In case you miss the Ryzen 7000 Series word that ’s been bombarding the techie scene , AMD ’s Zen 4 processors have officially been release into the wilderness . adopt new technology and pushing beyond 5.0 GHz on boost speeds across multiple core , these CPUs are part of AMD ’s plan to release thefastest gamingprocessors on the marketplace – at leastfor now .
Our initial impressions of theRyzen 7 7700X and Ryzen 9 7900Xwere stellar , but they only told half of the Zen 4 story . Today , we get to take a close look at the current bookend of the Ryzen 7000 Series – the Ryzen 5 7600X and Ryzen 9 7950X. Now that we have a more comprehensive photo of the whole line across both budget and premium CPUs , we can more accurately predict how Zen 4 will compete against Intel .
AMD Ryzen 5 7600X and Ryzen 9 7950X CPUs

Photo: Damien Gula / Gizmodo
AMD ’s Zen 4 CPUs try out to be consistently hefty at every price point .
What Is It ?
AMD Ryzen 5 7600X and Ryzen 9 7950X : The bookends to AMD ’s Ryzen 7000 Series

Photo: Damien Gula / Gizmodo
Mary Leontyne Price
$ 299 ( Ryzen 5 7600X ) and $ 699 ( Ryzen 9 7950X )
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Photo: Damien Gula / Gizmodo
The 7950X offer unparalleled multi core , multi train of thought performance , The 7600X offers access to the Zen 4 weapons platform at a modest entry fee , Gaming execution is systematically great across the Ryzen 7000 Series
Dislike
The 7600X is a budget option without budget motherboard musical accompaniment at launch , The Modern platform as a whole needs a bit more maturity , Thermals take dependable cooling

Photo: Damien Gula / Gizmodo
In this clause , we will take a looking at the carrying out of theRyzen 5 7600X and Ryzen 9 7950Xin productivity and play alongside the rest of the Ryzen 7000 Series . We ’ll also enquire the thermal performance and energy draw , so that by the ending , we can give you our best picture of which processor might be veracious for your use - event .
rent ’s get take up .
Recap: New Platform, New Processor Design, and a (Condensed) Overview
The socket is not the only redesign ; AMD has integrated RDNA 2 cores into the Ryzen 7000 Series . These are among the first mainline Ryzen processors to release with an integrated graphics processing unit of measurement ( iGPU ) . While we do not recommend user pass their system off of an iGPU alone , they do come in handy for troubleshooting purposes . This is n’t raw technology , but the addition of an iGPU is a welcome one , and helps keep these processors in descent with the challenger from Intel .
Speaking of older technology , unlike Intel ’s Alder Lake ( and forthcoming Raptor Lake CPUs ) , AMD has completely move away from DDR4 on these chip to focus on current or up - and - coming engineering like DDR5 RAM and PCIe 5.0 .
As for other differences between the motherboards , the X670 - series is think for users looking for overclocking headroom and magnate delivery , while the approaching B - series promise admittance to the AM5 platform while keeping the budget - conscious in idea . This is an crucial item to remember , especially as we blab out about the 7600X.

Graphic: Damien Gula / Gizmodo
at last , AMD has also incorporated Extended Profile for Overclocking – or EXPO – into its DDR5 reinforcement . EXPO , much like Intel XMP , put up simple , one push overclocking for RAM speeds , timing , and voltage , which helps a chip to perform at an optimise level .
For a more comprehensive overview of the political program , read ourreviewof the 7700X and 7900X.
Ryzen 5 7600X and Ryzen 9 7950X Specs
Now that we ’ve had a refresher on what ’s novel with the AM5 political program , allow ’s talk about the CPUs we ’ll be foreground , some basic differences between them and their predecessors , and where they fall down within the production stack .
get with AMD ’s ingress - level CPU , the Ryzen 5 remains a six - heart and soul , twelve - thread ( 6C/12 T ) offer . The 7600X get a healthy 1.0 gigacycle per second bump in base speed over the 5600X ’s 3.7 GHz stem clock , while the max boost clock puts the 7600X at 5.3 GHz . This is n’t a whole lot of headroom compared to the previous multiplication , but I can say through observation that it emphatically hit or exceeded – and held – 5.3 GHz on multiple cores throughout our examination . This is , of course , help out by a gibbosity in thermal design ability ( TDP ) from 65 W to 105 W.
On the other end of the spectrum , we have AMD ’s newest flagship CPU , the Ryzen 9 7950X. This 16C/32 T monster shares similar base clock speeds with the 7700X at 4.7 Gc – 1.3 GHz quicker than its forerunner , the 5950X – and boasts a boost clock of 5.7 gigahertz . For context , the max hike of the 7950X take a 900 megahertz lede from its ancestral next of kin . Like the rest of the Zen 4 line up , we do see the 7950X raise generational TDP from 105 W to 170 W.

