AMD Ryzen 9 7950X and Ryzen 5 7600X Review: A Return to Gaming Dominance

DDR5, PCIe 5.0, 5nm, AM5, and 5.7 GHz

By Paul Alcorn
published
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X and Ryzen 5 7600X
(Image: © Tom's Hardware)

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Integrated GPU Benchmarks on Ryzen 9 7950X and Ryzen 5 7600X

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AMD Ryzen 9 7950X and Ryzen 5 7600X Review
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

As before, the Ryzen 9 processors come with two Core Compute Die (CCD) while the Ryzen 5 processors come with one. Each 5nm die houses eight cores, measures 70mm^2, and has 6.5 billion transistors.

AMD’s new 6nm I/O Die (IOD) ties it all together. The 122mm^2 die houses 3.4 billion transistors and comes armed with a newcomer to Ryzen — an integrated graphics engine.

The RDNA 2 iGPU is designed to provide basic display output capabilities, and AMD says you shouldn’t expect it to support any meaningful gaming. The RDNA 2 iGPU comes with two compute units, 4 ACE, and 1 HWS, so that should be pretty apparent.

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Ryzen
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

We tried a few games anyway, which you can see if you flip through the album above, and the results weren’t pretty. We couldn’t get Far Cry 6 to load, for instance, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider could render the benchmark at 1280x720 but wouldn’t run at 1080p. Much like Intel’s graphics, we were treated to a slideshow in the few games that did run. The bar charts don't do the poor results enough justice -- check out the frametime over time charts for perspective on just how badly the iGPU performs in gaming.

The integrated graphics do have appeal for troubleshooting and OEM systems, though, and it has a few other redeeming qualities. The iGPU supports AV1 and VP9 decode, H.264 and HVEC encode and decode, USB Type-C with DisplayPort Alt Mode, DisplayPort 2.0 (adaptive sync, DSC, UHBR10, HDR), and HDMI 2.1 (HFR, 48Gbps FRL, DSC, HDR10+, and VRR). You also get support for 4K60 and hybrid graphics.

Socket AM5 and 600-series Motherboards

AMD's socket AM4 has served for five years across five CPU generations, four architectures, four process nodes, 125+ processors, and 500+ motherboard designs. Now it's time for a new socket, AM5, which AMD has committed to supporting through ‘2025+.’ 

AMD’s AM5 moves from its long-lived Pin Grid Array (PGA) AM4 sockets to a Land Grid Array (LGA) layout. Despite the entirely different LGA1718 socket interface (1718 pins), the AM5 socket will still support AM4 coolers. The AM5 socket measures 40x40mm, and the Ryzen 7000 chips adhere to the same length, width, Z-height, package size, and socket keep-out pattern as the previous-gen models, enabling backward support for AM4 coolers. AMD says all but 5% of existing coolers will work without new brackets (which cooler makers typically provide free).

The X670 and X670E chipsets will be available at launch, while B650E and the B650 will arrive in October. AMD says that motherboard pricing will drop as low as $125, but hasn't clarified if that constitutes pricing for X- or B-series boards. We have an extensive roundup of 20 600-series motherboards and a breakdown of the chipset connectivity options here. 

Paul Alcorn
Paul Alcorn
Deputy Managing Editor

Paul Alcorn is the Deputy Managing Editor for Tom's Hardware US. He writes news and reviews on CPUs, storage and enterprise hardware.

23 Comments Comment from the forums
  • -Fran-
    Thanks for the review(s)!

    Good to see more reaffirmation these CPUs don't have a performance problem, but a platform cost (or "cost of entry") problem with them. I hope AMD can alleviate it a bit so they become more of a mainstream crowd fav.

    One small point that I won't really defend much, but buying into the AM5 platform, you buy into several years of support. The huge caveat is you have to trust not only AMD, but the partners to go with it and roll the BIOS updates down the line. This being said, after AM4, I'd imagine both AMD and partners have seen it does matter they do keep supporting newer CPUs and see that as a strength. Maybe partners would rather convince you to buy a new motherboard, but allowing this "mix and match" with generations does help overall sales; or so it is my impression. Plus, we all know which motherboard vendors actually followed through with the updates, so they'll get more sales once B650 launches. Could Tom's have the list of motherboards from the 300-series chipsets that do support Ry5K? That would actually help track which partners are indeed reliable and can be trusted with buying into AM5.

    Regards.
    Reply
  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    The headline: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X and Ryzen 5 7600X Review: A Return to Gaming Dominance
    The reality: 5800X3D performs better in games than either of those.
    Reply
  • -Fran-
    Alvar Miles Udell said:
    The headline: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X and Ryzen 5 7600X Review: A Return to Gaming Dominance
    The reality: 5800X3D performs better in games than either of those.
    To be pedantic, the title is correct. They now have more than just 1 CPU topping the charts and most (if not all) above Intel offerings.

