Review Ryzen 7 9700X Reviews

[DAPUNISHER]

As I posted many months ago, it did not matter how Zen 5 performs, gamers know after seeing the performance of 2 generations of 3D to wait for the next iteration. Zen 3D is synonymous with flagship gaming now. And without being nuclear reactors that can go into Chernobyl meltdown mode at any time. The 5800X3D is still bringing it in titles that are not heavily memory bandwidth or single thread IPC/clockspeed dependent.

These CPUs are an OEMs dream. They get to use their bottom of the barrel mainboards, inadequate cooling for CPU and case, and low wattage PSUs. Yet have no worries about power, heat, performance, or it becoming rapture lake.

Question: Is the idle power draw issue fixed with Zen 5?

 

[Mahboi]

Question: Is the idle power draw issue fixed with Zen 5?

Same I/O die, same interconnect.
My money's on "LOL".

 

[Rigg]

Will they someday switch to Radeon for CPU tests?
That driver overhead difference is no joke, it's a valid argument to test with AMD, even if the graphical perf isn't the best, the CPU can show its best chops. Although yes, most people want to know Nvidia perf anyway.

HUB used a 6900XT for CPU tests before the 4090 came out. The overhead is a thing, but it takes a pretty severe CPU bottleneck to show up in testing. This usually means the CPU/GPU pairing and/or the resolution is unrealistic. Ideally review outlets would use both AMD & Nvidia flagship GPUs for CPU testing, but that'd be tough to pull off in the limited time frame they typically have to do testing on a new CPU launch. Perhaps this would be a good thing to explore in follow up pieces. In all honesty just using the fastest GPU available is probably the best policy even if there are edge cases where driver overhead could be a factor.

 

[Mahboi]

That's fair. It's true that even in this vid, Iceberg shows a pretty massive shortfall with a Zen CPU, but by Zen 3 it's a lot less serious.
Plus Bigger Number Better, so Novideo it is.

 

[KompuKare]

Will they someday switch to Radeon for CPU tests?
That driver overhead difference is no joke, it's a valid argument to test with AMD, even if the graphical perf isn't the best, the CPU can show its best chops. Although yes, most people want to know Nvidia perf anyway.

ComputerBase did:

Gaming-Performance des Ryzen 5 9600X & Ryzen 7 9700X: Spiele-Benchmarks auf zwei verschiedenen Grafikkarten

Ryzen 5 9600X & Ryzen 7 9700X im Test: Spiele-Benchmarks auf zwei verschiedenen Grafikkarten / Gaming-Benchmarks mit einer GeForce RTX 4090

www.computerbase.de

Average 9700X Vs 7700X (no 7700 non X) was 105% for 4090 and 102% for the 7900 XTX.

Some liked Cyberpunk had a regression while Outcast likes Zen5.

 

[Ranulf]

Toms Hardware likes it and seems somewhat an anomaly.

AMD Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X Review: Zen 5 brings upgraded gaming performance (Updated)

Dialing gaming up a notch.

www.tomshardware.com

MLID says its AMD bad marketing and review guidance. Should have set the power at 105w. "AMD still does not how to be #1".

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Fabio has a good review of the 9700X

 

[poke01]

Fabio has a good review of the 9700X

If most of he says is the 7700X is better than the 9700X because of its higher PPT in the productivity tests, a normal 7700 should have been included as well because of its 88PPT which is the same as 9700X.

I think techpowerup had the best comparisons overall.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

If most of he says is the 7700X is better than the 9700X because of its higher PPT in the productivity tests, a normal 7700 should have been included as well because of its 88PPT which is the same as 9700X.

I think techpowerup had the best comparisons overall.

Big reviewers like HUB had to lobby to start getting Fabio sent hardware. That was only a couple of months ago. I am not certain he has a 7700 to test.

W1zz does good work, but I don't care for his 25 second game runs or choice of titles to test. Besides the more reviews the better.

 

[coercitiv]

MLID says its AMD bad marketing and review guidance. Should have set the power at 105w.

