The reviews are now live for the new Ryzen 9000 series AMD CPUs. A day before the postponed 9700X release date, we can have a look at how it actually performs and if it’s even worth considering. Sadly, initial reviews suggest, maybe not – with various reviews finding it a bit underwhelming considering it is meant to be the next generation of AM5 CPUs. Although there are meant to be plenty of improvements in the next-generation line of chips, early reviews suggest that probably isn’t the case.
Comparing the 9700X vs 7700X, we find a surprising 700MHz lower base clock while the boost clock only goes up 100MHz higher. While the cores and threads stay the same, the TDP does fall down by around 40W and that’s the biggest thing going for it. As Gamers Nexus puts “the most positive thing about this CPU is power efficiency” with the second being that it’s not Intel, GN previously said it can’t recommend Intel CPUs right now considering all the issues it has going for it.
In their review we see the performance doesn’t really spike too much. Looking at TechPowerUp’s roundup the relative performance only goes up 4% against the 9700X in applications, with the game’s performance pretty much the same with a 2% increase at low resolutions.
Ryzen 9700X efficiency performance, Source Gamers Nexus
Ryzen 9700X power consumption, Source Gamers Nexus
Wait for X3D the general consensus
AMD’s X3D CPUs still reign in gaming titles, which is where these CPUs aim to hit with their lower cores and threads from the top end. Mainly the 7800X3D still has plenty of power behind it as it leads in frame rate, but as you can see in GNs testing it does so with a good power efficiency and not requiring too much power to do so. But their problem comes from worse application and productivity performance (via Forbes).
That means AMD is competing with itself to actually improve on that performance, and is likely why the 9000X3D CPUs aren’t coming just yet, and trying to give these processors a chance. That’s why the efficiency improvement might be what it’s aiming for, as the temperatures reached in these tests are rather small we’ve seen most of these reviews that include it show the CPU not going much higher than 61°C. So not only saves you electricity money, but needs a lot less cooling power behind it as well as the power limits are holding it back.
As eTeknix puts it “this is meant to be the next generation, and it just doesn’t feel like it is”. It is a bit of a boring update much like Intel’s 14th Gen not too long ago, more like marginal improvements. Great for efficiency and some drops in price, but nothing that blows you out of the water. As even X870 is not out yet that might bring something newer to the AM5 platform.