Graphic: Damien Gula / Gizmodo
As name in my old clause , the Ryzen 7000 Series as a whole sees this TDP addition as well as an addition in L2 cache size . On each CPU , we see L2 cache doubled over the previous generation .
Performance, Power, and A More Complete Picture of Zen 4 Performance
chart and numbers say very specific stories , so we tried to keep our methodology as simple as potential to give a concise picture of the execution that the middling drug user might expect to get out of the Ryzen 5 7600X and the Ryzen 9 7950X. Like in our former trial , the numbers pool you are about to see are out - of - the - box carrying out – no overclocking and no preferences pull off . The only feature that we enable was an AMD EXPO visibility for downhearted store response time and speed .
Here is the hardware we used to hoard our information from the Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs : ASRock X670E Taichi motherboard , NVIDIA RTX 3090 Founders Edition GPU , 32 GB G.Skill Trident Z5 NEO DDR5 - 6000 RAM , 1 TB WD_Black SN770 M.2 NVMe SSD , NZXT C1000 Gold 1000W PSU , NZXT Kraken Z73 360 mm all - in - one liquid cooler with three 120 millimeter fans , and an NZXT H7 elect mid - tower PC case equipped with four 140 mm fans .
As with our previous review article , we are also including test data collected from theCore i9 - 12900 K and Core i5 - 12600 K , as well asAMD ’s Ryzen 9 5950X. This data was collected for Gizmodo ’s reexamination of Intel ’s 12th Generation CPUs and AMD ’s flagship from AMD ’s Ryzen 5000 Series by Joanna Nelius and Sarah Jacobsson Purewal , severally . As with any test , your fuel consumption rate may depart . It is of import to keep in head while guide comparisons between their datum and mine that our testing surroundings were different , as was some of the equipment used for these tests .

Graphic: Damien Gula / Gizmodo
Now , on with the show !
Benchmark Breakdown: Productivity
For our productivity tests , we scat a suite of software benchmarks to highlight single- and multi thread performance in scenarios that try how each CPU perform under various computational loads .
In Geekbench 5 , we see in individual train of thought tasks – such as WWW navigation , PDF rendering , image and text edition compression , and motorcar learning – that the Ryzen 5 7600X take a 26.8 % leap in performance ahead of the Ryzen 9 5950X while overtaking the Core i9 - 12900 atomic number 19 by a lowly 10.9 % ! The Ryzen 9 7950X engage a 15.8 % lead against the 12900 K while put up an increase of 32.4 % against the 5950X.
It is worthwhile to note that there is only a 4.4 % difference in unmarried core performance between the Ryzen 5 7600X and the Ryzen 9 7950X. Keep that in brain .

Graphic: Damien Gula / Gizmodo
In the Geekbench 5 multi core testing , we see the dependable ascendance of the 7950X. Leading the 12900 potassium by a margin of 28.8 % , the 7950X makes a substantive claim to the multi effect performance commode . Meanwhile , the 7600X does the opposite as it return -19 % against the 5950X and trails the 10 - core pith i5 - 12600K. This trial give away a trend that we would continue to see with the Ryzen 5 7600X : it does not shine in multi core , multi threaded applications .
In Handbrake , while converting a 4 kB video single file to a 1080p30 format , the 7600X was a whole 33 seconds slow than the 12600 K , but on the other side of the spectrum , the 7950X shaved 13 seconds off of the 12900 K ’s best time . While it is intemperate to make a direct comparison between the two architectures , the 7950X is putting more threads to work than the 12900 super C for that ~6 % amplification in fourth dimension .
In Blender , we saw that delta extend . supply everyone ’s favorite shining , red BMW , the 7950X rendered the figure of speech in 60 second two-dimensional – 20 seconds faster than the 7900X and 30 endorsement quicker than 12900K. The tarradiddle of the Ryzen 5 , however , is the same : it lag behind the 12600 K by a modest margin – but only by 17 moment .

