AMD's Ryzen 7000 family of Zen 4 processors has barely been on the market for a month, and price cuts have already reduced prices by as much as 33%. The latest chip in the family to receive a significant price cut is the Ryzen 7 7900X, which just four days ago was selling for $473 versus an MSRP of $549.
Today, Amazon has the processor on sale for just $439.99, which is its lowest price to date and represents a 20 percent savings compared to its MSRP. Our own Paul Alcorn noted in his Ryzen 9 7900X review, "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."
At $439, one of our major complaints with the chip has effectively been addressed.
AMD Ryzen 9 7900X: now $439.99 at Amazon(was $549) The AMD Ryzen 9 7900X falls to an all-time low of $439 versus an MSRP of $549. That price get you a 12-core/24-thread processor with excellent gaming performance. You'll need to pair with with DDR5 memory and a new 600-series motherboard.
The Ryzen 9 7900X sits just below the flagship Ryzen 9 7950X and is a 12-core/24-thread design. It features a base clock of 4.7 GHz, a boost clock of 5.6 GHz, 76 MB of combined cache and a maximum TDP of 230 watts. Unlike competing Raptor Lake-based processors from Intel, AMD's Ryzen 7000 family only supports DDR5 memory, which you should take into account when budgeting for a new system.
You'll also want to consider that Ryzen 7000 also require all-new 600-series motherboards with an AM5 socket. 600-series motherboards add native support for DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0, putting them at parity with competitive offerings from Intel.
(Image credit: AMD)
In our gaming benchmarks, we found the Ryzen 9 7900X to come close to matching the more expensive Ryzen 9 7950X. It is also more than a match for the Core i9-12900K and Core i7-12700K in gaming scenarios. However, the massive price differential between the Ryzen 9 7900X and Core i7-12700K at the time of our review favored the latter. With this Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale, the scales are tipping more favorably for AMD.
Brandon Hill is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware. He has written about PC and Mac tech since the late 1990s with bylines at AnandTech, DailyTech, and Hot Hardware. When he is not consuming copious amounts of tech news, he can be found enjoying the NC mountains or the beach with his wife and two sons.
Asrock who makes some top line mobos has reasonable prices on most AM5 mobos. The Steel Legend is a full feature plus model for $300. They also have numerous lower priced models. IME Asrock delivers top quality and service.
The 13700K is on sale for $319.99 after $20 promo code on Newegg and has higher performance, so tell me exactly why you should pay MORE for a LOWER performance with the 7900X?
