AMD Ryzen 9 7900X test: A BANG of an intergenerational leap

Conclusion

More aggressive power limits? Okay, but at a higher efficiency than Intel can do, AMD told itself while working on the Ryzen 7000 processors. And that’s how it really is, despite record-high clock speeds that are truly unusual for a new, unrefined manufacturing node. If this is just the beginning… In any case, not everything is rosy and AMD’s new processors have downsides that will need to be addressed in the future.

Conclusion

It seems that Intel will not have it easy at all with Raptor Lake. The Ryzen 9 7900X beats the Core i9-12900K by some 8–9 % in terms of maximum/multi-threaded performance (3D rendering, x264/x265 video encoding) with significantly lower power draw. Despite this, the increase in power draw of the R9 7900X over its predecessor (the R9 5900X) is very high – up to 40 %. To outperform the competing Ci9-12900K processor, it was necessary to stretch it this way. Only a better IPC (while maintaining AMD’s power limit at 142 W) would not be enough, and moving the PPT to 230 W is natural when the Zen 4 architecture is “ready” for such an extra load. So the power draw of the R9 7900X has gone up significantly compared to the R9 5900X, but importantly, the computing power has gone up in the same proportion as well, so the power efficiency does not practically decrease due to a significant increase in clock speeds. The difference in efficiency compared to the Core i9-12900K is (to the disadvantage of the processor) really significant.

However, AMD isn’t playing it for brute force at high load for just the entire processor, and it’s pushing the bar for single-threaded performance as well. It also determines the speed of responses in a normal office environment or on the web. This can also be seen in the top-notch results in PCMark’s practical tests, where the R9 7900X outperforms the Ci9-12900K, often by quite significant margins. A typical single-threaded task that wrings the most out of a single core is, for example, the encoding of an audio recording. During FLAC encoding, where we also track power consumption, the R9 7900X is 8 % faster and at the same time 10 % more efficient than the Core i9-12900K.

Ryzen 9 7900X maintains its high efficiency even in single-threaded tasks, and the extremely high clock speeds of over 5.6 GHz don’t change that either. Compared to the Ci9-12900K, the new Ryzen 9 (7900X) has better efficiency even in games, but overall it’s rather below average in this environment, even though gaming performance per watt is still 5 % higher than the R9 5900X. But compared to the R7 58003D with its large 3D V-cache cache and conservative clock speeds, the efficiency of the R9 7900X is a third weaker. It should be noted, however, that gaming performance is usually on the side of the Ryzen 9 “Raphael”.

There are exceptions where larger cache outweighs higher clock speeds (for example in Cyberpunk 2077, in F1 2020, in Shadow of the Tomb Raider or, most prominently, in Microsoft Flight Simulator), so on average, the R9 7900X is theoretically (at 720p@low, without the graphics card’s performance input) 5 % above the R7 5800X3D. At higher resolutions (1080p) at higher graphical details, when the CPU is already burdened with computing “call draws” the R9 7900X still has an edge over the R7 5800X3D, but it is “only” at the level of the Ci9-12900K. And rather just below it (by 1 %). This creates a very fertile ground for cherry-picking and presenting material to try and prove, based on specific titles and specific scenes, that this or that processor is significantly more powerful. In some games this may indeed be the case. Ryzen 9 7900X doesn’t “do too well” in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, in F1 2020 and even in Cyberpunk 2077, where at 1080p@high AMD’s processor most noticeably trails rival Intel. Still, in titles such as Shadow of the Tomb Raider, CS:GO or Total War Saga: Troy, the R9 7900X catches up and overall equalizes to a draw. With the difference that Ryzen 9 has lower power draw.

Also of note here is the broadcasting test, which we don’t point to all that often in the final summary.
However, it always refers to how much of the gaming performance the processors lose when capturing video using the x264 encoder. While the R9 7900X’s average fps loss is similar to that of the Ci9-12900K (±2 %), the significantly smaller drop in minimum fps (by 50 %) speaks in favour of AMD’s processor. This is both in OBS and in Xsplit.

