Zen 4 serenely begins the AM5 era

The Ryzen 9 7950X crowned new king of “mainstream” processors; while waiting for the advent of the Core i9-13900K?

Starting tomorrow, you will be able to acquire one of four Ryzen 7000 processors (Ryzen 9 7950X, Ryzen 9 7900X, Ryzen 7 7700X and Ryzen 5 7600X) made official by AMD at the end of August: chips under Zen 4 CPU architecture engraved in 5 nm by TSMC. Several sites have several their test; this is the case of Igor’s LABS for which our partner Igor Wallossek officiates. He was able to gauge the performance of the Ryzen 9 7950X, the 16 cores / 32 threads of the quartet, and the Ryzen 7 7700X, the 8 cores / 16 threads of the band. Note that the recommended prices for the Ryzen 7000 in France are 849 euros for the Ryzen 9 7950X, 669 euros for the Ryzen 9 7900X, 489 euros for the Ryzen 7 770X and 369 euros for the Ryzen 5 7600X.

© Igor’s LAB

For his test, Igor installed the two aforementioned Ryzens on an MSI MEG X670E Ace motherboard; they collaborate with 32 GB of DDR5 RAM. All competing processors are supported by a AMD Radeon RX 6950XT graphics card and liquid cooled. Igor tests all chips with default settings, which includes Precision Boost Overdrive. The operating system is Windows 11 Pro 2H22.

Image 2: Ryzen 9 7950X and Ryzen 7 7700X review: Zen 4 calmly begins the AM5 era
© Igor’s LAB
Image 3: Ryzen 9 7950X and Ryzen 7 7700X review: Zen 4 calmly begins the AM5 era
© Igor’s LAB

Architecture CPU Zen 4

Before we get to the nitty-gritty, be aware that Zen 4 processors have 70mm CCDs2 versus 83mm2 for the Ryzen Zen 3 in 7 nm; in addition, Zen 4 CCDs have 6.57 billion transistors, which is 58% more than Zen 3 CCDs.

Officially, Zen 4 offers a 13% increase in CPI. In practice, thanks to the increase in frequencies and power limits, AMD reports an increase in single-core performance of 29% and multi-core of 35% compared to the previous generation, as well as a performance / watt index of 25% superior.

These gains are due to various optimizations: mainly a redesign of the front-end & load and the branch prediction function, but also a restructuring of caches, execution engines, and support for AVX-512 VNNI instructions (Vector Neural Network Instructions). Finally, remember that the Ryzen 7000s now have an iGPU: two RDNA 2 computing units operating up to 2200 MHz.

AMD to launch Radeon RX 7000 / RDNA 3 graphics cards on November 3

Results

Igor Wallossek tested the processors on a panel of 8 games, including Anno 1800, Cyberpunk 2077 and World War Z, in 720, 1080p and 1440p; in several professional applications and synthetic benchmarks.

Average frames per second in games:

Consumption in games:

Consumption / IPS ratio in games:

Performance and consumption AutoCAD 2021:

Performance Cinebench R23, Blender, Inventor 2021 Pro et Convolution :

The test d’Igor’s LAB contains many other results, do not hesitate to consult it.

Conclusion

As you can see, the Ryzen 9 7950X takes over the performance crown, more or less ahead of the Intel Core i9-12900K. Thus, in games, it is quite possible to see the Core i3-19000K prevail; however, the task promises to be much more difficult in applications.

Either way, the majority of users will gravitate toward cheaper alternatives, like the Ryzen 7 7700X. This reference do almost as well as its elder in games. Above all, it makes up for the delay incurred by the Ryzen 7 5800X against the Core i7-12700K to get ahead of the latter. For a newcomer, this Core remains an interesting alternative despite everything, especially since it is compatible with DDR4 motherboards, making the platform more accessible (but less durable). In fact, to reduce the bill a little with this Ryzen 7, Igor recommends waiting for the B650(E) motherboards.

As you will have understood, the two Zen 4 representatives tested here remain highly recommendable. Should you crack? If you have the budget and are loyal to AMD at all costs, these Ryzen 7000s will not disappoint you. They indeed offer a significant generational gap with the Ryzen 5000. Igor advises all the same to the most patient, especially to the players who can, to wait a few more weeks, until the tests of the 13th Generation Coreto make their choice in full knowledge of the facts.

Reviews of the Ryzen 9 7900X and Ryzen 5 7600X are expected in the coming days. Be aware that AMD drip-distilled the test samples to the press; we are curious to know the availability of these Ryzen processors to the general public in the coming days.

Source : Igor’s LAB

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.