Today is the day! AMD has allowed reviewers to start publishing their Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 Series processor reviews. The four new CPUs were detailed just a few weeks ago, now we can share everything with you. With Zen 4, AMD has made significant improvements to nearly all parts of their platform. It starts with the new Zen 4 architecture, which improves instruction-per-clock by well over 10% and adds support for AVX-512 and acceleration for AI workloads. Also what's new, is that the motherboards use the swanky "Socket AM5", which does away with the pins on the processor and uses an LGA package, similar to what Intel has been using for nearly two decades now. The new socket has support for all the latest technologies: PCI-Express 5.0 for graphics and NVMe storage; DDR5 memory, and higher power delivery capability. Last but not least, AMD is finally including integrated graphics across the board, even with their non-APU processors, which will be extremely useful when building a rig that will only see light activity, like productivity, light browsing, or a media PC.

In this review we've taken a look at the Ryzen 5 7600X, which is the company's most affordable Zen 4 model that they are introducing at this time. Just like the 5600X, the 7600X features a 6-core/12-thread configuration. The chip runs at a base clock of 4.7 GHz and boosts up to 5.3 GHz—a 700 MHz increase over its predecessor. AMD has also increased the TDP from 65 W to 105 W, which brings with it more headroom for boosting to higher clocks, but also increases cooling requirements, more on that later.

We spent the last months working on a new and improved CPU benchmarking suite with tons of new apps and games, and every processor was retested with the latest Windows 11 updates, game patches and drivers. Averaged over our 45 application tests we find the Ryzen 5 7600X a whopping 25% ahead the 5600X, beating much higher positioned processors like the Ryzen 9 3900X, 5800X3D and 5800X, Intel Core i9-11900K, and 12600K—very impressive. Ryzen 7 7700X is 15% faster in apps, the 12700K is 10% ahead, and the mighty 12900K is only 22% faster, but costs almost twice as much.

In gaming, Zen 4 can also deliver. While the Ryzen 5 7600X is the slowest Zen 4 for gaming when ranking all four new releases, the differences are so small, they are pretty much meaningless. Even at the artificially CPU limited resolution of 720p, the difference between fastest and slowest Zen 4 is only 4%, and it's even smaller at higher resolutions: 2.5% at 1080p, 1.2% at 1440p and 0.4% at 4K. When your gaming FPS is limited by the GPU, then a Ryzen 5 7600X is all you need, and it frees up money to be spent on a faster graphics card, where the investment actually translates into tangible FPS gains. There's still the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, which is a fantastic gaming processor, too, but on average, for our 12-game mix, the 7600X can pull ahead, or at least match it, on average. Where the 5800X3D will shine is in specific highly-CPU bound games that can benefit from its huge cache (like Borderlands 3). Gaming performance on Intel is still a tiny bit better than Zen 4, at least with our selection of games, as long as you have an Intel CPU with P-Cores and E-Cores—the P-Core-only Intel 12600 and 12400F in our test group do lose to Zen 4 in gaming. In early summer, way before we had any Zen 4 samples, I picked titles based on their relevance and popularity and it seems the game list tends to run a bit better on Intel than what a general average over many more titles would end up at. I have plans to test Zen 4 on a wider range of games, 50 is the target, to get a better feel for this. Both AMD Zen 4 and Intel Alder Lake are fantastic processors for gaming and in a subjective test without FPS counter you wouldn't be able to tell their performance apart. For gaming at highest FPS, the processor is secondary, you should rather spend as much money as possible on the graphics card and pair it with a more affordable processor, instead of focusing on brute CPU performance.

AMD is fabricating the Zen 4 compute dies (CCDs) on TSMC's 5 nanometer production process and the IO die is made on TSMC 6 nanometer. Just these numbers alone would suggest that Zen 4 is extremely energy efficient, but it seems clocking Ryzen 7000 at these high frequencies and TDPs has cost AMD quite some efficiency. We've upgraded our power measurement pipeline, and can now measure "chip-only" power consumption (as opposed to "whole system" before), and we record samples much faster, with full integration of the results. This lets us pair up power measurements with individual benchmark runs and perform more complex analyses, check out page 23. The 7600X is the weakest Zen 4 model launched today, so it has the lowest energy consumption, too. Compared to the 5600X, you get like 20% better single-threaded efficiency, but multi-threaded is 15% less efficient, with higher performance of course; gaming efficiency is roughly similar. If you prefer better efficiency, you can always dial down the clocks and voltages a bit, and greatly reduce the power consumption with minimal impact on performance. AMD's Precision Boost offers plenty of dials to achieve that, loving it. Compared to the 12600K and its P+E-Core mix, the 7600X is considerably more energy efficient in all our test scenarios, including gaming. The 12400F (6c/12t, but no E-Cores), is more efficient than the 7600X on the other hand.

What will be a big source of discussion for Zen 4 is the extremely high temperatures. Using our high-end Noctua air cooler, the 7600X was the only Zen 4 that was somewhat easy to keep cool. While the other three models went to its 95°C thermal limit when fully loaded, the 7600X topped out at 88°C, which isn't "cool" by any standard, but apparently the way the product was designed according to AMD: "TJMax is the max safe operating temperature – not the absolute max temperature. In the Ryzen 7000 Series, the processor is designed to run at TJMax 24/7 without risk of damage or deterioration. At 95 degrees it is not running hot, rather it will intentionally go to this temperature as much as possible under load because the power management system knows that this is the ideal way to squeeze the most performance out of the chip without damaging it."