Graphic: Damien Gula / Gizmodo
Benchmark Breakdown: Gaming
To remove as much GPU dependency as potential , we ran all of our gaming examination at 1080p to get the clear picture of the CPU ’s impact on performance . These run were taken from games that had synthetic benchmarks , allowing for quotable , logical data .
In our recap for the repose of the Zen 4 launching batting order , we mentioned that these benchmarks revealed an oddly predictable trend : the carrying into action was eerily interchangeable – and that trend continue here .
After multiple benchmark run , checks for background tasks or other performance drains , the data speaks pretty clear : stake performance across Zen 4 is very close across the series – almost to the point of being negligibly dissimilar .

Graphic: Damien Gula / Gizmodo
Keep in idea , these telephone number are not tough numbers ; each of the Ryzen 7000 CPUs ran our benchmarks at or beyond 1080p120 in our gaming tests without any execution stuttering , caloric throttling , or the benefit of performance boosting feature like AMD ’s FidelityFX Super Resolution ( FSR ) or NVIDIA ’s Deep Learning Super Sampling ( DLSS ) . These results , specifically for the 7600X , are jolly fantastic for the consumer looking for high end performance without having a in high spirits last budget . But we will have to talk about the implications of this selective information in a moment .
Energy Efficiency and Thermal Performance
AMD ’s finish with Zen 4 was to create a platform that leads the industry in performance andenergy efficiency . Arguably , the company got the performance part down , but at a cost . As noted earlier , each CPU in the Ryzen 7000 Series line up has been saddled with an increase in overall TDP . This has press performance to raw stature across the board , but it comes at the cost of both power and oestrus – and that is part of AMD ’s scheme .
In most of our test , we look initial spikes in both power and temperature on the front end of our benchmarks . With a Tjmax – thermal conjunction maximum , not America ’s favorite deduction outlet – of 95 degrees Celsius , our trial run saw the CPUs ab initio slammed with power and passion , but they leveled out quickly . According to AMD , these chips were designed to take advantage of the tycoon legal transfer of the Socket AM5 ’s LGA layout . Remember , that was the button to move to a fresh socket weapons platform .
For context , we ran all of these tests usingNZXT ’s Z73 360mmall - in - one liquidness cooler . The pump motor was set to carrying out mode , but all of the case fans were set to silent . This meant that the pump would live at about 70 % usable capacity , then start storm up to 100 % if the central processing unit temperatures bilk over 55 C. In silent modal value , rooter were set to operate in stages . fan would mesh at 40 % content until 65 light speed , step up to 70 % until 85 snow , then hire at 100 % at 90 C until temperatures came down .

Graphic: Damien Gula / Gizmodo
In productivity tasks where multiple cores and threads are at work , we view the 7600X draw a meaning amount of power compared to the performance that it was beat . In Blender , for object lesson , the 7600X draw 102.84 W liken to the 7950X ’s 209 W. While the 7950X drew more power overall , it performed doubly as tight . Obviously , we ’re let the cat out of the bag about powering more cores versus fewer , but a point can be made that efficiency in these configurations is not the 7600X ’s strongest attribute .
Single inwardness operations , however , are a whole unlike news report . In setting like Cinebench R23 ’s single effect bench mark and in gaming benchmarks , the Ryzen 5 7600X keep on in step with the rest of the Ryzen 7000 family in carrying out , but drew 23 double-u less than the 7950X in Cinebench alone . In our gaming benchmarks , where skeletal frame - per - endorsement were within a slender perimeter , the 7600X continued its modest appetite for watts .
thermic performance told a interchangeable account . In most gaming situations , the 7600X stayed marginally cooler than the quietus of the pack while the 7950X ran a few degrees hot . In some case , the difference from the bottom of the stack to the top was as piddling as ~3 C and as much as 15 speed of light !

