highest-end chips can be slight.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2021 on AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
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The Ryzen 7 5800X3D is simply outstanding in this title, highlighting that the chip can provide huge speedups in some titles. However, that can skew overall rankings. This is why the chip is, on average, the fastest gaming chip in the world, but be aware that it can change drastically based on the game you’re playing.
The Ryzen processors, including the previous-gen models, beat Intel’s Alder Lake at stock settings. Despite Intel’s big overclocking gains, the tuned Ryzen chips land within a few percent of their price-comparable competitors.
Red Dead Redemption 2 on AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
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The Zen 4 Ryzen 9 chips don’t gain much from overclocking in this title, but they don’t need much help as they beat even the heavily-overclocked Core i9-12900K when they’re at stock settings.
Watch Dogs Legion on AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
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Watch Dogs Legion brings a much-needed win for the 12900K as we close out our gaming benchmarks. However, the 12900K’s lead over the 7900X is slim.
Desktop PC Application Benchmarks on Ryzen 9 7900X — the TLDR
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The 16-core Ryzen 9 7950X absolutely dominates our cumulative measurement of multi-threaded performance, but the $549 Ryzen 9 7900X is also impressive, with a 14% lead over the $598 Core i9-12900K. The 7900X is also 35% faster than the previous-gen Ryzen 9 5900X, an impressive gen-on-gen improvement given that both chips have 12 cores.
Intel’s Alder Lake took a pronounced lead in single-threaded performance over the prior-gen Ryzen 5000 processors, but the Zen 4 architecture takes a big step forward, matching or exceeding the price-comparable Alder Lake chips.
You’ll notice that the overclocked configurations offer little to no benefit for the Ryzen processors, as expected, while both Intel processors actually lose some performance in this metric. It isn’t surprising to see the 12900K lose a bit of steam — the all-core 5.1 GHz overclock is lower than its peak 5.2 GHz boosts on a single core — but the 12600K and 12700K’s decline is a bit unexpected because the overclock matches the peak clock rate. After quite a bit of analysis and repeated testing, it appears that thread targeting isn’t working as effectively with the overclocked Intel configurations, resulting in quite a bit of thread migration during single-threaded tasks.
The Ryzen 9 7900X makes a compelling case for creators and prosumers, but high memory and motherboard pricing remain a fly in the ointment. Intel’s existing chips are much more competitive on a performance-per-dollar basis when we factor in those costs, and we expect Intel’s continued aggressive pricing with Raptor Lake to significantly reduce the appeal of the Ryzen 9 7900X and 7950X at their current pricing. Intel has a pricing advantage with its coming platform, even on a like-for-like basis with DDR5 motherboards. That is amplified with Intel’s option for DDR4 platforms.
| Tom’s Hardware | Multi-Thread | Single-Thread |
| $699 — Ryzen 9 7950X | 100% | 100% |
| $549 — Ryzen 9 7900X | 79.3% | 98.7% |
| $589 — Core i9-12900K | 69.4% | 99.6% |
| $409 — Core i7-12700K | 59.4% | 96% |
| $399 — Ryzen 7 7700X | 57.2% | 97.6% |
| $299 — Ryzen 5 7600X | 45.1% | 95.7% |
| $430 — Ryzen 7 5800X3D | 41.7% | 74.9% |
Rendering Benchmarks on AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
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It was initially surprising to see Alder Lake’s hybrid architecture largely beat Ryzen in threaded workloads after AMD had dominated these types of benchmarks for years. The Ryzen 9 7950X quashed that uprising on the high end — at least until Raptor Lake arrives — but the Ryzen 9 7900X vs Core i9-12900K battle isn’t quite as clear cut in some benchmarks.
For instance, the Ryzen 9 7950X is 5% faster than the 12900K in the multi-threaded Cinebench benchmarks, but the 12900K is 11% faster in POV-Ray. The Ryzen 9 7900X leads in the Blender renders, being 16% to 23% faster than the 12900K. Overclocking the Intel chip isn’t enough to change the picture, either.
Encoding Benchmarks on AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
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Most encoders tend to be either heavily threaded, like HandBrake and SVT-AV1, or almost exclusively single-threaded, like the LAME and FLAC applications. The Ryzen 7900X leads the Core i9-12900K in both types of applications, sweeping this series of tests, though often not by large margins.
Adobe Premiere Pro, Photoshop and Lightroom on AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
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The UL Benchmarks Procyon suite runs complex Adobe Premiere Pro, Photoshop, and Lightroom workflows with the actual software, making for a great real-world test suite. The Ryzen 9 7900X beats Alder Lake handily in Premiere Pro and the Lightroom and Photoshop benchmarks.
Web Browsing, Office and Productivity on AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
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The ubiquitous web browser is one of the most frequently used applications. These latency-sensitive tests tend to be lightly threaded, so a fast response time is critical. Intel typically dominated these benchmarks, but Ryzen 7000 flips the tables and takes the lead in every browser test. AMD has also improved its standing in the Application Start-up benchmark, which compares how long it takes to open various applications and is a great measure of system snappiness.
