Review: Ryzen 9 7950X processor (with ASRock X670E Taichi motherboard)

Kick ass review as always @Hilbert Hagedoorn , well done !

AMD did bring some improvements on ipc but same as intel at the cost of eye watering high wattage and absolutely inferno of temperatures :/ ( 95c ). If you want to upgrade to this new am5 platform and you are a gamer please just wait for the X3D cache updated versions of this cpu's as those for sure will be the frames per second pushing mosnters for gaming .

I believe if you are in am4 and want to max your gaming experience just get 5800X3D and voila you will get a faster and better gaming experience than with this new am5 7xxx cpu's while saving a lot of money.

PS. I know for sure 13900k will be even hotter than this cpu as i have seen it in action ( cannot say much more or i will get in trouble ) you will see in due time

 

Well for me this is a major step forward, everyone is focused on only the Temps which are not as high unless your benching which is by design, all cores hit the max at some point not just the odd core or two and the all core boost which for a 16 full core cpu is fantastic, the actual increase in performance is insane in many workloads even some games but this is not a gamers CPU its a good all rounder with exceptional encoding ability and should be bought as such you want games only look at the 7600x or the upcoming X3D which we know are inbound i suspect after Intel launches they will come along and spoil the party for them, I will get one tbh because its my hobby I dont need it but I want it

 

No question about it - it is a MONSTER of performance AND a SPACE HEATER!
But as a commercial said: "power is nothing without control"...in this case how hot it runs - for me at least is an obsession since it took some effort to tame the 5950X let alone this beast.
I looked on many reviews - nothing said about room temperature which is important and some said that they tested in open systems - many if not all of us keep everything enclosed in a case with better or worst airflow so a big difference here.
Also, on a review they tested with 280mm AIO and a custom loop and no difference so a 280 mm AIO will suffice but with fans on the radiator at 100% all the time during some heavy work (rendering, encoding, etc) so you need to test a 360 mm AIO or some crazy custom loop and maybe get better results at least in terms of not having both a space heater and vacuum cleaner in the same room.

It is important that the temps are very high not only during benchmarks but also during usual content creator work like rendering on CPU - there is still software that do that - and this is not great at all.

I am also curios about undervolting - maybe get better results - but nobody tried yet - maybe because of the announced ECO MODE.

 

True, but considering all I care about is 4K@60FPS, a 5800X3D is a bit overkill for me. Really, all I'm waiting for is something efficient with 8c/16t, doesn't cost over $300, and preferably has the option to overclock. And even then, I'd rather it be no higher than $250. We're getting close to that but not quite there. Should AMD make a 7700 non-X, I might get that after the 8000 series.
I may consider looking into BGA chip. I'm on ITX so as long as it has an x16 slot with at least PCIe 4.0, the option I'm looking for may already exist, just without the overclocking.

Yep. I've had this GPU for 8 years. It still plays 1080p games at medium-high settings. I paid $275 for it back then; I'm not willing to spend the same amount for another GPU only capable of 1080p gaming.

Right but if you're on a budget, what difference does it make? If you don't want to splurge on a cooler or your electric bill, does the extra 5% matter?

I agree, so if you want a solid cheap, cool, and quiet gaming CPU, just get a 12400 and spend the rest on a GPU. Will it give you the highest FPS possible? No, but if you're on a budget, it will not be the bottleneck of your system, and it'll keep your electric bill more manageable too. If you want the best valued gaming CPU then get an X3D.

 

I think you forgot one thing which many gamers overlook, and that is the 1% or 0.1% lows...

I am like you targeting 4K@60FPS, but I don't want 2-60 FPS swings. The closer to 60 FPS sustained lows, the better, even at the sacrifice of 10 FPS top speed. I would take 40-50 FPs sustain over 20-60 FPs or even 100 FPS swings anyday.

The X3D CPUs are amazing on the 1% lows...

 

You're not wrong, but I also game on Linux where conventional wisdom is kinda thrown out the window anyway lol. Case in point: on Windows, the 5800X3D really only improves games and does nothing for other workloads. In Linux, it's the exact opposite. Games are incredibly complex, to the point where you can dramatically change their performance on the same hardware just from lower-level tweaks. Filesystems, CPU schedulers, power governors, driver APIs, the GPU drivers themselves, translation layers, display managers, other background processes, etc all have an impact on gaming performance. Despite my anemic system, it rarely ever has any stuttering issues. Since the V-cache won't really do much to help my specific use case, I won't be bothering with it. For most other people though, I would recommend it.

