AMD Ryzen 7 9700X Review - Zen 5 Sucks For Gaming!

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Video Index
00:00 - Welcome to Hardware Unboxed
00:36 - Ryzen 9 9700X
02:18 - Test System Specs
02:55 - Cinebench 2024
03:30 - Cinebench 2024, Power
03:45 - 7-Zip File Manager
04:11 - Blender Open Data
04:24 - Corona 10 Benchmark
04:36 - Adobe Photoshop 2024
04:51 - Adobe Premiere Pro 2024
05:07 - Baldur's Gate 3
05:30 - The Last of Us Part 1
05:58 - Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty
06:15 - Hogwarts Legacy
06:29 - Assetto Corsa Competizione
06:48 - Spider-Man Remastered
07:01 - Homeworld 3
07:18 - A Plague Tale: Requiem
07:32 - Counter-Strike 2
07:46 - Starfield
08:10 - Horizon Forbidden West
08:29 - Hitman 3
08:39 - Watch Dogs: Legion
09:00 - 13 Game Average
09:52 - Power Gaming
10:41 - PBO
11:17 - Cost per Frame CPU
11:51 - Cost per Frame Upgrade
12:09 - Final Thoughts

AMD Ryzen 7 9700X Review - Zen 5 Sucks For Gaming!

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Outro music by David Vonk/DaJaVo

[Hardwareunboxed]

AMD has finally updated their review guide with the 7700X!

- AMD's own internal testing found that the 9700X is just 5% faster than the 7700X for gaming.
- AMD's selection of games is very odd, they benchmarked 23 games, just 3 of which were released in the last 2 years.
- AMD sponsored games which are CPU limited such as Starfield were not included.
- AMD almost exclusively tested older games using the built-in benchmark which generally aren't that CPU demanding.

The point is, best case on average the 9700X is 5% faster than the 7700X for gaming. Some people are pointing me to reviews with 10% average gains or higher, claiming we got it wrong... well not according to AMD.

[Collin_J]

EVERYONE GET IN HERE STEVE IS STANDING AGAIN

[Lightkie]

Huh. I agree that the result in Cinebench is iffy. der8auer had a much higher reduction in power consumption compared to the Ryzen 7 7700X and it was 21% faster with PBO enabled compared to your 9%. Of course you tested R24 where he tested R23, so it can't be compared directly but something is seriously off.
Same with the Puget Photoshop benchmark result. der8auer had a 10% uplift compared to your 3%. That's a significant difference.
Also your Counter-Strike 2 test had it a rare 10% ahead of the Ryzen 7 7700X while in der8auer's review it was just 2.5%. Again, a significant difference.

[HeretixAevum]

It's hilarious to me that people think HUB is biased towards AMD with review titles like this.

[cajonesalt]

Not sure what your settings were, but GN got a 40% power efficiency increase between the 9700x and 7700x. With that big of a disparity, I think we can say the current benchmarks probably aren't reliable on at least power efficiency.

[Hanclok]

Something doesn't add up you have the same score as other reviewers but double the Watt usage?
What is going on?

[mariuspuiu]

The power draw numbers are a bit weird compared to other reviews. In CB MT, others like Derbauer see the 9700x sit at around 80-90W compared to 140+ of the 7700x. Is it a bios/mobo difference? showing just a 20W difference is a pretty big outlier.

[jonas_bento]

"A Waste of Sand"

Oh sorry! Wrong Steve.

[infinitely_free_to_be_me]

lol "sucks"... with the latest Agesa 9700x is now neck-and-neck with 7800x3D in most games from what I've seen.. latest sale price under $240 on the 9700x makes it a gaming monster for the price.

[DeLawrence]

AMD Ryzen 9000 series, or as I like to call it, ”The best reason to buy a 7800X3D”

[MenTalR]

Wow... It makes the 5800X3D look even more amazing. The gift that has kept on giving, it's turning into the 1080 Ti of CPUs 😂

[Boatfisherz]

This review is wrong. With bios and windows update, this thing it at 7800x3d performance in gaming at $100 cheaper. That's a win.

[jumpman]

Now we know why AMD lowered the prices this time...

[Jomi]

I'm just hoping this drives the price of the 7000 series down so I can get in on that platform, use it for 5 years and then upgrade to final series cpu supported by that socket.

[QuantumConundrum]

Seems like AMD' stagnation is here. Let's hope this doesn't last 8 years until Intel's Zen moment.

[caffz]

I cant believe 3DFX unboxed strikes again

[prdx]

Steve, I saw on other channels, that Zen5 is actually running in mostly limited to 4.5Ghz, and never went above 5Ghz. Can you look into this? Perhaps some bug in BIOS, or power limitation or something that made it run at much lower clock.

[juanh]

Amd as a company is always very considerate, every time Nvidia or Intel make a mistake they accompany them by doing the same so they don't feel bad

[mirceastan]

"Sucks" - wow, that was fast. :)

L.E. I found the Ryzen 5/7 pricing already pretty underwhelming compared to the discounted Zen 4 prices, but I thought, well, you got to pay for that 15% premium, right? Turns out, it's rather a 5% premium, at which point, those things are horrific, they should have been sold at 199$/299$ max considering they also don't include any coolers - for instance, 9700X would have been perfect with a Wraith Prism considering its efficiency.

[Thedevans]

What the hell is this? These CPUs are not showing the performance we were led to believe. Remember AMD claimed the 9700X would be just a bit behind the 7800X3D in gaming performance? What a load of BS that was!

EDIT: This comment was inane and inflammatory, and I can't believe how many likes it got.

I guess I was just shocked at the results compared to the IPC claim by AMD. From watching a bunch of reviews now, it seems like the majority of multi-core performance uplift was negated by the cut to power vs the 7700X. The fixed Cinebench power chart from HUB also makes more sense than before. As for gaming, I still don't know why there's only a few percent in it. Maybe microcode or mobo tuning? Hopefully we learn more in the future.

The price points for the 9000 series are still pretty rough vs the existing CPUs, and the 7800X3D is still king. So still a meh launch but not as bad as I initially thought.

EDIT 2: The first edit was copium, these CPUs really are that underwhelming. I doubt any performance improvements will materialize.