Compilation, Compression, AVX-512 Performance on AMD Ryzen 9 7900X
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This selection of tests runs the gamut from the exceedingly branchy code in the LLVM compilation workload to the massively parallel molecular dynamics simulation code in NAMD to encryption and compression/decompression performance.
Y-cruncher computes Pi with the AVX instruction set, making for an exceedingly demanding benchmark. We employed the latest version of y-cruncher that has added support for Zen 4, and here we can see the benefits of AVX-512 become apparent in the single-threaded benchmark. Spreading the workload out among the cores in the threaded portion of the y-cruncher test reduces the magnitude of the lead over Intel (per-core memory throughput and/or fabric throughput are likely barriers here), but the Ryzen 9 7900X leads over Alder Lake. The generational performance improvement is also readily apparent compared to the Ryzen 9 5900X.
Ryzen has long had an uneven performance in compression/decompression workloads, with decompression being a strength while compression suffered compared to other chips. The Zen 4 architecture delivers impressive performance in both workloads, reducing the disparities.
Power Consumption and Efficiency Ryzen 9 7900X
AMD worked with TSMC to tune the 5nm process for its design goals, resulting in a specialized 15-layer N5 process node. Unfortunately, we don’t know the specifics of the custom node. However, TSMC’s N5 generally provides 15% more performance at a given power level, or 20% lower power consumption at any given clock rate compared to the 7nm process AMD used for its previous-gen Ryzen 5000 chips.
Paired with the Zen 4 architectural advances and SoC improvements, AMD says Ryzen 7000 delivers up to 40% more performance-per-watt at its standard TDP levels. However, the company has significantly dialed up its TDP levels so that extra efficiency is largely lost in a bid to fend off the coming Raptor Lake chips. This isn’t entirely unexpected as companies dial up to the upper end of the voltage/frequency curve — the last few percentage points of performance often come at the expense of double-digit percentage increases in power consumption.
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As expected, our power measurements find the Ryzen 7000 chips drawing significantly more power than the previous-gen Ryzen 5000 models, and that’s by design. However, we have to keep things in perspective — despite Ryzen’s gen-on-gen increase in power consumption, Alder Lake processors still consume more power while delivering less performance.
AMD’s highest-end 7950X is equally power efficient to its predecessor, the 5950X, in the renders-per-day-per-watt efficiency metric, showing that AMD has sacrificed potential extra efficiency in the name of increased performance.
Those efforts seem largely confined to the flagship, though. As we can see with the previous-gen Ryzen 9 5900X, the lesser Zen 4 models, like the Ryzen 9 7900X, are more efficient than their predecessors even though they consume more power overall. They also chew through the workloads faster, as you can see below.
In the end, this boils down to AMD making a run at the overall performance crown at the expense of efficiency with the 7950X, while the other models show generational efficiency gains.
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Here we take a slightly different look at power consumption by calculating the cumulative energy required to perform x264 and x265 HandBrake workloads, respectively. We plot this ‘task energy’ value in Kilojoules on the left side of the chart.
These workloads are comprised of a fixed amount of work, so we can plot the task energy against the time required to finish the job (bottom axis), thus generating a really useful power chart.
Remember that faster compute times, and lower task energy requirements, are ideal. That means processors that fall the closest to the bottom left corner of the chart are the best. Here we can see that the Ryzen 9 7900X is far faster than the previous-gen 5900X while consuming less power.
AMD Ryzen 9 7900X Boost Frequencies and Temperatures
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As part of our normal test regimen, we tested performance in lightly-threaded work to record the peak boost speeds and thermals. We ran through our standard series of lightly-threaded tests (LAME, PCMark10, Geekbench, VRMark, and single-threaded Cinebench).
As with the previous-gen chips, some Ryzen 7000 chips can boost above their rated speeds if they have sufficient cooling and power. As always, the silicon lottery could apply. The Ryzen 9 7900X regularly peaked at 5.7 GHz, above the rated 5.6 GHz.
We also ran through a spate of standard heavily threaded applications (Cinebench, HandBrake, POV-Ray, Blender, AVX-heavy y-cruncher) to measure power and thermals. We used a Corsair H115i 280mm AIO with the fans cranked to 100% to keep the chip as cool as possible during this test run.
The 7950X hovered around 5.2 GHz through the most intense workloads when all cores were fully loaded. Peak power consumption reached 215W. The 7950X peaked at 90C during the test run but mostly hovered around 87C, which AMD assures us is expected behavior — the chip is designed to consume all available thermal headroom to provide faster performance. AMD assigns a 95C thermal threshold as the safe operating limit.
It’s often forgotten, but the Ryzen 5000 processors also operate in a similar fashion — 95C is a normal operating condition with stock coolers, which we wrote about in our original Ryzen 5000 reviews. By design, Intel’s latest chips also often run at 100C for extended periods. Both vendors are locked in intense competition for performance leadership, so we can expect this trend to continue.
Conclusion
AMD’s Ryzen 9 7900X delivers impressive performance gains that beat Alder Lake in most types of workloads, including gaming. However, the chip, motherboard, and memory pricing conspire to reduce its appeal against Alder Lake, and we expect that disparity to become far more pronounced when Raptor Lake arrives later this month.
