AMD Zen 4 Ryzen 9 7950X and Ryzen 5 7600X Review: Retaking The High-End
by Ryan Smith & Gavin Bonshor on September 26, 2022 9:00 AM ESTCPU Benchmark Performance: Power, Web, And Science
Our previous set of ‘office’ benchmarks has often been a mix of science and synthetics, so this time we wanted to keep our office section purely on real-world performance. We've also incorporated our power and science testing into this section too.
In this version of our test suite, all the science-focused tests that aren’t ‘simulation’ work are now in our science section. Where possible these benchmarks have been optimized with the latest in vector instructions.
We are using DDR5 memory on the Ryzen 9 7950X and Ryzen 5 7600X, as well as Intel's 12th Gen (Alder Lake) processors at the following settings:
- 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.
Power
The nature of reporting processor power consumption has become, in part, a dystopian nightmare. Historically the peak power consumption of a processor, as purchased, is given by its Thermal Design Power (TDP, or PL1). For many markets, such as embedded processors, that value of TDP still signifies the peak power consumption. For the processors we test at AnandTech, either desktop, notebook, or enterprise, this is not always the case.
Modern high-performance processors implement a feature called Turbo. This allows, usually for a limited time, a processor to go beyond its rated frequency. Exactly how far the processor goes depends on a few factors, such as the Turbo Power Limit (PL2), whether the peak frequency is hard coded, the thermals, and the power delivery. Turbo can sometimes be very aggressive, allowing power values 2.5x above the rated TDP.
AMD and Intel have different definitions for TDP but are broadly speaking, applied the same. The difference comes from turbo modes, turbo limits, turbo budgets, and how the processors manage that power balance. These topics are 10000-12000 word articles in their own right, and we’ve got a few articles worth reading on the topic.
- Why Intel Processors Draw More Power Than Expected: TDP and Turbo Explained
- Talking TDP, Turbo and Overclocking: An Interview with Intel Fellow Guy Therien
- Reaching for Turbo: Aligning Perception with AMD’s Frequency Metrics
- Intel’s TDP Shenanigans Hurts Everyone
Looking at the results of our Peak Power test, the Ryzen 9 7950X topped out at 221.8 W, which is around 30% higher than the TDP of 170 W it comes with. As stated by AMD, the Power Package Tracking or PPT limit for AM5 motherboards when used with 170W TDP Ryzen 7000 SKUs will be 230 W. Still, while it draws more power than its generational predecessors such as Zen 3 and Zen 2, the Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 series benefits from higher core clock speeds, a higher single core boost frequency, as well as other implementations around TSMC's 5 nm manufacturing process.
The AMD Ryzen 5 7600X is more aimed at the mid-range, and as such has a lower overall power draw, with the peak power figures in our testing reaching 134.3 W. This is around the same levels of power draw as the Ryzen 9 3950 X, the Ryzen 9 5900X, and the Ryzen 7 5800X. Per AMD's specifications, the Ryzen 5 7600X has a TDP of 105 W, with around a 27 % variance in peak power compared to TDP.
From our testing, so far, it seems that Ryzen 7000 when combined with a premium X670E motherboard allows for up to 30% in terms of extra power allowances for higher single-core boost and overall faster all-core frequencies.
Web
In our web tests, the overall improvements in IPC, frequency, clock speeds, and the switch to DDR5 all play a part in performance here. Both the Ryzen 9 7950X and Ryzen 7 7600X top our charts in regards to web testing, although performance isn't as apparent as it should be in other areas.
Science
For our 3DPM v2.1 testing, we added in the Intel Core i9-11900K (Rocket Lake) to show performance across AVX workloads. Although Intel officially fused off the AVX2/512 extensions on Alder Lake which did cause a little controversy and gave the impression that AVX-512 on consumer platforms was dead. AMD clearly believes the opposite, as it has implemented it so that AVX-512 runs two cycles over a 256-bit wide instruction. The performance of the Ryzen 9 7950X here is phenomenal, although the Core i9-11900K which did indeed feature AVX instruction sets in the silicon, is still better than the Ryzen 5 7600X with AVX workloads.
Focusing on our more science-based tests, both the Ryzen 9 7950X and Ryzen 5 7600X perform well against the competition. In our 3DPMv2.1 test in non-AVX, the Ryzen 9 7950X provided a jump of 35% in performance against the previous generation Ryzen 9 5950X processor.
Interestingly, in our yCruncher 0.78 test, the Ryzen 9 7950X and the Core i9-12900K trade blows consistently, although the Ryzen 5 7600X performs well for its price point.
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Oxford Guy - Tuesday, September 27, 2022 - link
This has been posted for years. ReplyBoredInPDX - Tuesday, September 27, 2022 - link
I’m confused. I they 720p tests you write:“All gaming tests here were run using integrated graphics, with a variation of 720p resolutions and at minimum settings.”
