Early sample of AMD's Ryzen 5 9600X is only 12% quicker than Ryzen 5 7600X in CPU-Z benchmark

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A bit lower than the 16% IPC improvements AMD touted at Computex

Ryzen 7000
(Image credit: AMD)

Following the Ryzen 5 9600X L1 and L2 cache story we wrote earlier today, benchmark results of AMD's new Zen 5 mid-range chip in CPU-Z have cropped up, showing a 12% performance increase for the 9600X over its predecessor, the Ryzen 5 7600X. The new benchmark was discovered by HXL on X (formally Twitter). At first glance, CPU-Z's performance estimations suggest the 9600X's performance is weaker than what AMD claimed in its Computex announcement.

The Ryzen 5 9600X's performance gap applies to both its single- and multi-core performance. The Ryzen 5 7600X CPU-Z results that we grabbed were from Guru3D's review, since the CPU-Z app does not have a 7600X reference score to compare to, and we don't use CPU-Z in our own CPU reviews.

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CPUs:Single-CoreMulti-Core
Ryzen 5 9600X871.47,096.6
Ryzen 5 7600X7656,221

The Ryzen 5 9600X scored 871.4 points in CPU-Z's single-core test and 7,096.6 points in the application's multi-core benchmark. The CPU-Z result reported by Guru3D's Ryzen 5 7600X review is 765 points for the single-core test and 6,221 points for the multi-core test.

This results in the Ryzen 5 9600X having a 12.21% advantage in the single-core test and a 12.30% advantage in the multi-core test over the Ryzen 5 7600X. Of course, we have to take these results with a grain of salt since the 9600X unit is probably an engineering sample of some kind, and there is a very good chance both CPUs are running different memory configurations.

Regardless, the CPU-Z numbers suggest that the new Ryzen 5 9600X won't be that much faster than the Ryzen 5 7600X. This makes sense, considering both CPUs share very very similar specifications. Both sport six-core configurations with 12 threads and the same amount of cache. The only difference between the two — besides the obvious architectural differences and a TDP drop from 105W to 65W, is the clock speed. The Ryzen 5 9600X clocks up to 5.4GHz while the Ryzen 5 7600X clocks up to 5.3GHz (a measly 100MHz difference).

But there is a good chance CPU-Z is one of Zen 5's weaker benchmarks. AMD's 16% IPC metric comes from a plethora of real-world applications that were benchmarked on Zen 5 and averaged out to get the 16% result. As a result, the Ryzen 5 9600X probably performs better in many other applications than what CPU-Z is showing.

However, we will have to wait and see if that is the case. We will be testing the Ryzen 5 9600X as soon as we can get one, to see how it performs in a diverse collection of synthetic and real-world benchmarks.

Aaron Klotz
Aaron Klotz
Contributing Writer

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

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33 Comments Comment from the forums
  • A bit lower than the 16% IPC improvements AMD touted at Computex

    Regardless, the CPU-Z numbers suggest that the new Ryzen 5 9600X won't be that much faster than the Ryzen 5 7600X. This makes sense, considering both CPUs share very very similar specifications
    However, the chip's CPU-Z performance appears to be weaker than its IPC performance suggests.

    Nonsense. Actually, we should not trust CPU-Z scores though, at least for AMD Ryzen CPU benchmarks, for the Zen architecture.

    Although, the chip might be having a 12.21% advantage in the single-core test and a 12.30% advantage in the multi-core test over the Ryzen 5 7600X, as per your math, but I wouldn't directly compare it with any IPC gain.

    Because the CPU-Z app never took full advantage of Zen4's improvements to the arch like, micro-op cache, branch prediction, L2 cache capacity etc, but other apps did. I expect the same with ZEN 5.

    CPU-Z score is a bad metric for comparison, at least for AMD Ryzen CPUs. So it's not worth the time comparing these 1T and NT scores. We also don't know anything about the test environment being used here.

    The factors that limit performance in CPU-Z are very different from those in typical real-life workloads. From AMD’s own slides, Zen 4 barely improved over Zen 3 in CPU-Z app benchmark. Zen 4 received improvements like a larger micro-op cache, better branch prediction, and doubled L2 cache capacity.

