AMD’s Ryzen 9000 CPUs have arrived, marking the debut of the more powerful and efficient Zen 5 architecture and four processor numbers associated with Dragon Ball Z memes: 9600X, 9700X, 9900X and 9950X. Today we’re taking a look at the first two processors, with the six-core 9600X priced at £269/$279 and the eight-core 9700X priced at £339/$359. These mainstream offerings will go on sale from August 8, with the 12-core and 16-core Ryzen 9 models scheduled to arrive a week later.
With faster gaming X3D variants rumored to be coming later this year, and heavily discounted Ryzen 7000 parts already on the market, are the new Ryzen 9000 models worth buying? How do these processors compare to the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, which we’ve been recommending as the best high-end gaming CPU?
To find out, we tested these processors along with some of the closest AMD and Intel competitors in a range of demanding games from 1080p to 4K, and looked at synthetic and content creation benchmarks to see if these new Ryzen 9000 processors are a significant improvement over their predecessors.
We expect to see big upticks in most workloads, with AMD’s numbers showing an average 16% increase in IPC (instructions per clock, a measure of single-core performance) at similar clock speeds to the upcoming Ryzen 7000X CPUs, and on the same AM5 socket and 700-series motherboards. (AMD also announced X870 and X870E motherboards with USB 4 as standard and support for faster memory, but we haven’t received those for testing yet.)
The speed gains here are achieved through a combination of architectural improvements (such as improved branch predictors, better AVX-512 support and doubled data bandwidth between L2 to L1 cache) and a switch to more efficient 4nm CCDs. This means we should expect better power efficiency from the new cores, and the parts are indeed all rated at lower TDPs than their Ryzen 7000 predecessors (65W vs 105W for Ryzen 5/7).
Finally, improved thermal resistance means temperatures at the same TDP should also be lower – AMD claims a 7°C reduction at a matching TDP, which is impressive.
CPU Design | Promote | according to | L3 Cache | Thermal Design Piezoelectric | Suggested retail price | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Ryzen 9 9950X | Zen 5 16C/32T | 5.7GHz | 4.3GHz | 64MB | 170 W | $649 |
Ryzen 9 9900X | Zen 5 12C/24T | 5.6GHz | 4.4GHz | 64MB | 120W | $499 |
Ryzen 7 9700X | Zen 5 8C/16T | 5.5GHz | 3.8GHz | 32MB | 65W | £339/$359 |
Ryzen 5 9600X | Zen 5 6C/12T | 5.4GHz | 3.9GHz | 32MB | 65W | £269/$279 |
Ryzen 9 7950X3D | Zen 4 16C/32T | 5.7GHz | 4.2GHz | 128MB | 120W | $699 / £699 |
Ryzen 9 7950X | Zen 4 16C/32T | 5.7GHz | 4.5GHz | 64MB | 170 W | $699 / £739 |
Ryzen 9 7900X3D | Zen 4 12C/24T | 5.6GHz | 4.4GHz | 128MB | 120W | $599 / £599 |
Ryzen 9 7900X | Zen 4 12C/24T | 5.6GHz | 4.7GHz | 64MB | 170 W | $549 / £579 |
Ryzen 9 7900 | Zen 4 12C/24T | 5.4GHz | 3.7GHz | 64MB | 65W | $429/£519 |
Ryzen 7 7800X3D | Zen 4 8C/16T | 5.0GHz | 4.2GHz | 96MB | 120W | $449 / £375 |
Ryzen 7 7700X | Zen 4 8C/16T | 5.4GHz | 4.5GHz | 32MB | 105 W | $399 / £419 |
Ryzen 7 7700 | Zen 4 8C/16T | 5.3GHz | 3.8GHz | 32MB | 65W | $329 / £349 |
Ryzen 5 7600X | Zen 4 6C/12T | 5.3GHz | 4.7GHz | 32MB | 105 W | $299 / £319 |
Ryzen 5 7600 | Zen 4 6C/12T | 5.1GHz | 3.8GHz | 32MB | 65W | $229/£249 |
Ryzen 5 7500F | Zen 4 6C/12T | 5.0GHz | 3.7GHz | 32MB | 65W | $200/£255 |
We used a similar physical setup to our previous Ryzen 7000 tests, including an ASRock X670E Taichi motherboard, G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo DDR5-6000 CL30 RAM, and an Eisbaer Aurora 240mm AiO. The big difference is that our RTX 3090 has been swapped out for an RTX 4090 Founders Edition, providing the extra graphics performance that should push modern CPUs even further.
While Ryzen 9000 was the star of the show, we also tested earlier Ryzen 3000 and 5000 processors as well as Intel’s more mainstream 14th-generation processors. Our Intel CPU testing was conducted on a Gigabyte Aorus Z790 Master using the same DDR5-6000 CL30 RAM, while the AM4 CPUs were tested on the classic Asus ROG Crosshair 8 Hero using a Trident Z Royal DDR4-3600 CL16 kit.
