Review AMD Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X Review: Zen 5 brings stellar gaming performance

[Admin]

We tested AMD's Ryzen 5 9600X in a battery of gaming and productivity benchmarks to see how it compares to competing Intel processors.

AMD Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X Review: Zen 5 brings stellar gaming performance : Read more

 

[MergleBergle]

Nice review! Another site mentioned some power issues, where both the new cpus were idling at at 45-50W. Did you come across this problem yourself? I'm sure the issue will be dealt with relatively quickly, but as the other site mentioned, their test bench and config may have been part of the initial issue.

 

[edzieba]

The gaming benchmarks appear to diverge wildly from the testing conducted by others (e.g. Eurogamer, Anandtech, Techpowerup) despite having very similar test rigs.

 

[YSCCC]

Nice efficiency, but GN and Jay reported the pre release bios isn't stable, need to wait (if) the imporved bios release and for all round, better pay for the top tier ones in the Zen lineup

 

[PaulAlcorn]

Check out the page on power and thermals. The third album down has the power trace during different workloads. You can see the idle at the tail end. Sub-25W.

 

[maestro0428]

Hmm. I dont get the 4.5stars. A new architecture cannot beat a two gen old one in the 5800x3d consistently at gaming? Sure efficiency is better, but I don't really care about that unless it means a higher OC. Application performance is great, most of the time, except when its beat by the 14600k. I guess Ill wait and see how this shakes out in the next month or so. There is also a mistake in the article where you call the cpu 9700x3d, in the test system area.

 

[gggplaya]

Check out the page on power and thermals. The third album down has the power trace during different workloads. You can see the idle at the tail end. Sub-25W.

I'd like to see you guys try a test with Star Citizen vs the 7800x3D and 7700x and the new 9800x. Star citizen is very math intensive with very heavy physics. It's a very cpu bottlenecked game because of it. I'm wondering if the new parallel floating point pipelines in the 9000 series will really help.

 

[Mattzun]

Very different from other reviews this morning that shows 3-5 percent gains and called 9700x meh or bad value
Nice to see both base and PBO for all tests.

 

[jeremyj_83]

The gaming performance and overall efficiency is quite nice. Will be interesting to see how the Ryzen 9's perform.

 

[stuff and nonesense]

PBO turns it into a different beast, similar power consumption to the previous gen but much better all core frequencies, 4.4/4.5 GHz to approximately 5.3GHz. (The friendly German overclocker demonstrated this).

PBO off it looks a little meh compared to the 7000 series. It will be a good upgrade from my 3900x.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Very different from other reviews this morning that shows 3-5 percent gains and called 9700x meh or bad value
Nice to see both base and PBO for all tests.

Note that the 4.5 stars is for the 9600X, while the 9700X only gets 3.5 stars. Paul will be putting together a standalone review of the 9700X as time permits (same data, some different text with a different overall score). The overall combination of gaming performance, price, and efficiency is what makes the 9600X an attractive option. It's not always faster than an i5-14600K, but it's using about half as much power.

Nice efficiency, but GN and Jay reported the pre release bios isn't stable, need to wait (if) the improved bios release and for all round, better pay for the top tier ones in the Zen lineup

There are definitely some teething pains with the initial BIOS releases to support these chips, from what I've seen. The specific boards used along with BIOS settings applied will certainly impact results, and initially there's going to be some tuning required and probably clean installing the AMD chipset drivers for each processor.

We can't say how others test, what settings, memory, etc. gets used, or other potential instability-causing aspects of reviewing. Brand-new hardware can be problematic, but I'd expect any serious problems to be ironed out shortly with updated firmware. Paul may have gotten 'lucky' with his chosen board, memory, and test settings (or simply been more pragmatic and careful about what 'stock' settings to run). Others have reported issues.

 

[Lucky_SLS]

Which ram kit was used in the AMD system? Looking up 6000mhz Trident Z Neo kits, I can see CL 30/32/36 models.

Please confirm it was the CL30 kit that was used...