 

Nice... if only it was just a simple swap upgrade from my 5950X, but having to buy new motherboard and RAM too is too much cost and effort.

I do make use of 5950X in below software which definitely can use all 32 cores in these.

Adobe Premiere Pro (although now uses GPU encode to speed up)
Topaz Video Enhance AI
Mercalli v6

Video Enhance AI is interesting because it absolutely flies with smaller resolution files that I presume is because they can fit into its cache completely, but once the files no longer fit in ultra-fast cache and have to swap in/out of main RAM it slows down by a lot. It would be very interesting to see if the same files now could fit into this new 7950X much larger L2/L3 caches and was now much faster - a proper productivity test. Some short 20 minute videos can take 3 hours to upscale even on the 5950X

 

Don't forget guys, sometimes, some people just buy some stuff for no other reason than they can.
Yes some people are having to tighten up on their spending, some are having it really hard, but that's no reason for those not impacted in a negative way to feel bad for spending money on something just because somebody else can't afford it or thinks its poor value.

 

But are they then playing Metro EE in4k at high frame rates on that lappy ha ha ha

 

Yeah, I certainly expected better. I have really mixed feelings about this new release. I was excited, but feel a little underwhelmed.

 

Monstrous multi threaded performance

 

I know they are always called the "Flagship CPU" but not when for gaming as they will be beaten when the X3D comes out.

I do expect a 7800X3D sometime in the near future and it'll be the flagship for gamers. Although that heat already scares me even if AMD say it's fine.

 

The 7700X seems to be pretty reasonable in terms of performance-per-watt. Seems to me AMD just cranked up the 7950X way higher than it needs to. Remember- architectures have a sweet spot in terms of efficiency, and both AMD and Intel push their high-end chips waaay beyond that point. That's why I'm looking forward to a 7700, because the lower clock speeds should make it significantly more efficient without much of an impact on FPS.

 

buying one and probably...one day a 4090 or 4080 when there are psus available and a premade liquid cooling model (i can buy one but not throw the money away for a mistake made, which might have happened >< not my fault tough faulty screws let go and made a gap but still i'd rather have a warrantied card)
the rtx 4000 have 2x video encoders (vs 1 currently) + this 7950x which seems very fast for video encoding I have to know what it'll do I just have to know when I think my 1st H265 encode attempt (4k down to hd) I had 3fps now 108fps things have changed and I hope this gen + double nvencoders will break all records

about the temps I type now from a 28k cr23 12900k that hits already 90-95°C I hate it, my 5950x @72°C had 29k which I tought was an insane perf/temp ratio and apparently still is
but considering the 7950x does +27% score from the same-ish temps than a 12900k (with real cores not baby ones) I guess it's "okay"
I repeated many times on guru3d that the temps from the intel came mostly from the clockspeed, with a 5.1ghz all cores it was bound to happen

x570 5950x still king of do-it-all at reasonable temps and what I would recommend to most people frankly

 

Lenovo are the biggest PC Manufacturer in the world...they do not sell this in any of their configs...yet.

 

What the article doesn't say is that there is a way to make the cpu a 105w tdp one, you keep most of the performance (losing a few percentage at best apparently) but it gives you a cooler cpu and greatly enhance the efficiency.
AMD should enable the feature in Ryzen Master "soon". I saw a french review where they did the manual step AMD gave them to compare "old" and "new" TDP. And the difference in performance is not enough to sacrifice the efficiency.

Anyway, there is no game that is so CPU limited that you can't play it over 100 fps as long as you have the GPU. So yeah, waiting these CPU to greatly enhance the framerate is pointless. Don't expect much from raptor lake, the CPU aren't making the difference unless you wanna benchmark at 1080p. But enthusiast (which are the target here) are not really playing at that low resolution, are they ?
Anyway, it's a good batch of new CPU. The jump between Zen 3 & 4 is still way more than what intel did before AMD shake them up. The only blame is not to default the CPUs at the "efficiency TDP" and leaving the "higher TDP" for the ones that are after overclocking to the last Mhz.

 

You forgot the almost obsolete GeForce RTX 3090 used in the review.What's the point? in even doing the reviews

 

they have an entire lineup of 3D cache CPUs coming out, plus the 5800X3D is still current until they do

 

Amazing CPU, for those who can use all it`s power.

For everyone else, there are better alternatives.

Great review as always Hilbert!

Hilbert, do you think you could investigate a little about Pluton, that some say is a backdoor pretending to be a security device???