    Those would help a lot of other applications, but not CPU-Z. CPU-Z’s benchmark ended up being of little use to both CPU designers/testers and end consumers.

    +1% gain !! Check this IPC chart.

    https://i0.wp.com/chipsandcheese.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/zen4_ipc_uplift_slide.png?resize=768%2C432&ssl=1
    Reply
  • The Ryzen 5 9600X scored 871.4 points in CPU-Z's single-core test and 7,096.6 points in the application's multi-core benchmark.

    Wrong !

    You actually need to make some correction in your entire article though. Those CPU-Z scores are from an overclocked chip. Kindly check the Tweet again. The normal CPU-Z scores are 776 Single, and 6201 MT.

    So you need to edit the article. The same sample chip was also tested in CPU-z with an overclock of 5.7 GHz, or a +300 MHz boost over its stock boost clock of 5.4 GHz.

    Btw, this OC/overclock was done across ALL cores, while the chip's 5.4 GHz frequency is a single-core boost with the average all-core boost rounding up around 5.0-5.1 GHz.

    https://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/AMD-Ryzen-5-9600X-Zen-5-Desktop-CPU-5.7-GHz-Overclock.jpg

    Here are the non-OC CPU-Z scores.
    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GPrZdiIbwAA6VQJ?format=jpg&name=large
    Reply
  • MWeiss89
    871.4 / 765 = 13.91% increase
    7,096.6 / 6221 = 14.07% increase
    Where do 12%, 12.21%, and 12.30% come from?
    Reply
  • jackt
    I'm disappointed, 4nm ? why not 3nm ? isnt 3nm ready ?
    I hope that a 3nm refresh comes soon.
    Reply
  • blargh4
    These clickbaity articles about benchmark leaks have got to be my least favorite genre of tech site filler. We already have a good idea of the IPC gains because AMD gave us the numbers - and as the author himself is clearly aware, AMD's 16% number is based on a geometric mean of numerous benchmarks, where Zen 5 exhibits between a 10% and 35% improvement over Zen 4. CPU-Z is not among that set, probably because it's a useless synthetic benchmark.
    Reply
  • Makaveli
    lol this article is a mess.

    Why zero mention of overclocked scores posted!
    Reply
  • Gas Racing
    The performance is closer to 14% difference... just as AMD claimed.
    Did the author really write a whole article based on the fact he did math wrong?
    How embarrassing.
    Reply
  • NeoMorpheus
    Hit piece sponsored by Intel?
    Reply
  • usertests
    jackt said:
    I'm disappointed, 4nm ? why not 3nm ? isnt 3nm ready ?
    I hope that a 3nm refresh comes soon.
    The rumor mill said AMD hedged its bets because of TSMC N3 uncertainty. Remember these decisions are made years in advance. I think they will end up with the Zen 5 chiplets on N4 and Zen 5c chiplets on N3. And there's talk of other chiplet variants like a subtly different one for Strix Halo.

    The node really doesn't matter. It's a decent enough increase, but it's the same basic design carried over from Zen 2. Zen 6 is set to be a lot more interesting if AMD switches to something like a die-to-die interface (Infinity Links) like High Yield predicts. That's also when we can expect core count increases, and maybe different ways of using L3 cache.

    Zen 5 can be cheaper on N4 than N3, so that's a potential point in its favor. We've also heard that AMD might try something different with 3D V-Cache this generation, but no word on what that actually means.
    Reply
  • Conor Stewart
    Oh wow, AMD must be lying because they didn't score exactly their average performance increase on some synthetic benchmark that they didn't include.

    This is a synthetic benchmark that wasn't included in AMDs published results so it really means nothing. AMD claimed that their next generation chips managed anywhere from 10 - 35 % improvement over the previous generation with a 16 % geomean, so the increase of 12 % falls pretty well inside that range and not too far off of the geomean.

    So what is the problem? Either the author doesn't know what they are writing about or they purposely ignored the facts in order to write a clickbait and wrong article. I would think it is a combination especially with all the other errors in the article and acknowledging that AMDs 16 % was average. I suppose we shouldn't expect much more from modern "journalists".
    Reply