I'm getting more and more annoyed at this attitude of "should have given it more power" after we spent years lamenting that CPU power usage was getting out of control. AMD will learn to appease reviewers instead of the average consumers and Intel is definitely taking notes for Arrow Lake from this. The same people who complain that overclocking is dead are the ones complaining the 9700X did not come with the pedal already nailed to the floor.

High power computing should be opt-in, not opt-out. Put conservative settings as stock for the average user, let the enthusiast make the monumental effort of enabling PBO or using ECO for custom builds.

As far as review guidance goes, it was probably bad. They had bad marketing, bad BIOS health before launch, why would review guidance be any better...

 

[AnandThenMan]

Hopefully, you’ll agree that this is a fair way to include the data for Intel’s chips so that we can compare their performance, while acknowledging that performance could very well change for the worse here in a matter of weeks."

No I don't agree at all. It would be like including a car in 0-60 runs even though there is a known flaw that might cause the engine to burst into flames. Asterisk is not good enough.

Anandtech has been using the same dirty trick for decades make sure Intel is at the top of the charts no matter what. It's a powerful psychological trick, even if you're looking at a review of a low end product seeing the best of the best in a graph tells your brain that is the best brand.

 

[Mahboi]

Perfectly summarised the situation IMO:
"I wouldn't dream of taking a Zen 4/AM5 7700X and "upgrading" to a Zen 5 9700X".

If you are on Zen 3 or prior, the leap is good. If you're on Zen 4 consumer, it is utterly pointless to switch. Just keep Zen 4.

 

[Thunder 57]

Perfectly summarised the situation IMO:
"I wouldn't dream of taking a Zen 4/AM5 7700X and "upgrading" to a Zen 5 9700X".

If you are on Zen 3 or prior, the leap is good. If you're on Zen 4 consumer, it is utterly pointless to switch. Just keep Zen 4.

Has there ever been a generational leap so good as to upgrade in one generation? Maybe a couple of examples exist but it has never been the norm. Same for GPU's.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Has there ever been a generational leap so good as to upgrade in one generation? Maybe a couple of examples exist but it has never been the norm. Same for GPU's.

Bulldozer to Zen comes to mind but you're right not a common thing.

 

[Mahboi]

AMD Ryzen 5 9600X & Ryzen 7 9700X Offer Excellent Linux Performance Review - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

How come Linux compilation is that much faster than Windows tests???
Every Windows test gives the same compilation speed as Zen 4, but Phoronix finds about 10% better. The heck?

 

[lakedude]

No I don't agree at all. It would be like including a car in 0-60 runs even though there is a known flaw that might cause the engine to burst into flames. Asterisk is not good enough.

Agree to disagree.

More information is better than less.

Anyone could read the article and dismiss the RL results if they were that worried. It seems AT went out of their way to run at Intel's settings instead of the MB default. I suppose they could have done something more dramatic than a tiny asterisk, like maybe strike through or gray them out.

 

[Ranulf]

Bulldozer to Zen comes to mind but you're right not a common thing.

Well, that was a 3-5 year long gen of cpus though.

 

[AnandThenMan]

More information is better than less.

Most definitely not quality of info> quantity.

Well, that was a 3-5 year long gen of cpus though.

True.

 

[Rigg]

I'm getting more and more annoyed at this attitude of "should have given it more power" after we spent years lamenting that CPU power usage was getting out of control. AMD will learn to appease reviewers instead of the average consumers and Intel is definitely taking notes for Arrow Lake from this. The same people who complain that overclocking is dead are the ones complaining the 9700X did not come with the pedal already nailed to the floor.

High power computing should be opt-in, not opt-out. Put conservative settings as stock for the average user, let the enthusiast make the monumental effort of enabling PBO or using ECO for custom builds.

As far as review guidance goes, it was probably bad. They had bad marketing, bad BIOS health before launch, why would review guidance be any better...

While I don't really disagree with your overarching point, the "should have given it more power" criticism could be valid in this specific circumstance. Especially since these parts appear to scale better than 7000 with power. We need more testing to have a more clear view on that.

In an ideal world, high power computing would be opt-in, not opt-out. Unfortunately CPU releases don't happen in a vacuum so we're stuck with comparing new CPUs to old CPUs with higher power limits.