 

[redgarl]

Wow, I am kind of surprised to see Paul really impress by Zen 5 with many Luke Warm techtubers having some reserve with the 9700x and the 9600x.

Efficiency is amazing, bare none, it is impressive and it is just going to be a nightmare for Intel in the datacenter just by the look of it.

Mobile is going to be extremely interesting also for Zen 5.

 

[baboma]

In skimming over the THW review piece, I'm struck by how much subjectivity (of the reviewer's) is layered on top of what should be a straightforward showing of "objective" benchmarks, which would allow the reader to form his own opinion.

As an in-your-face example, instead of the gushing "Zen 5 brings stellar gaming performance," the reviewer could've gone the other way and say that "Zen 5 still substantially trails Intel multicore performance that are two generations old." You see how much slant (and the writer's bias) goes into these pieces.

For me, I'm not a gamer in the "MOAR FPS" sense that these sites primarily cater to (I play strategy games), so perhaps I'm not the targeted in-crowd. But these Ryzen 9K don't make much sense for gamers regardless. As other reviews point out, their bang/buck value sucks. If you want gaming perf, it's X3D. If you want value, either the Ryzen 7K or Intel RPL. Proclaiming "stellar gaming perf" is just wrong on so many levels.

Anyway, this only reinforces my practice of looking at multiple reviews to get a more balanced perspective. From the few I've seen thus far, Ryzen 9K comes off as meh at best.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Which ram kit was used in the AMD system? Looking up 6000mhz Trident Z Neo kits, I can see CL 30/32/36 models.

Please confirm it was the CL30 kit that was used...

Paul would have to confirm, but the AMD review kits that shipped with Zen 4 seem to have used G.Skill F5-6000J3038F16GX2-TZ5N, which would indeed be the CL30 EXPO variant.

 

[redgarl]

In skimming over the THW review piece, I'm struck by how much subjectivity (of the author's) is layered on top of what should be a straightforward showing of "objective" benchmarks, which would allow the reader to form his own opinion.

As an in-your-face example, instead of the gushing "Zen 5 brings stellar gaming performance," the author could've gone the other way and say that "Zen 5 still substantially trails Intel multicore performance that are two generations old." You see how much slant (and the writer's bias) goes into these pieces.

For me, I'm not a gamer in the "MOAR FPS" sense that these sites primarily cater to (I play strategy games), so perhaps I'm not the targeted in-crowd. But these Ryzen 9K don't make much sense for gamers regardless. As other reviews point out, their bang/buck value sucks. If you want perf, it's X3D. If you want value, either the Ryzen 7K or Intel RPL. Proclaiming "stellar gaming perf" is just wrong on so many levels.

Anyway, this only reinforces my practice of looking at multiple reviews to get a more balanced perspective. From the few I've seen thus far, Ryzen 9K comes off as meh at best.

It was the review of a 6 cores CPU and you want to talk MT performances? Really?

I for one know that a 6 cores CPU strength will not reside in MT performances.

Leo from kitguru have the same stance on the 9600x.

View: https://youtu.be/AAzstB2BxAk?si=nhrNbmRoOOPjyJf7

 

[redgarl]

Paul would have to confirm, but the AMD review kits that shipped with Zen 4 seem to have used G.Skill F5-6000J3038F16GX2-TZ5N, which would indeed be the CL30 EXPO variant.

I am more interested about the motherboard. Steve from GN had issues with his Asrock board.

 

[baboma]

>It was the review of a 6 cores CPU and you want to talk MT performances? Really?

Perhaps counting is not your forte, but 6 (and 8) count as multi-cores. So, yes, MT.

>Leo from kitguru have the same stance on the 9600x.

Sure, everybody has a take. If you get a big enough pool, you can always find somebody to agree with you. Oh, the wonders of the Internet! Flat earthers, unite!

 

[jeremyj_83]

In skimming over the THW review piece, I'm struck by how much subjectivity (of the reviewer's) is layered on top of what should be a straightforward showing of "objective" benchmarks, which would allow the reader to form his own opinion.

