The AMD Ryzen 9 7900, Ryzen 7 7700, and Ryzen 5 7600 Review: Zen 4 Efficiency at 65 Watts
by Gavin Bonshor on January 9, 2023 9:00 AM ESTCPU Benchmark Performance: Rendering And Encoding
Rendering tests, compared to others, are often a little more simple to digest and automate. All the tests put out some sort of score or time, usually in an obtainable way that makes it fairly easy to extract. These tests are some of the most strenuous in our list, due to the highly threaded nature of rendering and ray-tracing, and can draw a lot of power.
If a system is not properly configured to deal with the thermal requirements of the processor, the rendering benchmarks are where it would show most easily as the frequency drops over a sustained period of time. Most benchmarks in this case are re-run several times, and the key to this is having an appropriate idle/wait time between benchmarks to allow for temperatures to normalize from the last test.
One of the interesting elements of modern processors is encoding performance. This covers two main areas: encryption/decryption for secure data transfer, and video transcoding from one video format to another.
In the encrypt/decrypt scenario, how data is transferred and by what mechanism is pertinent to on-the-fly encryption of sensitive data - a process by which more modern devices are leaning to for software security.
We are using DDR5 memory on the 12th and 13th Gen Core parts, as well as the Ryzen 7000 series, at the following settings:
- DDR5-5600B CL46 - Intel 13th Gen
- DDR5-5200 CL44 - Ryzen 7000
- DDR5-4800 (B) CL40 - Intel 12th Gen
All other CPUs such as Ryzen 5000 and 3000 were tested at the relevant JEDEC settings as per the processor's individual memory support with DDR4.
Rendering
Focusing on rendering performance, the entry-level Ryzen 5 7600 starts to fall behind in comparison to the other SKUs. Even in terms of CineBench R23 single-threaded performance, it sits below Intel's 12th Gen Alder Lake chips (albeit in a very packed field). Meanwhile in the multi-threaded test, it is blown away by the parts with 10 cores and above.
The real surprise is how well the Ryzen 9 7900 performs, as it is consistently better than the previous generation Ryzen 9 5950X, and even trades blows with the Intel Core i9-12900KS processor in quite a few tests. The Ryzen 7 7700 also performs well, but with just 8C/16T, and at 65 W, it basically bridges the gap directly in the middle between the Ryzen 9 7900 and the Ryzen 5 7600.
Encoding
As we saw in our rendering tests, the same thing can be said about performance in encoding. The Ryzen 9 7900 offers the highest levels of performance (as expected), with the Ryzen 5 7600 being one of the slowest chips we've tested so far since we updated our test suite for 2023. The Ryzen 7 7700 once again bridges the gap between the other two Ryzen 7000 65 W SKUs.
Despite not offering world-beating levels of performance, all three chips are running with a 65 W TDP and given the results, even the Ryzen 5 7600 performs above our expectations here.
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Maverick009 - Friday, January 13, 2023 - link
Linus Tech Tips actually did a review on these chips with benchmarks. The 7900 and 7900X are basically identical chips with one being 65W and the other being 170W, but the 7900 is also unlocked and if you use PBO, it can match its 7900X sibling with marginal performance differences on some programs and the upside being the 7900 is cheaper. I for one think I may pick the 7900 up for a build but I am also waiting on pricing for the 7900X3D and 7950X3D parts for my big gaming PC build that will replace my current 5900X.blzd - Friday, January 13, 2023 - link
I don't get how 7600 is beating 7600X in your F1 2022 and RDR2 gaming tests. By a large margin.It's identical other than lower clock speed and power limit yet performing faster somehow?
Kangal - Tuesday, January 31, 2023 - link
I noticed that too, and frankly, I cannot accept any of their gaming results here.blzd - Friday, January 13, 2023 - link
OC test results would be nice addition.Though not with the bundled heatsink of course haha. AMD included inadequate cooling for these CPU running at 99C under sustained workloads at factory clocks.
Thank you for the review!
Targon - Monday, January 23, 2023 - link
They can't run at 99C since AMD uses temperature as the basis for how high the clock speed will go. The default for the 7900X and 7950X was at 95 degrees C, and the chip won't go more than a degree above that point. With the temperature as the key, the chip will clock itself as high as cooling works, so better cooling results in higher clock speeds, and worse cooling will result in lower speeds, but you will never see temperatures above the max temperature.dicobalt - Wednesday, January 18, 2023 - link
Now if only it was possible to get a modern GPU will a low space heater factor that isn't based on an architecture that's positively ancient.Roy8oh - Friday, January 20, 2023 - link
Bundling coolers with its more affordable CPUs means users can spend their budget on a premium AIO cooler through better memory, storage, or graphics, which will have a positive impact on performance. What do u mean by that isnt aio cooler just cpu cooler liquid obviously but isnt it a cpu cooler or are you refering to fans ?AnitaPeterson - Sunday, January 22, 2023 - link
I am disappointed that the benchmarks do not include more samples from the Zen 3 family, aside from the 5800X3D. With many of us rocking Ryzen 3xxx and 5xxx, such a direct comparison would be much more useful than all the catalogue of horribly power-inefficient Intel chips that most people are not likely to buy anyway...mikato - Thursday, January 26, 2023 - link
"The Ryzen 7 7700 also performs well, but with just 8C/12T"Looks like that should be 16 threads, page 5.
dennphill - Monday, January 30, 2023 - link
OK, so I see a CPU that's a bit less power draw with a price close to last AMD generation. Would change my 5-5600X IF there was a descent motherboard that fits my mATX case! LOUSY selection so far of mATX motherboards from ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, ASRock, etc. Upgrade needs AM5 motherboard and DDR5 (probably) in addition to 7000-series CPU. B650M expensive or crippled in capability and X670M boards are basically non-existent. Need to wait out until manufacturers decide offering to us need some degree of reasonableness in price and features. O(old)MHO. Thanks for good articles...I hope MB manufacturers read reviews AND comments.