Below, we have the geometric mean of our gaming test suite at 1080p and 1440p and a cumulative measure of performance in single- and multi-threaded applications. We conducted our gaming tests with an RTX 3090, so performance deltas will shrink with lesser cards and higher resolution and fidelity settings — and might grow if you’re using a future next-gen RX 7900 XT or RTX 4090.
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If the Ryzen 9 7900X were a chip designed specifically for gaming, it would be a wonderful option with its Core i9-12900K-beating performance. However, as we see with most higher-tier chips, the 7900X’s $549 price tag removes this chip from the picture if you’re only interested in gaming — the $299 Ryzen 5 7600X and $399 Ryzen 7 7700X both offer nearly identical gaming performance.
The Ryzen 9 7900X is designed for the productivity-minded, and here its raw performance metrics shine. The 7900X was 14% faster than the $589 Core i9-12900K in our multi-threaded tests, but for $50 less. The Zen 4 architecture also closes the gap with Alder Lake in single-threaded applications, addressing a particularly glaring deficiency.
But the raw performance and the chips’ price tag aren’t the only factors in your build. AMD’s 600-series motherboards offer modern connectivity options, like DDR5 and PCIe 5.0, and also bring other additives, like USB4. However, they’re significantly more expensive than comparable DDR5 motherboards for Intel systems, which we chalk up to the dual-chipset design. However, the B-series motherboards also don’t appear as price-competitive with Intel’s comparables, which is an inexplicable bummer.
And that’s before we factor in the impact of AMD’s decision to only support DDR5 memory with Ryzen 7000. Intel also has DDR4 motherboards available that are even cheaper, magnifying the price disparities between the two platforms.
DDR5 memory is also simply more expensive than DDR4. AMD’s decision to fully commit to DDR5 could be a liability if pricing remains higher than DDR4, but memory pricing is volatile, so this could change (you should check current pricing). AMD expects DDR5 pricing to improve as we enter the last part of the year, but this market can be unpredictable.
We think the thermal ‘issues’ with AMD’s Ryzen 7000, while not ideal in a perfect world, are a bit overblown. The Ryzen 7000 chips consume more power than their predecessors, but that is by design. AMD has improved its power delivery and uses that to turn the thermal headroom into extra performance that cuts through work quicker. Intel’s high-end chips are also designed to run at higher levels of power consumption, and thus heat, so this tactic isn’t unheard of. In fact, AMD’s prior-gen flagships also ran at similar temperatures with stock coolers.
AMD’S ECO Mode feature will reduce power consumption and thermals for those interested in a cooler and quieter system, but it does reduce performance. It also boosts efficiency. In that vein, AMD didn’t make any efficiency strides with its flagship Ryzen 9 7950X because it sacrificed potential extra efficiency in the name of increased performance. This isn’t entirely unexpected as companies dial up to the upper end of the voltage/frequency curve — the last few percentage points of performance often come at the expense of double-digit percentage increases in power consumption. However, the lower-tier models, like the Ryzen 9 7900X, offer better power efficiency than their prior-gen counterparts in the tests we’ve conducted.
AMD’s biggest problem comes in the form of pricing, and that’s before we account for the looming Raptor Lake launch on October 20. Intel has made confident performance claims of a 15% improvement in single-threaded, 41% improvement in threaded, and a 40% ‘overall’ performance gain, which means that Raptor Lake and Ryzen 7000 will be closely matched.
Given AMD’s pricing challenges surrounding its AM5 motherboard ecosystem and DDR5 memory, not to mention Intel’s aggressive Alder and Raptor Lake pricing, the Ryzen 9 7900X will need a meaningful price reduction to be competitive with other modern offerings.
| AMD Socket AM5 (X670E) | Ryzen 9 7950X, Ryzen 9 7900X, Ryzen 5 7600X |
| ASRock X670E Taichi | |
| G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo DDR5-6000 – Stock: DDR5-5200 | OC/PBO: DDR5-6000 | |
| Intel Socket 1700 DDR5 (Z690) | Core i9-12900K, i7-12700K, 15-12600K, i5-12400 |
| MSI MEG Z690 Ace | |
| G.Skill Trident Z5 DDR5-6400 – Stock: DDR5-4400 | OC DDR5-6000 | |
| AMD Socket AM4 (X570) | Ryzen 9 5950X, 5900X, 5700X, 5600X, 5800X3D |
| MSI MEG X570 Godlike | |
| 2x 8GB Trident Z Royal DDR4-3600 – Stock: DDR4-3200 | OC/PBO: DDR4-3800 | |
| All Systems | Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3090 Eagle – Gaming and ProViz applications |
| Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FE – Application tests | |
| 2TB Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus, Silverstone ST1100-TI, Open Benchtable, Arctic MX-4 TIM, Windows 11 Pro | |
| Cooling | Corsair H115i, Custom loop |
| Overclocking note | All configurations with overclocked memory also have tuned core frequencies and/or lifted power limits. |
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