Was I Wrong? - AMD Ryzen 9700X Re-Review!

When we published our 9700X review, lots of people commented about the fact that we didn't test using PBO, which brings us on to today, and guess what we did? We tested PBO, and you'll not be surprised by the results that we got.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
00:00 Introduction
00:49 Sponsor
01:27 Why Are We Retesting?
03:54 How We Test
04:47 3DMark Timespy
05:17 Blender
05:51 Corona
06:13 V-Ray
06:42 Cinebench
07:14 Geekbench
07:40 A Plague Tale: Requiem
08:06 Cyberpunk 2077
08:24 Cyberpunk 2077 RT
08:55 F1 23
09:09 Hogwarts Legacy
09:33 Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered
09:50 Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered RT
10:06 Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020
10:30 Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
10:53 Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart RT
11:10 Remnant II
11:30 Shadow Of The Tomb Raider
11:54 Starfield
12:12 Overall AVG FPS & Cost Per Frame
13:12 PBO MAX
13:48 Cyberpunk 2077 PBO MAX
14:04 Hogwarts Legacy PBO MAX
14:16 Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered PBO MAX
14:30 Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart PBO MAX
14:42 Starfield
14:55 Final Thoughts
------------------------------------------------------------------------

[paalosordoni]

If your mostly gaming just get a 7800X3d and be happy or wait for the new X3D chips.

[Eternalduoae]

Love seeing the people in the comments blasting you about the PBO saying, "Scatterbencher showed 11%!" but failing to understand that number one iota.

He got 2 fps extra in returnal, 10 fps in the other title I've forgotten and 15 fps in FF XV for an extra 110W of power usage!

There's really no extra headroom for gaming on these chips / this architecture.

Great video, as always!

[michaelchung]

Oh wow, just found your channel. You are one of the few places to find RT vs non-RT performance. Thanks a bundle for including RT testing.

[AvroBellow]

I saw something interesting... At 10:35 in Ratchet & Clank: A Rift Apart, the i7-14700K and i9-14900 are ranked second and third out of 10, respectively. However, when RT gets turned on, they drop to sixth and eighth places, respectively.

It's nothing major, but it is rather unexpected.

[cks]

I know if you lock all the cores to 5.5G, the performance uplift may be even higher than PBO . But the power increase is not worth the gain, you buy 9700x for the reason of power efficiency, that is AMD main income comes from ( data center, big data server ).

[NGreedia]

If I wanted an upgrade now, I would have gotten a 7800x3d. Will be staying on my 5700x3d for a few years more, and by then, we might be last gen AM5 or on AM6

[TechHunterOfficial]

You're still doing it wrong, you need to undervolt it, then overclock it, run it under the cold water, then use 128GB of RAM + some ice cream. Then it should be about 1% even faster

[MrESSE]

with pbo power consumption raise 2x on over 160+watt and almost none performance raise except on stupid Cinebench and some other sinthetic benches but important productivityx tasks as 7zip and unzip , handbrake and similar just like gaming no gain

[Oceanborn]

This is interesting. On the day all the reviews hit I saw only one or two videos that did test with PBO and they actually showed a significant uplift there. Now seeing you here having next to no performance gains is such a difference. I wish I remembered what channels that was/were but it's been such a flood of videos that it's kinda hard. In any case, great job at listening to your viewers and retesting things to such an extent when you're probably also busy doing tests for the 9900X and 9950X right now.

[WSS_the_OG]

Great job here mate. Point well made, and well taken.

[eTeknix]

What should we do to redeem this CPU next? Overclock to 5.3GHz? Way ahead of you!

[kittikajorns]

Except price is too high. 9700x has potential a great consumer cpu. Enable PBO, adjust power/thermal limit, undervolt and manage CPU temperature.

[nottsoserious]

Just wait for the massive price cuts that will come in <3 months

[Born_Stellar]

So I should buy intel and hope it doesn't blow up?

[Headloser]

Am i going to have to wait for the NEXT generation CPU? Have said it great while other saying it suck. DAMN.

[mentalplayground]

This round of AMD chiplets is made for EPYC not Ryzen. Money talks.

[ryanp]

9800 x3d and 7800x3d are hard to get and over priced so what are our

[mariusjohannessen]

When the Ryzen 7000 series goes out of stock were left with the 9000 series.
1% lows seams to be more stable, AMdipp is gon form the 9000.
Power draw and heat seems better.
And content creation performance is good.
In my eyes the Ryzen 9000 gets more hate than it deserves.

[elr]

I'm going to sound like a grumpy old man with this I know, so be warned :D

While I get and totally agree that Zen 5 just isn't worth the money given Zen 4 prices, I find it funny that reviewers in one breath have told PC gamers since the 5800X3D was released that the X3D CPUs were the best AMD CPUs for gaming because of the 3d v-cache. Every where I go where conversations are about gaming it is X3D this X3D that. Yet now a regular desktop (non-X3D) CPU without the very thing that made X3D best for gaming is released, non-X3D is suddenly not worth the money and is a flop? I am probalby missing something but I'm not sure what people were expecting. It seems like stating the obvious, that a non-gaming CPU is not getting the fps of a gaming CPU and making a big deal out of it. PBO clearly matters in productivity which non-X3D CPUs are clearly for given AMD have carved out a whole new segment of X3D CPUs that perform better in gaming workloads. If the same thing happens with Zen 5 X3D CPUs then yes, but until then tall this rage on Zen 5 seems to be all pointless hot air.

Also I feel only someone with a lot of money to waste would be upgrading from Zen 4 to Zen 5. I am on Zen 2 (3950X) built in 2019. When I play games, I game at 4K. Zen 3 and Zen 4 (including the X3D chips) were a waste of money, even where there were more than "margin of error" gains. I was not going to spend silly money on a 5950X or entire system upgrade to AM5 for the 7950X or 7950X3D for less than a 10% boost at 4K and it's not like my productivity is so slow the huge uplifts of Zen 3 and 4 made the spend worth it. I suspect Zen 5 is aimed at people like me on AM4 and if I was looking to upgrade to AM5, there is no way I am spending over $1000 on AM5 mobo, DDR5, 16-core CPU to get last generation and give up the new chipset features even if I don't use them all.


It is for this latter reason, that pricing wise I can't look at currently Zen 4 prices and compare them to Zen 5 prices. I would not be buying Zen 4 new but used from eBay or even better Threadripper, since I personally want the cores. Can only compare launch price to launch price. Of course knowing AMD Zen 5 prices will drop within 2 months anyway and I am sure reviewers will be doing a whole new batch of tests in a month or 2 when the new chipset comes out.

[thomasgessert]

Forget a moment about marketing and expectations. Zen5 compared to Zen4 may have 15% IPC uplift on N4P that has been used for power efficiency. The caches are the same size and frequency is more or less the same. So why should the performance much different to the 7700X? We know that games need to have a big cache to benefit, no surprise here. The phoronix tests show why the Zen5 core is promising for Epyc and thats where the big money is made. The market is not pivoting around the (DIY) market for gamers, this market is splitted already in consoles, mobile and desktop. The X3D cpus are somewhat like the F1 cars made for image not for the profit. Just wait for X3D cpus and even then expect not more then +10% avg. uplift. The problem of the 9700X is not that is a bad cpu, it has only a bad price/performance ratio atm. But old stuff needs the get out of the shelves so again, just wait.