AMD Ryzen 7 9700X

[Chaitanya]

Gamers will wait for 8 core X3D variant, entry level users will wait for non X Ryzen5 chips and those use for productivity will buy 9900X and 9950X so overall just as it always has been Ryzen7 x700X(and to lesser degree x600X) are step children which wont move much ensuring they will get discounted sooner rather than later.

 

[Pumper]

GN reviews showed that 9700X was running at around 800MHz lower frequency in MT than 7700X. Makes me wonder if AMD did not lower the TDP on Zen5 X CPUs, because they have plans to move from non-X CPUs (like with Zen4) to XT variants, so they left themselves plenty of room to boost performance by increasing TDPs to Zen4 X levels.

 

[AnotherReader]

Thanks for the review. The performance is rather underwhelming in many workloads. Linux and SPEC performance seems better. Overall it's very workload dependent; In some cases, the IPC uplift is much greater than expected while in others, it's barely beating its predecessor.

 

[Colddecked]

You would think 65w is holding it back alot, but not much gain using unlocked PBO. These seem to be the bottom of the barrel as far as binning goes.

 

[oZ65]

Application performance on average in single digit % better than 7700X, gaming performance as well.

View attachment 357823

Is this not a bit underwhelming? I thought this will be a new radically better CPU generation.

For my niche of use, it is much more efficient with Stockfish (Chess) which is good

 

[MaMoo]

Seems like a great all arounder. Just my type of chip. Gonna wait and see how the bigger chips do.

 

[G777]

Never noticed this before, but what is up with Zen 4 and 5 idle power draw? It makes no sense, when compared to Zen 2 and 3 and single threaded vs. idle numbers, i.e.:

- 5800X3D ST - 22W
- 9700X ST - 22W
- 3900X ST - 40W

but then idle system power draw:
- 5800X3D - 61W
- 9700X - 78W
- 3900X - 59W

Is that because AM5 is just that big of a power hog compared to AM4?

But then, when you go look at the release day 5950X review, the idle power draw is listed as 54W, vs. 71W in this review.

What has changed in those years?

That’s the new (well, was new with Zen 4) cIOD. That’s just how much power it consumes, nothing to do there. Cores themselves are extremely efficient, but the cIOD is full power even at idle.

They have separate dies, IO die is apparently still the reason for high idle power draw.

This is going to be a big problem for the laptop versions of these chips (again)

 

[Vario]

Very yawn of a release. Will there be any major changes in 7800X3D - > to upcoming 9800X3D (such as cache improvement), or is it going to be this type of ... performance "improvement"?

 

[BoggledBeagle]

I think the hidden powers of these new chips will be unlocked only with the new chipset. When are the new motherboards coming out?

 

[Gucky]

Disappointing.
If you take the 7700 for comparision, since they have the same TDP, there is less then 10% difference, sometimes even under 5%.
But I get a 7700 for almost half the price of a 9700X...

 

[ARF]

This is going to be a big problem for the laptop versions of these chips (again)

They have monolithic chips for laptops. Raven Ridge, Picasso, Renoir, Cezanne, Rembrandt, Phoenix, Strix Point.

 

[dj-electric]

I think the hidden powers of these new chips will be unlocked only with the new chipset. When are the new motherboards coming out?

What's essentially a PCIE based IO Expander for SATA and USB devices connected to a CPU does not unlock any "hidden powers". What it might unlock is more mature connectivity for the users.

 

[W1zzard]

I think the hidden powers of these new chips will be unlocked only with the new chipset. When are the new motherboards coming out?

As far as I know, they are using the same physical chip from ASMedia as on X670, so don't expect any miracles

 

[BoggledBeagle]

I am trying to make sense of it all and hidden powers is the only thing I can come up with...

 

[RogueSix]

I think the hidden powers of these new chips will be unlocked only with the new chipset. When are the new motherboards coming out?

That is very unlikely because the X870E will have the exact same Promontory chips on board as the X670E. Sure, there might be some tweaking, better memory compatibility and so on but I don't know where any unlocking of hidden powers should be coming from...

Oh, X870 boards are rumored to be released September 30th so real availability on shelves in October/November.

