AMD's Zen 5 Challenges: Efficiency & Power Deep-Dive, Voltage, & Value

This deep-dive looks at the AMD Zen 5 CPU efficiency for the Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X, introducing gaming efficiency and compression efficiency to our testing suite. The benchmarks find that AMD's Zen 5 is at times extremely efficient, like in some all-core workstation tasks (such as rendering), but can also be remarkably inefficient in some gaming scenarios. Even when FPS-normalized (locked to 60FPS) or power normalized (locked to 50W PPT), the Zen 5 CPUs can prove less efficient than Zen 4 in many scenarios. This also introduces testing of the 7700 non-X and 7600 non-X, as those were lower TDP parts more directly comparable to the 9700X and 9600X for power testing.



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TIMESTAMPS

00:00 - Zen 5 Power Efficiency Research
03:18 - Don't Buy Zen 5
05:51 - Testing Methodology
07:45 - Definitions & Efficiency
09:39 - Blender Power Efficiency
10:51 - Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty Power Efficiency
12:35 - 10-pt & 30-pt Highs in Cyberpunk
13:50 - 60FPS Locked Power Comparison
14:21 - Cyberpunk CPU Voltage
15:35 - FFXIV Dawntrail CPU Efficiency
17:27 - FFXIV Dawntrail Power vs Time
18:39 - FFXIV Max VID
19:15 - FFXIV VDDCR SVI3
19:50 - FFXIV All-Core Frequency
20:19 - Stellaris Efficiency
21:45 - F1 24 Benchmarks
24:37 - Starfield Efficiency
25:55 - Baldur's Gate 3 CPU Benchmarks
26:47 - Rainbow Six Siege CPU Benchmarks
28:12 - 7-Zip Compression CPU Benchmarks
29:25 - Stellaris Highs
30:14 - FFXIV Dawntrail Highs
31:03 - Electricity Cost Per Year
32:53 - Conclusion

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Steve Burke: Test Lead, Writing, Host
Patrick Lathan: Testing
Mike Gaglione: Testing, Video Editing
Jeremy Clayton: Testing, QC
Vitalii Makhnovets: Video Editing

[dwarfcow]

Steve just made a whole "PER MY LAST EMAIL" video.

[Hardwareunboxed]

did you test with SMT Disabled? That unlocks Zen 5's gaming <- This is BS, just wanted to head off those comments for you Steve, Thanks Steve.

[advil]

THIS is the deep dive that no one in the industry ever wanted anyone to see. Not Intel, not even AMD. THIS is the full holistic picture of why the large cache X3D CPUs are so damn good. They're efficient EVERYWHERE. It's not whether they're the power blasting 24 core kind of speed, it's that they're the better all around CPU for just about damn near everything from a perspective of this question: "What is the overall best price/performance/power CPU technology?" The answer is the monster cache CPUs. Can we have more of those across all the CPU vendor's product stacks please?

[LOLHICRONO]

0:54 can i just say, i still to this day think these side bars counting down until the next slide is such an excellent touch. stood out to me when i started watching your videos years ago and i still appreciate it

[joshdoldersum]

Steve absolutely LOVES taking super random shots at Starfield lol.

[randocrypto]

Steve just made a 40 minute statistical deep dive to say “well actually” to commenters. And I love it.

[mc_sim]

7700 - $220.
9700X - $380.
Same performance, same efficiency.
Why pay more?

[leeroyjenkins]

I don't think people are as interested in efficiency as they are just wanting to justify the new AMD CPUs.

[wbUxhwRYUoLv]

Looks like we're getting the 7700 non-X efficiency comparison. Let's go!

[Dabbleatory]

Never mind FPS/Watt or frames/Joule. 1 Horsepower = 745.7 Joules per second, so you could measure in FPS/hp, which I think we can all agree sounds the most impressive.

[KarhamPaints]

> Lots of comments about power efficency
> Steve: "Ok I will briefly address that"
> one week of office sleeping later
> 40ish minutes video

We love you steve, no joke

[MisakaMikotoDesu]

You saved me so much money. I was going to buy Zen 5, but ended up going with a 7900x3D instead. And before someone says it, no I need more cores than I need gaming performance.

[theteejaygee]

You mean you’re telling me the comments weren’t accurate? How am I to live my life after this glass shattering moment?

[osulliza]

Between the intro and the first 7-8 minutes of testing, it was pretty obvious where the conclusion was going to end up.
At about 15 minutes in, I thought "even though the comments from the opening of the video were proven "wrong" in instances, I just learned a ton and got shown a new way of thinking about things. Hopefully this doesn't discourage people from sharing their thoughts in the future."
I'm not surprised at all that Steve (and his team) took a few moments around 33:30 to tell those commenters that they're appreciated.
Even though I'm not surprised, that cool acknowledgement should be reciprocated. "Thanks Steve!"

[Snail_With_a_Shotgun]

Did someone put RedBull in Steve's coffee? I checked 3 times if I wasn't watching the video on 1.5x speed.

[te-wei]

What people should care about the power consumption was idling power consumption, since PCs are in idle most of the time. Use a bit less under load and 3x~4x more when idling is not an okay, AMD need to fix this.

[joewerner]

Keyboard warriors: Steve is wrong

Steve: “Here’s a 40 minute statistical analysis of why I’m not wrong”

[sttrsp]

"Sleeping in the office, running tests." This man's committment is untouchable. Thank you so much, Steve and GN.

[mallonox]

the 9600X/9700X launch is a 4D marketing campaign to sell more 7800X3D's?

[Teh-Penguin]

I really appreciate that the reaction to the comments wasn't "I'm the pro here, listen to me", but instead they validated everything in way more detail than was necessary to confirm the claims.