For storage, we used a 4TB Lexar NM790 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD and a 4TB Kingston KC3000. Our rig was equipped with a 1000W Corsair RM1000x power supply. Testing was performed with the latest Windows updates (23H2), chipset drivers, and BIOS revision (3.06 for ASRock AM5 motherboards).
Cinebench 2024 (10 minutes) | Single core | Multi-core |
---|---|---|
Ryzen 5 7600X | 114 | 845 |
Ryzen 7 7700X | 118 | 1127 |
Ryzen 7 7800X3D | 112 | 1074 |
Ryzen 5 9600X | 132 | 935 |
Ryzen 7 9700X | 130 | 1172 |
Ryzen 7 9700X (105W) | 136 | 1280 |
Intel Core i5 14600K | 120 | 1400 |
Intel Core i7 14700K | 127 | 1987 |
The content creation benchmarks serve two purposes here. Firstly, they serve as synthetic benchmarks that make a useful distinction between single-core and multi-core results, allowing us to see where the new CPUs stand compared to the competition, and where they seek to gain an advantage. Secondly, they are of course helpful in showing real-world performance under similar workloads, with Cinebench simulating the 3D modelling and animation program Cinema 4D, while Handbrake is actually just a transcode of an early DF Patreon video – a common task for anyone working with video.
Let’s start with the Cinebench 2024 results. This is the first time we’ve used this test, and it loops for at least ten minutes to ensure the processor can’t quickly get a good score before thermal or power limits kick in. This makes for a long total runtime, especially when the task is handed off to a single CPU core, but it’s a reasonable step up given the power of modern CPUs.
In this regard, the 9600X and 9700X do perform well indeed, with single-core scores improving by 16% and 18% respectively over the previous generation, very close to the 16% IPC average measured by AMD in its own benchmarks. Multi-core scores are slightly lower, with the 9600X and 9700X improving by 11% and 4% respectively.
Cinebench R20 | Single core | Multi-core |
---|---|---|
Ryzen 5 3600X | 485 | 3654 |
Ryzen 5 7600X | 744 | 5814 |
Ryzen 7 7700X | 758 | 7609 |
Ryzen 7 7800X3D | 688 | 6988 |
Ryzen 5 9600X | 850 | 6358 |
Ryzen 7 9700X | 862 | 7851 |
Ryzen 7 9700X (105W) | 863 | 8908 |
Intel Core i5 14600K | 777 | 9420 |
Intel Core i7 14700K | 818 | 13614 |
I did notice that the CPU maxed out at just 62°C during these tests, so I tested at a higher 105W TDP using PBO in the BIOS – and did get a bit more performance at the expense of temperature.
Cinebench R20 is a traditional test for us, having been run before in a number of CPU reviews, so we thought it was worth running as well in case you want to go back and compare results. We see similar generational margins here (14% increase in single-core margins for both Ryzen 9000 CPUs), but the threat from Intel is worth noting.
The 14600K’s multi-core score is 9420, while the 14700K is a whopping 13614 – while Intel’s best result in the category for the Ryzen 7 is just 7851 at 65W TDP out of the box, and 8908 after the TDP limit is raised to 105W. This is down to several factors, most notably the higher core count of Intel’s CPUs, with the 14600K (6P+8E) having 14 cores and the 14700K (8P+12E) having 20 cores, compared to the six and eight cores of the 9600X and 9700X. Intel motherboards are also generally more aggressive in terms of power delivery out of the box, which is particularly helpful for all-core workloads like these, but results in higher power consumption and more heat dissipation.
Handbrake | H264 (frames per second) | HEVC (frames per second) |
---|---|---|
Ryzen 5 3600X | 26.66 | 10.80 |
Ryzen 5 7600X | 41.29 | 18.31 |
Ryzen 7 7700X | 53.27 | 23.65 |
Ryzen 7 7800X3D | 49.63 | 21.54 |
Ryzen 5 9600X | 42.51 | 19.77 |
Ryzen 7 9700X | 51.80 | 23.79 |
Ryzen 7 9700X (105W) | 58.87 | 26.98 |
Intel Core i5 14600K | 59.42 | 25.39 |
Intel Core i7 14700K | 80.26 | 31.07 |
Our final test is the Handbrake transcoding test, where we convert an 822MB 4K video file using the H264 and H265 codecs, setting the Production Standard preset to CRF 18. We’re using the latest version of Handbrake here, 1.8.1.
These transcoding results show the first worrying signs of poor performance, with the 9600X just 3% faster than the 7600X in the H264 benchmark, but around 8% faster in the H265 benchmark – likely due to AVX architecture improvements. The 9700X was even weirder, actually falling nearly three percentage points behind the 7700X in the H264 test – a situation that persisted across multiple retests. The HEVC test was back to normal, although it was only down 1%.
Raising the 9700X’s TDP to 105W in the BIOS yielded a more meaningful improvement, 14% higher than the stock 7600X – but temperatures were also higher, in the high 80s to low 90s, compared to the low 60s we saw with the stock power limit.
With the content creation benchmarks out of the way, let’s get into the meat of the action: gaming benchmarks.