 

[TheDeeGee]

I would never get used to 95C by design.

 

[Vincero]

Overall, this is a major disappointment and does not feel like the CPUs are worthy of a new architecture name. At best Zen4+

ST performance bump is ~12%, but it only translates to 5% MT advantage. The only notable improvement is that it's up to 9% faster than the 65W 7700, but in the end, you might as well just save the $80 and get the 7700 instead of 9700X.

AMD made a big mistake by not including their NPU in these, losing the only reason to recommend Zen5 over Zen4.

I wouldn't say it's disappointing - progress is progress even when it's minimal.

This release reminds me a lot of when Intel released Haswell after Ivy Bridge - small IPC improvement and really a product where the main focus was efficiency - almost a mobile first approach, with baked in efficiency gains better than the move to a new process alone delivered.

I forsee a lot of people having a similar opinion and complaining how little an improvement it is...
And to be fair they are right to do so - AMD were pushing a Zen5 uplift that will not be that apparent for some depending on what apps they use - and non-existant if using certain games.

On the plus side, anyone who has bought a 7700/7600/x will have little to be upset about - the new equivalent product is not something that makes the older one seem immediately obsolete. If the price of the 7000 series CPUs drops significantly below the equivalent 9000 series part then I can see a lot of people getting the 7000 equal quite happily as they are not really missing out on anything except for the weird Zen4 / 1st gen AM5 thermal behaviour.

 

[theouto]

Hooray for better temperatures, but this is hilariously underwhelming.

Oh well, time to wait for X3D to drop.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Overall, this is a major disappointment and does not feel like the CPUs are worthy of a new architecture name. At best Zen4+

ST performance bump is ~12%, but it only translates to 5% MT advantage. The only notable improvement is that it's up to 9% faster than the 65W 7700, but in the end, you might as well just save the $80 and get the 7700 instead of 9700X.

AMD made a big mistake by not including their NPU in these, losing the only reason to recommend Zen5 over Zen4.

It is no Raptor Lake killer, that's for sure. I wouldn't call it a disappointment, it's just not the flawless, supremely performant architecture that many hyped it up to be. It seems most of the improvements are derived from its architectural improvements regarding cache associativity and execution width. Tasks which do not leverage these (which seem to be few right now, even in the niche of video encoding given that Raptor is still beating it in this workload) should perform roughly the same as Zen 4. For the price, I think AMD delivers on an unassuming upgrade after two years of Zen 4.

In other words... idk, buy it if you're building from scratch, otherwise don't bother, your Zen 4 chip is still great, especially if gaming is all you do. Raptor Lake 8P+12E chips such as the 14700K are still leading benchmarks, and Bartlett Lake's purported 10P+0E Core 7 configuration would smoke this chip. The Arrow Lake Core Ultra 7 should be significantly faster even at 6P+8E, due to Lion Cove and Skymont gains.

Overall, I am satisfied with what was delivered. Hope folks manage to buy them soon. More people with great machines the merrier.

 

[Paganstomp]

What I bought from Best Buy last month...

So I'll pass.

 

[JohH]

It has 88W power target. It should be compared directly to the 7700 with 88W power target.

But still a pass for most people.

 

[Dr. Dro]

It has 88W power target. It should be compared directly to the 7700 with 88W power target.

But still a pass for most people.

I might have missed it, but I presume @W1zzard increased the PPT limits when testing for the overclock section, although, I would consider it unlikely that juicing this thing is going to dramatically improve performance. It just might hurt it instead, with TSMC 4 nm node, it is really a wonderful power-sipping chip. Giving it 150W+ is probably not going to shift the clock ceiling upwards.

I just finished reading the reviews at Anand and Tom's. Seems in line with what W1zz has, and Tom's overclock settings were apparently done with the default limits.

 

[Vincero]

It is no Raptor Lake killer, that's for sure.

No.... but Intel are taking care of that themselves at this point...

 

[Ruru]

Pretty impressive and the price isn't that high. A cheaper non-X version would be even more interesting.

 

[BoggledBeagle]

... supremely performant architecture ...

Performant is not a word in english, do not use it!

It is only in french and Linus uses it because he is from Canada, country of snail-eating ancestry, and because he is confused.