The R9 7900X is also faster than the Ci9-12900K for video editing in DaVinci (in Adobe Premiere Pro, Ryzen often has slower Live Playback) as well as for Adobe After Effects graphics effects. The AMD processor is also in charge of the photo editing performance comparison. In Adobe Photoshop, the R9 7900X ends up with a better result 15 out of 18 filters. When exporting RAWs and generating thumbnails in Lightroom, the Ci9-12900K is again clearly slower (by 19–23 %). The situation doesn’t change in Zoner Photo Studio X either, and check out the tremendous difference in Topaz Labs AI applications, where batch edit times are shorter by almost half. But XnView is already better optimized for Core i9.

The biggest competitor from Intel (12900K) also loses to the R7900X in de/compression (~26 %) or in de/encryption (~42 %) and usually lags behind in numerical calculations, as well as in physical simulations. Anyway, how the R9 7900X stacks up against the Ci9-12900K is slowly becoming irrelevant. The Alder Lake generation is coming to the end of its lifecycle, and what matters is in what light AMD Raphael processors will appear against Intel Raptor Lake. However, AMD started this game well, except for the poorly thought-out cooling and high temperatures (but these have also been a problem for Intel processors for a long time). Even with high-performance air coolers such as the Noctua NH-U14S, it takes a perfectly functioning system cooling system to keep temperatures below 95 degrees Celsius (what AMD refers to as the upper limit of optimal temperatures).

When someone says to just slap a liquid cooler on it, don’t take their advice. The smaller ones, with a 240 mm radiator, often fall short of the performance of the more effective tower coolers, and when they are more powerful, it’s usually at the cost of significantly higher noise. Rather than an extreme cooler, AMD will have to figure out how to efficiently dissipate more heat from those increasingly smaller chiplets than the cooling interface now allows. However, we won’t put higher temperatures in the minuses, just as we don’t put it in the minuses for Intel processors either. It’s annoying, but it’s not overheating – these processors keep clock speeds and performance stable even at such high temperatures. Of course, the question is what effect such intense temperature has on durability. But we will not resolve that now.

After cross-sectional testing of all types, we can conclude that at least until the Raptor Lake generation is released, Intel has nothing to lay on the table against the Ryzen 9 7900X. Compared to the Core i9-12900K, AMD’s twelve-core processor overwhelmingly delivers higher performance (often quite significantly higher) at lower power draw. The overall platform’s viability will naturally also depend on what prices AM5 motherboards settle on. But regardless of them, the AMD Ryzen 7900X processor deserves the “Top-notch” editorial award due to its features.

English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš

Testing games are from Jama levova

Special thanks also to Blackmagic Design (for DaVinci Resolve Studio license), Topaz Labs (for licenses to DeNoise AI, Gigapixel AI and Sharpen AI) and Zoner (for Photo Studio X license)

• Contents
• AMD Ryzen 9 7900X in detail
• Methodology: performance tests
• Methodology: how we measure power draw
• Methodology: temperature and clock speed tests
• Test setup
• 3DMark
• Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla
• Borderlands 3
• Counter-Strike: GO
• Cyberpunk 2077
• DOOM Eternal
• F1 2020
• Metro Exodus
• Microsoft Flight Simulator
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• Total War Saga: Troy
• Overall gaming performance
• Gaming performance per euro
• PCMark and Geekbench
• Web performance
• 3D rendering: Cinebench, Blender, ...
• Video 1/2: Adobe Premiere Pro
• Video 2/2: DaVinci Resolve Studio
• Graphics effects: Adobe After Effects
• Video encoding
• Audio encoding
• Broadcasting (OBS and Xsplit)
• Photos 1/2: Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom
• Photos 2/2: Affinity Photo, Topaz Labs AI Apps, ZPS X, ...
• (De)compression
• (De)cryption
• Numerical computing
• Simulations
• Memory and cache tests
• Processor power draw curve
• Average processor power draw
• Performance per watt
• Achieved CPU clock speed
• CPU temperature
• Conclusion