    You'd be correct if the title was something like "7950X is the new gaming overlord/king/champion*" or something that implies "the CPU is 1st in gaming", which as you clearly noticed, it is not.

    Plus, it depends on the game anyway.

    Regards.
    Reply
  • BogdanH
    I didn't read the article, simply because it's too long -quick view on some of pages gave me impression, that there's a lot of repeating from previous articles.. so why bother.
    Another reason why I didn't read, is the title. When I see a CPU like 7900X/7950X (or Intel's pendant) in conjunction with "gaming", I can already imagine the content. I assume, such title should grab the attention... I'm not sure who's attention, though. Are you trying to convince "gamers" to shell out 800€ for CPU alone? Yes, there's always said, that for gaming alone, it's "wiser" to get 7600X (or 5800X3D) -but such title still imply that 7950X is simply "the right thing"... "if you wish to have it all..". -again, that's my impression, so feel free to diagree.

    Ok, so you say (for example), 7950X is 15% faster (in whatever) than 5950X. Now, some of this performance increase happens thanks to faster new DDR5 memory. And quite a lot performance increase (in my opinion) goes to much higher clock speed -which in turn comes back as heat dissipation. There's also faster PCIe5.0, etc ... Now I wonder, how much has actual CPU improved (compared to 5950X)? I mean IPC. Because if IPC is the same, then I see 7950X as a "brute force" improvement. In sense: Make it faster, no matter the costs (power draw & heat dissipation).
    Yes, I know: 7950X finishes work faster (than 5950X) and so at the end, electricity bill will be lower. That's true if we look strictly from CPU side. But, if we take the cooling (of whole PC) into account, then the total power draw doesn't look that appealing anymore -especially in summer. In short: CPU is more efficient, but whole PC probably isn't.

    I can read many times in forums, that many are already running their PC in eco-mode (to save energy, to make PC more silent, having less heat in room, etc) -they're ready to sacrifice fps by few percent for that. So I assume, what they wish or hope for, is certain performance increase, without affecting power draw -at least not by much.

    I don't blame AMD/Intel/Nvidia for going into high power consumption direction. They know we wish everything faster (than it was in previous generation), so they do it -and many will buy it.. and that's the whole idea,
    However, I do blame media for not putting more investigation/research into efficiency and write about that.

    Just sharing my thoughts (being aware I may be wrong)
    Bogdan
    Reply
  • DavidLejdar
    -Fran- said:
    Thanks for the review(s)!

    Good to see more reaffirmation these CPUs don't have a performance problem, but a platform cost (or "cost of entry") problem with them. I hope AMD can alleviate it a bit so they become more of a mainstream crowd fav.

    ...

    If one wants to go for as cheap a build as possible e.g. just to play CS:GO, then yeah, the DDR5 requirement with AM5 may sure be off-putting. Myself, I will be upgrading in the near future from DDR3 anyhow, and (here) the extra cost for 32 GB DDR5-5200 (instead of DDR4-3200) is around 80 currently. At the same time, B650E has PCIe 5.0 both for GPU (16x) and NVMe at currently around 300-400 cheaper than what motherboards for Raptor Lake with the same connectivity cost (that is the few released so far). And only a handful of Alder Lake MBs have PCIe 5.0 for NVMe, while taking away 8 lanes from the GPU for that though.

    So what I am currently looking at is around 250 for AM5 motherboard and 170 for 32 GB of DDR5 - which isn't as cheap as it can get, but should be plenty good for at least several years, giving me the option to upgrade individual parts later.

    And to me that seems worth it to go for that, instead of saving perhaps 100 bucks with a Raptor Lake MB and DDR4 now, which likely won't support Meteor Lake already and would require me to get a lot of new parts then if I may want to boost performance in a year or two.

    Of course, as you point out, not really a guarantee that even AMD directly may not push AM6 soon if Meteor Lake is taking it all to very new heights. But even if I upgrade the MB sooner than I was expecting, at least I will already have DDR5 to reuse, including having made use of it in the meantime.

    BogdanH said:
    ... . But, if we take the cooling (of whole PC) into account, then the total power draw doesn't look that appealing anymore -especially in summer. In short: CPU is more efficient, but whole PC probably isn't.

    I can read many times in forums, that many are already running their PC in eco-mode (to save energy, to make PC more silent, having less heat in room, etc) -they're ready to sacrifice fps by few percent for that. So I assume, what they wish or hope for, is certain performance increase, without affecting power draw -at least not by much. ...

    Very strictly taken, sure, the cooling uses some power too. But then again, a case fan has a power consumption of up to 6W, and CPU coolers (air or liquid) usually don't consume more than that. So even if all the cooling would take 20W at full load, that is 50 hours of full load to get to 1 kWh. And e.g. in the U.S., it is less than $1 for 4 kWh, isn't it?