I'm just surprised that temperatures are so high. Maybe it's the smaller die size of the compute dies, paired with high clocks and voltage that leads to these temperatures, or some compromises were made to achieve compatibility with AM4 coolers, or maybe both. I'm sure in the coming months we'll learn more about the cooling challenges, how to overcome them, and cooler vendors will probably release solutions optimized for Socket AM5. Right now you need to be aware that cooling Zen 4 is much more difficult than Zen 3, and that you should really stop worrying about temperatures. AMD is very clear in their messaging that these temps are normal and expected.

During testing I didn't encounter any major bugs or issues; the whole AM5 / X670 platform works very well considering how many new features it brings; there's one big gotcha though and that's startup duration. When powering on for the first time after a processor install, your system will spend at least a minute with memory training at POST code 15 before the BIOS screen appears. When I first booted up my Zen 4 sample I assumed it was hung and kept resetting/clearing CMOS. After first boot, the super long startup times improve, but even with everything setup you'll stare at blank screen for 30 seconds. To clarify: after a clean system shutdown, without loss of power, when you press the power button, you're still looking at a black screen for 30 seconds, before the BIOS logo appears. I find that an incredibly long time, especially when you're not watching the POST code display that tells you something is happening. AMD and the motherboard manufacturers say they are working on improving this—they must. I'm having doubts that your parents would accept such an experience as an "upgrade", considering their previous computer showed something on-screen within seconds after pressing the power button.
Update Sep 29: I just tested boot times using the newest ASUS 0703 Beta BIOS, which comes with AGESA ComboAM5PI 1.0.0.3 Patch A. No noticeable improvement in memory training times. It takes 38 seconds from pressing the power button (after a clean Windows shutdown), until there ASUS BIOS POST screen shots. After that, the usual BIOS POST stuff happens and Windows still start, which takes another 20 seconds or so.

Just like previous AMD Ryzen processors, all AMD Zen 4 CPUs come with unlocked multipliers, which makes overclocking much easier. Our highest manual all-core OC turned out to be 5.3 GHz, which is a good deal higher than the 5.1 GHz we got on the other processors. What really helped, is that the 7600X has temperatures that are manageable, so you can play with higher voltage and try to find stability sweet spots, without hitting the 105°C thermal cutoff point at which the CPU powers off. Slapping a big AIO on the 7600X still helps a lot and will give you more headroom. I ran all our benchmarks at 5.3 GHz All-Core OC, and this config ends up beating the stock settings in a few tests, mostly rendering. Unless you specifically run these workloads all day, I'd still recommend against manual overclocking with all-core OC. The better way to OC Ryzen is using PBO "Auto Overclocking", paired with Curve Optimizer, same as Zen 3. Spending just a few minutes on that will yield you a few percent in OC performance—not a lot, but the times of huge OC gains are a thing of the past—CPU manufacturers are getting better and better at giving you the best performance out of the box.

As mentioned before, Zen 4 now comes with integrated graphics. These "just work"—if no discrete graphics card is installed, plug the monitor cable in the motherboard, boom, everything works. Windows Update will install the right driver, or you can grab the official AMD Radeon drivers. Overall IGP performance is outstanding, and plenty for everything except serious gaming. Some lighter 3D apps work perfectly fine, too, and get hardware-acceleration, just like all video decode and encode workloads, for video conferencing, for example. While AMD is very clear that the integrated graphics are not for gaming, I still ran our IGP test suite and have to say I'm impressed—the Zen 4 IGP roughly matches the IGP of the Core i9-12900K, which uses Intel's latest Xe architecture and that they've spent a ton of die area on. A real graphics card is still much faster, even the most entry-level Radeon RX 6400 offers 4 times (!) the FPS. For all other typical consumer activities, these integrated graphics are awesome and they'll be a huge selling factor for cost-optimized compact office systems, a market where Intel has dominated, because an additional graphics card wasn't required.

AMD wants $300 for the Ryzen 5 7600X, which makes it the most affordable Zen 4 option available—the 5600X launched at that price point, too, but is now available for $215, and there's also the 5600 non-X for $200. Both these older Zen 3 processors offer considerably less gaming and application performance than 7600X, but their price/performance ratio is a little bit better. What's also important here is that the platform cost of Zen 3 is very low, you could even buy a 5800X3D ($430) + motherboard ($100) + memory ($140) for the cost of a 7600X ($300) + motherboard ($300) + memory ($250) and still have money left over to spend on the graphics card. Things will get better in October, when AMD is releasing the B650 chipset motherboards, which are supposed to sell for around $150. Intel also has strong offerings around this price point. For example, the Intel Core i7-12700F sells for $355 and will beat the 7600X in both applications and gaming—definitely worth checking out. And then there's the Core i5-12400F of course, which sells for $175, and is good enough for gaming. I feel like AMD has to address the entry-level market, with Zen 4, too—in these times, people don't just have a thousand bucks lying around for a system upgrade—they will happily spend just half that and accept a little bit lower performance. On the other hand, AM5 offers a great upgrade path, while AM4 is a dead platform. For AM5, AMD is promising socket compatibility until at least 2025! Intel's new 13th gen CPUs are getting announced this week, but apparently only 13600K and above. It seems like the processor market will become even more interesting in the coming months, and I'd expect that prices will go down, leading up to 2023.