As an in-your-face example, instead of the gushing "Zen 5 brings stellar gaming performance," the reviewer could've gone the other way and say that "Zen 5 still substantially trails Intel multicore performance that are two generations old." You see how much slant (and the writer's bias) goes into these pieces.

For me, I'm not a gamer in the "MOAR FPS" sense that these sites primarily cater to (I play strategy games), so perhaps I'm not the targeted in-crowd. But these Ryzen 9K don't make much sense for gamers regardless. As other reviews point out, their bang/buck value sucks. If you want gaming perf, it's X3D. If you want value, either the Ryzen 7K or Intel RPL. Proclaiming "stellar gaming perf" is just wrong on so many levels.

Anyway, this only reinforces my practice of looking at multiple reviews to get a more balanced perspective. From the few I've seen thus far, Ryzen 9K comes off as meh at best.

In the first paragraph of the review it says "The processors also deliver class-leading single-threaded performance but still trail Intel in heavily threaded applications." That right there says all you need to know.

 

[-Fran-]

I've been reading and watching people/reviewers saying their 9600X having issues/gremlins here and there, so throw caution to the wind and don't recommend them until these are ironed out or at least let people know this.

From a pure performance standpoint, they're not that remarkable out of the box, but PBO makes them shine, specially in MT workloads. Like, holy hell. Also, brownie points for not shipping with PBO enabled by default. That is not trivial and should be praised of AMD to have the decency to tell the AIBs to leave that off as default.

Also, something I read elsewhere: they're so efficient that the cooling for the counterparts from Intel should start being considered, since you can get away with pretty cheap cooling here (remember, stock settings). Just spit on it and it'll run!

Overall, while not amazingly amused by the raw performance, at least the efficiency is really good.

Thanks a lot Paul, as always, for the great data and review!

Regards.

 

[frogr]

"

AMD Ryzen 5 9600X Overclocking, and Test Setup​

• Ryzen 5 9600X: Default power limits, DDR5-5600
• Ryzen 5 9600X3D PBO

Typo: no 3D for 9600 or 9700

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

"

AMD Ryzen 5 9600X Overclocking, and Test Setup​

• Ryzen 5 9600X: Default power limits, DDR5-5600
• Ryzen 5 9600X3D PBO

Typo: no 3D for 9600 or 9700

Fixed, thanks.

>It was the review of a 6 cores CPU and you want to talk MT performances? Really?

Perhaps counting is not your forte, but 6 (and 8) count as multi-cores. So, yes, MT.

The point he's making is that if you really care about multi-threaded performance, you should be looking at the 16-core parts from AMD and the 24-core parts from Intel. Gamers looking for "most of the performance at half the price" often gravitate toward the Core i5 and Ryzen 5 line for good reasons, with often negligible benefits if you go beyond Ryzen 7 / Core i7.

 

[baboma]

>In the first paragraph of the review it says "The processors also deliver class-leading single-threaded performance but still trail Intel in heavily threaded applications." That right there says all you need to know.

Thanks for reinforcing my point. A glass half filled with water can be positively slanted as "half full" or negatively slanted as "half empty."

By putting the HALF FULL in big letters, eg the title and subhead of the piece, and the half-empty in small letters (body text) is where subjectivity shows up.

That's how advertising & marketing works. They never lie, they just shade the facts, by emphasizing the positives and downplaying the negatives.

I'm not saying that the reviewer is a shill, only that to the discerning reader, his demonstrated bias weakens his credibility.


>The point he's making is that if you really care about multi-threaded performance, you should be looking at the 16-core parts from AMD and the 24-core parts from Intel.

I disagree with this binary pigeonholing. It's not a "really care about" or "don't care" proposition. MT always matter in modern PCs regardless of what tier you buy into. Saying that buyers of i5/Ryzen 5 don't care about MT is idiotic.

 

[YSCCC]

reading a few more seems like they are really for the very efficient quiet PC use and offer great single thread performance but lackluster MT performance, if one really need MT better wait for the higher end SKUs or the 7900/7950X varient, RPL is still very relevant IF it really is ironed out, but intel suffers a hell lot due to that basically cover up like defect