Zen 5 is a Huge Disappointment So Far

Episode 40: We discuss all the fallout from Zen 5 reviews, including claims of extremely good efficiency, pricing, power limits and more

CHAPTERS
00:00 - Intro
01:26 - Feedback on Zen 5 Reviews
06:38 - Zen 5 Power Efficiency
14:02 - Zen 5 Pricing Issues
22:36 - Are Zen 5 CPUs Extremely Power Limited?
31:27 - AMD's Launch Issues
43:12 - AMD Needs to Make Moves Soon
50:55 - How's Our Excitement for the CPU Market?
58:20 - Intel Has an Opportunity with Arrow Lake
1:11:06 - Updates From Our Boring Lives

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LINKS

[darkfeeels]

One thing Daniel also highlighted was that if you compare the new prices vs non-X Zen 4 prices, 9600X is $50 higher vs 7600 launch price and 9700X is $30-40 higher than 7700. Plus the non-X variants came with coolers which 9600/9700X do not. So when you gain 7% performance/efficiency gain for such a higher cost, than it just makes everything even worse for AMD.

[dsc]

The advantage of being transparent in your marketing is when you DO have something to be hyped about, people believe you. Instead, because of how AMD handled this generation, people will approach the next Zen generation with skepticism rather than excitement

[seamon]

I think the only 2 good things about Zen 5 are:
- Massive AV1 encoding performance boost
- Sizable AVX 512 emulator speed boost

[dawienel]

Look at Daniiel Owens video on this, it's even worse than you guys think.

The 9700x/9600x is a 7700/7600 in most respects which launched at a significantly better price and is arguably the more sustainable pricing 7000 should have launched at.

Did we forget how badly the 7000 competed on price when it launched?

AMD is following in Intel's footsteps regarding being their own worst enemy.
Intel and AMD should give each other a marketing budget since they're are really good at marketing each other.

[skye]

Very glad that you all are honest about your reviews and don’t sugar coat them. I think we just want the objective truth and not have a bias or angle.

[KimBoKastekniv]

Reviewers who praised the 9600X / 9700X exists in a universe where the non-X 7000 CPUs don't exist and ECO mode completely obliterates performance.

[mjc]

Yeah, a lot of people already seem to have forgotten AMD's promises and marketing. If the 9700X isn't supposed to be a great gaming CPU and it's unfair to call it a flop because of lackluster gaming performance, why was AMD boasting that the 9700X would rival the 7800X3D for gaming? AMD made that claim, it's absolutely fair to call AMD out on that claim not being true.

A lot of AMD fanboys are coming up with a lot of strange cope to defend these processors.

[stennan]

AMD added the X to the 9700, removed the bundled cooler and raised the MSRP by 30 dollars compared to the 7700 at 329$.

Also they paraded the statement of 16% IPC improvement with 10-25% gaming gains. So now wonder reviews are lukewarm when the 13 game average only improved by 1%.

Gamers will just buy the 7800X3D for a few dollars more and get the same great efficiency 😅

[ChrisDupres]

Zen5 out here making my 5800x3D look good still

[devonmoreau]

People were purely comparing X to X - 7700X vs 9700X, and noting that efficiency gain, but you're absolutely right that the name is a bit misleading in this case, it should be 7700 vs 9700X

[htoomyatlin]

It would have been a differnt laumch if they named it 9700 non-x at launched at 329$.

[Adromelk]

The saga of AMD. They never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

[scottharris]

The issue for some of us is we are hungry for non gaming benchmarks but relative to the gaming market everything else is niche. For audio tasks there are a handful of audio plugins that benefit from AVX 512. Lower temperatures and power consumption can make a massive difference to fan noise which is critical in some studio spaces. Power consumption can be a big factor when the mobile variants of the chips start to show up. Apart from synthetic benchmarks which are not reliable indicators of audio performance across various audio production workloads, When it comes time to consider an upgrade or replacement there is a gap in CPU/motherboard coverage. Gaming centric reviews leave some of us out in the cold. Regardless, I greatly benefit from your reviews and appreciate your professionalism. In general gaming benchmarks for CPU dependent games is an imperfect proxy for audio performance in audio production related workloads. Fantastic channel.

[shawtmanXR]

As someone who roots for AMD, this is simply unacceptable. While I understand that they need to price it higher than Zen 4 street price for profit, the product simply needs to be substantially faster for that asking price. Luv from Jamaica 🇯🇲 💜

[pomp_it]

The 9700x is 100€ more expensive than the 7700x here in Germany. I think that says it all.

[JasonTheOneAndOnly]

Love it when normal ppl defend big corporations, like the company gives a f*** about you in slightest.

[bart_fox_hero]

It’s nice to see that every single component is now a sketchy purchase. Picking your CPU just felt so easy before

[Overonator]

AMD is pulling an Intel and making sub-marginal improvements which are just basically refreshes and calling it the next generation.

[profounddamas]

This would be a good opportunity to increase the core count to 24 cores. But I think AMD now is the old Intel where performance increases were 7-10%.

[STRET]

Great work and commentary always guys…appreciate your honesty and tech coverage in general.