    The electricity costs can add up quickly though. E.g. if someone is gaming 50 hours a week at 700W, that's possibly up to 35 kWh right there, coming to 140 kWh a month.

    Myself, I wouldn't know how to have that much time for gaming. So even if my rig would consume 700W, perhaps every other week to play at full load for a total of 10 hours, at the U.S. electricity price that would be less than $2.

    Which isn't to say that it wouldn't be nice if there would be more improvement for power efficiency. But the review mentions that the Ryzen 5 7600X is a very sound choice for gaming (unless one can wait a few months to check out the gaming specific CPU). And that one has quite less Watt than the top tier one. And coupled with perhaps not the top-tier GPU around, e.g. the RTX 3060, which has around 200W, one can have a solid build which comes in at under 500W at full load.
    Reply
  • BogdanH
    DavidLejdar said:
    Very strictly taken, sure, the cooling uses some power too. But then again, a case fan has a power consumption of up to 6W, and CPU coolers (air or liquid) usually don't consume more than that. So even if all the cooling would take 20W at full load...
    -that's 20W (probably less) just to move hot air out of PC case into our room.. which we need to cool in summer days.
    Many say, it's "only 10€/year more" (or whatever number).. but there are millions of PC's running. And if looking that way, we can see see how much energy is wasted.. and is really not about who can afford to pay electricity and who can't.

    Best wishes,
    Bogdan
    Reply
  • chalabam
    Der Bauer has shown that this CPU is 20 degrees hotter than it should be due to bad packaging
    Reply
  • Sluggotg
    Nice new lineup for AMD. Looking forward to the industry moving to PCIE 5 and USB 4. The 7600 is very impressive. (For 300 Bucks!). With Intel's new chips coming out next month we should see some very healthy competition that will hopefully lead to overall lower prices. With the New CPUs and the New Graphics cards all coming out in the next several months, we should be able to do some nice upgrades. Hopefully the Scalpers will fail to corner the market.
    Reply
  • -Fran-
    BogdanH said:
    I didn't read the article, simply because it's too long -quick view on some of pages gave me impression, that there's a lot of repeating from previous articles.. so why bother.
    Another reason why I didn't read, is the title. When I see a CPU like 7900X/7950X (or Intel's pendant) in conjunction with "gaming", I can already imagine the content. I assume, such title should grab the attention... I'm not sure who's attention, though. Are you trying to convince "gamers" to shell out 800€ for CPU alone? Yes, there's always said, that for gaming alone, it's "wiser" to get 7600X (or 5800X3D) -but such title still imply that 7950X is simply "the right thing"... "if you wish to have it all..". -again, that's my impression, so feel free to diagree.

    Ok, so you say (for example), 7950X is 15% faster (in whatever) than 5950X. Now, some of this performance increase happens thanks to faster new DDR5 memory. And quite a lot performance increase (in my opinion) goes to much higher clock speed -which in turn comes back as heat dissipation. There's also faster PCIe5.0, etc ... Now I wonder, how much has actual CPU improved (compared to 5950X)? I mean IPC. Because if IPC is the same, then I see 7950X as a "brute force" improvement. In sense: Make it faster, no matter the costs (power draw & heat dissipation).
    Yes, I know: 7950X finishes work faster (than 5950X) and so at the end, electricity bill will be lower. That's true if we look strictly from CPU side. But, if we take the cooling (of whole PC) into account, then the total power draw doesn't look that appealing anymore -especially in summer. In short: CPU is more efficient, but whole PC probably isn't.

    I can read many times in forums, that many are already running their PC in eco-mode (to save energy, to make PC more silent, having less heat in room, etc) -they're ready to sacrifice fps by few percent for that. So I assume, what they wish or hope for, is certain performance increase, without affecting power draw -at least not by much.

    I don't blame AMD/Intel/Nvidia for going into high power consumption direction. They know we wish everything faster (than it was in previous generation), so they do it -and many will buy it.. and that's the whole idea,
    However, I do blame media for not putting more investigation/research into efficiency and write about that.

    Just sharing my thoughts (being aware I may be wrong)
    Bogdan
    Er... Paul (the article) did include IPC measurements and a couple parragraphs to that. Zen4 is indeed faster, clock for clock, than Zen3. It's just it gets more overall performance from the increased clocks (hence the higher power budget) than raw IPC improvements.

    Regards.
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    so zen 3 they held out entire generation for a 5700x

    and now zen 4 its the 7800x missing...AMD ffs why do you do this?

    and as said before...the cpu are great, but platform isnt worth it with 5800x3d existing.

    (will likely change by time weg et 3d cache zen4 cpus)
    Reply