Every generation of Ryzen has had a 95W or 105W TDP 8 core available at launch. Every generation of Ryzen has had a 95W or 105W TDP 6 core available at launch with the exception of the 5000 series. The CPU the 9700X is being directly compared to is a 105W TDP part. It doesn't look very impressive compared to the 7700X with the exception of efficiency and a lower MSRP. In reality the 7700 is what the 9700X should be compared to because it launched (Jan 10, 2023) with a $330 MSRP and an identical TDP/PPT. The 9700X is less impressive against the 7700. If the 9700X performance scales better with more power, than it's kind of tough to say (at least from a marketing perspective) that the stock TDP/PPT shouldn't have been higher.

 

[AnandThenMan]

AMD is optimizing for server/AI workloads with a priority on perf/watt us gamers get the scraps.

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

AMD is optimizing for server/AI workloads with a priority on perf/watt us gamers get the scraps.

It's Nvidia's tensor cores all over again, except there's no DLSS to try and convince consumers that charging them more for hardware they can't use is a good thing.

This is why I have a gigantic beef with the pricing and I hope (Mindfactory gives promise) that market reception is awful and these processors don't sell well at all. AMD fudged this, no way around it, and they need to learn a lesson here.

I keep seeing people compare this to Intel's 4 core reign. It's not really comparable because market pricing on Zen 4 is so low, there's nowhere near a performance gain for consumer workloads to even come close to justifying the increase to MSRP over Zen 4 parts.

Intel kept pretty good control over pricing, without giving massive discounts and without keeping old gen parts around on the market. The new gen would come and slot in at practically the same price the old part was at, fully replacing it and the old gen part would just disappear from the market.

AMD has historically kept the last gen parts around to help fill in lower pricing tiers and gaps between new gen products, since they release a pretty sparse stack initially and only fill in over time. If AMD keeps Zen 4 around, there really is no reason for any consumer to choose Zen 5 at MSRP. If AMD intends to eliminate Zen 4 from the market, it would be the first time. If they're trying to pull an Intel, I don't think they really have the market control, market share and mind share to pull it off.

 

[Thunder 57]

AMD is optimizing for server/AI workloads with a priority on perf/watt us gamers get the scraps.

X3D. Patience.

 

[Thunder 57]

It's Nvidia's tensor cores all over again, except there's no DLSS to try and convince consumers that charging them more for hardware they can't use is a good thing.

This is why I have a gigantic beef with the pricing and I hope (Mindfactory gives promise) that market reception is awful and these processors don't sell well at all. AMD fudged this, no way around it, and they need to learn a lesson here.

I keep seeing people compare this to Intel's 4 core reign. It's not really comparable because market pricing on Zen 4 is so low, there's nowhere near a performance gain for consumer workloads to even come close to justifying the increase to MSRP over Zen 4 parts.

Intel kept pretty good control over pricing, without giving massive discounts and without keeping old gen parts around on the market. The new gen would come and slot in at practically the same price the old part was at, fully replacing it and the old gen part would just disappear from the market.

AMD has historically kept the last gen parts around to help fill in lower pricing tiers and gaps between new gen products, since they release a pretty sparse stack initially and only fill in over time. If AMD keeps Zen 4 around, there really is no reason for any consumer to choose Zen 5 at MSRP. If AMD intends to eliminate Zen 4 from the market, it would be the first time. If they're trying to pull an Intel, I don't think they really have the market control, market share and mind share to pull it off.

Zen 4 CPU's are priced low because they want to clear inventory. This is nothing new.

 

[gdansk]

People keep complaining about the AVX512 because that logic and register file is taking up all the area. But is it? Do we have annotated die shots?

The hugely increased front end buffers/queue (which seems to still operate like 4 wide most the time) might take up even more area. And what good are all those duplicated resources except for servers with SMT?

The real defect of the AVX512 is the latency increase for 128/256 bit instructions. And that doesn't sound like it was intentional...

 

[OriAr]

Has there ever been a generational leap so good as to upgrade in one generation? Maybe a couple of examples exist but it has never been the norm. Same for GPU's.

Nehalem to Sandy Bridge might have been the last one.
NetBurst to Core 2 as well.