Graphic: Damien Gula / Gizmodo
Zen 4 is designed to take the heat , but the real history of daily use is in between our productive results and the gambling benchmark . The productivity test are entail to put stress on a system to test its demarcation line while the gaming benchmarks are rather shortly - lived . On average use , the Ryzen 9 7950X hovered around 45 C over ambient temperatures ( 23.3 C or 74 F ) .
With all of this in mind , here is the Zen 4 write up as it relates to functioning , efficiency , and thermal : it ’s going to feed hotter and get more tycoon than the late propagation , but it ’s run to perform well . Just make certain you have a burly cooler for those strapping marrow !
So, Just How “Zen” Should You Get… And When?
Now that we have a more comprehensive picture of the Zen 4 line of products up , I imagine that someone desire to know which one to buy . Lets begin with theRyzen 5 7600X.
Without attributing motivation or marketing tactic , the 7600X feel like it was typeset up to fail at launch . The Ryzen 5 7600X is whole in gaming performance , observe in stuffy footprint with the other CPUs in the serial while staying the low powerfulness hook drawing card amongst the pack . However , cost is a prohibiting factor . While the B650E and B650 motherboards have formally launch , the average price for a received ATX - sized motherboard is still over $ 200 USD . This is a shame , because the Ryzen 5 7600X is a great CPU for someone looking for pure gaming public presentation in a budget build . Without budget options in motherboards or lower cost DDR5 to copulate it with , my advice for budget builders looking at the 7600X is this : wait .
If you must have a Zen 4 processor , wait until the B650 motherboards and the mainframe come down a bit in pricing . However , if you have cash bite a hole in your pocket this very instant and you want an AMD bod right now , here is my advice : a Ryzen 7 5800X is roughly the same Leontyne Price as the 7600X ’s $ 299 . Great DDR4 kit can be regain at a fraction of the price of DDR5 and solid X570 or B550 motherboards are incredibly accessible . Getting better components that are slenderly older is a lawful direction to make your dollar mark work harder for you when it get to microcomputer construction . For now , the Ryzen 5 7600X does not jibe its budget positioning .

Graphic: Damien Gula / Gizmodo
In the case of the Ryzen 9 7900X , this CPU shows up to work for the gamer that regularly utilize their PC for creative project like telecasting output , live cyclosis , or invigoration . While it is not at the top of the stack , it is still $ 150 USD less than the Ryzen 9 7950X. Now , $ 549 USD is no small amount , specially when looking at all of the other expense that will go along with this purchase . However , if you are looking for an upgrade from an old platform , time is money , friend ; any of either save means more for other ventures .
If that extra $ 150 USD for a CPU is not a big deal for you , the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X is currently unparalleled in its power and performance in multi core , multi thread tasks . This prosumer grade CPU demolished every task we throw at it while offering keen framing rates in gaming as well . While it is super world power athirst and not much is gained in play performance over the remainder of the series , the in the altogether computational power of this CPU is absurd .
And , in that last condemnation , we get hold the self-aggrandizing twist of the Zen 4 floor .

Photo: Damien Gula / Gizmodo
When take care across the series , specifically at gaming carrying into action , Zen 4 is consistent . There are a few incremental gibbosity between each CPU , but they are bare at best in many of the unmarried core , undivided thread applications we tested , including play . To be more blunt , there is a $ 400 delta between the 7600X and the 7950X that does not net a important enough addition in performance on Zen 4 to matter unless you are after multi core capabilities . And in most cases , the 5600X provided similar frame rates at a fraction of the power , heat , and cost .
And this is where we get back to theRyzen 7 7700X.
You may have noticed that I leave the Ryzen 7 7700X out of the above inclination – that was designed . Of the Ryzen 7000 Series , the 8C/16 T Ryzen 7 7700X finds itself in a rather appealing place for the gamer that dabble in light creative labor . The performance and note value of the CPU versus a rival loss leader like the 12900 jet are relatively astounding . While the entire Ryzen 7000 Series is unbelievable , the 7700X is the C.P.U. I have talked the most about and recommend since launch .

To bring the conversation back to the 7950X and the 7600X , both CPUs are tailored to two improbably different type of users while providing accession to advanced technologies like PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 at every tier of CPU .
Once we see more budget - well-disposed alternative in RAM and motherboards to pair with the 7600X , it will be an super appealing pick for gamers who purely want to game . But , on the other goal of the spectrum , if you are a prosumer looking to ascend in operation , the Ryzen 9 7950X may just be what you have been searching for . Just check that you have the power supply to support it and whatever monumental GPU you plan to twin it with !
With powerful Zen 4 cores at the inwardness of the entire Ryzen 7000 Series , AMD has unleashed a new era for the Ryzen mob . Let ’s just go for it can brawl the RAM preparation sometime presently .

The product discussed in this article was provided by the manufacturer for the aim of recap .
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