Yet all the prior-gen AMD CPUs tested are lacking an IGP. Am I missing something? Reply
Ryan Smith - Friday, September 30, 2022 - link
You are not missing anything; we did not run any iGPU tests. That's a bit of boilerplate text that did not get scrubbed from this article. Thanks for bringing it up! ReplyGigaplex - Wednesday, September 28, 2022 - link
There's some odd results here and the article commentary doesn't seem to touch on it. Why is the 7600X absolutely trounced in Geekbench 4.0 MT? The second slowest CPU (3600XT) more than doubles it. And yet the 7950X wins by a mile in that same test, so it shouldn't be architectural. And in some of the gaming tests, the 7600X wins, and in some it comes dead last. ReplyDribble - Wednesday, September 28, 2022 - link
The processors are particularly cache bound - i.e. it fits in cache it runs very fast, if it doesn't it falls off rapidly. That is often visible in games where it'll run amazingly in some (mostly older) games, but tend to fall off, particularly in the lows, in more complex (mostly newer) games. Replyricebunny - Wednesday, September 28, 2022 - link
The SPEC multithreaded tests are N separate instantiations of the single thread tests. That’s a perfect scenario where there is no dependency or serialization in the workload and tells us very little how the CPUs would perform in a parallel workload application. There are SPEC tests specifically designed to test parallel performance, but I do not see them included in this report. Anandtech, can you comment on this? Replyabufrejoval - Wednesday, September 28, 2022 - link
Emerging dGPUs not supporting PCIe 5.0 is just crippleware!While I can easily see that 16 lanes of PCIe 5.0 won't do much for any game, I can very much see what I'd do with the 8 lanes left over when all dGPU bandwidth requirements can be met with just 8 lanes of PCIe 5.0.
Why can't they just be good PCIe citizens and negotiate to use 16 lanes of PCIe 4.0 on lesser or previous generation boards and optimize lane allocation on higher end PCIe 5.0 systems that can then use bifurcation to add say a 100Gbit NIC, plenty of Thunderbolt 4 or better yet, something CXL?
Actually I'd be really astonished if this wasn't even an artifical cap and that the Nvidia chips may actually be able to do PCIe 5.0.
It's just that they'd much rather have people use NVlink. Reply
TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, October 4, 2022 - link
Um....dude, 4.0x16 and 5.0x8 have the same bandwidth, and no GPU today can saturate 4.0, not even close. The 300ti OCed manages to saturate.....2.0. 3.0 is a whopping 7% faster.You got awhile man. Reply
abufrejoval - Wednesday, September 28, 2022 - link
It should be interesting to see if AMD is opening the architecture for 3rd parties to exploit the actual potential of the Ryzen 7000 chips.The current mainboard/slot era that dates back to the 1981 IBM-PC (or the Apple ][) really is coming to an end and perhaps few things highlight this as well as a 600 Watt GPU that has a 65 Watt mainboard hanging under it.
We may really need something more S100 or VME, for those old enough to understand that.
Thunderbolt cables handle 4 lanes of PCIe 3.0 today and AFAIK cables are used for much higher lane counts and PCIe revisions within high-end server chassis today, even if perhaps at shorter lengths and with connectors designed for somewhat less (especially less frequent) pluggability.
Their main advantage is vastly reduced issues with mainboard traces and much better use of 3D space to optimize air flow cooling.
Sure those cables aren't cheap, but perhaps the cross-over point for additional PCB layers has been passed. And optical interconnects are waiting in the wings: they will use cables, too.
You stick PCIe 5.0 x4 fixed length cables out from all sides of an AM5 socket and connect those either to high bandwidth devices (e.g. dGPU) or a switch (PCIe 5.0 variant of the current ASMedia), you get tons of flexibility and expandability in a box form factor, that may not resemble an age old PC very much, but deliver tons of performance and expandability in a deskside form factor.
You want to recycle all your nice PCIe 3.0 2TB NVMe drives? Just add a board that puts a PCIe 5.0 20 lane switch between (even PCIe 4.0 might do fine if it's 50% $$$).
And if your dGPU actually needs 8 lanes of PCIe 5.0 to deliver top performance, connect two of those x4 cables to undo a bit of bifurcation!
How those cable connected board would then mount in a chassis and be cooled across a large range of form factors and power ranges is up for lots of great engineers to solve, while dense servers may already provide lots of the design bricks.
Unfortunately all that would require AMD to open up the base initialization code and large parts of the BIOS, which I guess currently has the ASmedia chip(s) pretty much hardwired into it.
And AMD with all their "we don't do artificial market segmentation" publicity in the past, seem to have become far more receptive to its bottom line benefits recently, to allow a free transition from console to PC/workstation and servers of all sizes.
And it would take a high-volume vendor (or AMD itself), a client side Open Compute project or similar to push that form factor the the scale where it becomes economically viable.
It's high time for a PC 2.0 (which isn't a PS/2) to bridge into the CXL universe even on desktops and workstations. Reply
Oxford Guy - Wednesday, September 28, 2022 - link
"The current mainboard/slot era that dates back to the 1981 IBM-PC (or the Apple ][)"Absolutely nothing about the IBM PC was new. The Micral N introduced slots in a microcomputer and the S-100 bus, introduced by the Altair, became the first big standard. Reply