AMD Ryzen 9 7900X Review (2024)

Simply put, AMD's flagship Ryzen 9 7950X is a multi-threading monster of a mainstream CPU. It commands a hefty power draw, an even heftier cooler, and (most consequential to you) a steep price, at $699 MSRP (though discounted a bit these days). For certain professions in which time literally is money, increased performance means the increased output of projects. However, if you have high-tech demands but your livelihood isn't determined by your PC's processing power, models just under the flagship often deliver nearly as much performance but are available for significantly less, like the $549-MSRP AMD Ryzen 9 7900X.

Also often discounted, its list price is a smidge more than 20% lower than the 7950X's. For that, you get 25% fewer cores and a slightly higher base clock speed. Everything else remains the same. While we're impressed by the 7900X, dropping the "X" and going for the AMD Ryzen 7900 could save you even more money with slightly lesser (but still comparable) performance and a stock cooler included in the box. If all you're after is pure performance in this price range, however, definitely consider the Editors' Choice-award-holding Intel Core i7-13700K.

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AMD Ryzen 9 7950X vs. Ryzen 9 7900X: Just a Little Off the Top, Please

We're primarily comparing the Ryzen 9 7900X with the Ryzen 9 7950X in this review. If you need a refresher on the AMD "Zen 4" architecture or previously reviewed Ryzen 7000 CPUs, you can check out the above link, or our Ryzen 9 7950X review. As we've already covered the details several times, we see little need to repeat them here.

For the TL;DR crowd, the 7900X and 7950X are identical from a hardware standpoint; the 7900X simply has four cores disabled. Each of the 12 intact cores is still SMT-capable of running two threads simultaneously and still has 64K of L1 and 1MB of L2 cache. The shared L3 cache remains unchanged from the 7950X. The final product is a 12-core/24-thread processor with 768K of L1, 12MB of L2, and 64MB of L3 cache.

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AMD Ryzen 9 7900X Review (10)

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Both CPUs have a 170-watt TDP with a max socket power draw of 230 watts and an unlocked clock multiplier. However, this benefits the 7900X more than the 7950X in some ways. As the dies and chip are still the same size between the two, as is the 95 degree C temperature limit, the 7900X doesn't run as hot as the 7950X, since it has four fewer cores generating heat. This frees up thermal headroom for the active cores, which is reflected in the 7900X's higher base clock frequency of 4.7GHz, versus the 4.5GHz of the 7950X. The maximum boost frequency for the 7900X is capped at 5.6GHz, compared with 5.7GHz on the 7950X. This is likely AMD using an artificial limitation to keep the 7900X from undercutting the more expensive flagship CPU any more than necessary. However, Ryzen 7000 CPUs are known to go beyond their rated boost frequencies if they have the thermal headroom to do so.

AMD Ryzen 9 7900X Review (11)

(Credit: Michael Justin Allen Sexton)

With these configuration differences, the 7900X has the potential to match the 7950X in some cases, or possibly beat it. Remember, the maximum boost frequency is typically for a single core only. Multiple cores running at full steam generate much more heat and can cause the clock speed to drop in response to avoid overheating.

In single-threaded and lightly threaded workloads, the 7950X should be able to keep a 100MHz lead ahead of the 7900X. We'd expect the 7900X to be about 2% behind. In heavily threaded loads, where all 16 cores are brought to bear, the 7950X should have a big advantage. Despite running 200MHz slower, 16 cores at 4.5GHz should be able to accomplish roughly 20% more work than 12 cores at 4.7GHz.

AMD Ryzen 9 7900X Review (12)

(Credit: Michael Justin Allen Sexton)

The midrange tasks in between are where the 7900X should be able to shine. With the 7950X having more active cores, it's possible it could be forced to a slightly lower clock than the 7900X under these conditions. As for how often such a situation would occur, we'll see how it plays out in the benchmarks.

AMD Ryzen 9 7900X: Our Test Setup

This AMD Ryzen 9 7900X was benchmarked on our updated AM5 test station. In short, the test bed is an ASRock X670E Taichi with 32GB of DDR5 memory clocked at the CPU's maximum supported RAM frequency of DDR5-5200. CPU cooling is handled by a Cooler Master MasterLiquid PL240 Flux all-in-one liquid cooler, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition provides discrete graphics power, and all of it is mounted on a Praxis Wetbench open-frame chassis with a SilverStone DA850 power supply handling power duties.

Benchmarks specifically testing integrated graphics were run solely on the 7900X's integrated graphics, or IGP. All other tests used the RTX 3080.

Testing the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X: CPU Benchmarks

We start where we usually do, with AIDA64. Total memory bandwidth is the same between the 7950X and 7900X, which is as expected since they share the same controller. And the 7900X trails the 7950X in L1 and L2 cache bandwidth, as expected. The 7900X has 75% of the cores, 75% of the cache, and almost exactly 75% of total memory bandwidth. L3 cache is shared across all the cores, and here we see the 7900X within spitting distance of its more expensive sibling.

Intel's 13th Generation "Raptor Lake" chips still enjoy gobs more L1 and RAM bandwidth, but its L2 trails far behind Zen 4. L3 bandwidth is split among each, with Raptor Lake having slightly faster reads but Zen having much better write capabilities.

Our application tests show mostly what we anticipated. In single-threaded tasks, the 7900X was nearly tied with the more expensive 7950X, but it fell behind in multi-threaded benchmarks. Premiere Pro, HandBrake, Blender, and Cinebench can all saturate the 7950X's 32 threads, which rewarded it accordingly in our numbers. However, Photoshop can use multiple threads, but not nearly as many as Premiere, and here we saw the 7950X and 7900X effectively tied. You should also note the small but sure win on this test by the AMD Ryzen 7 7700X over all of AMD's 7900 CPUs. This suggests that something about the Infinity Fabric or multi-CCD configuration doesn't agree with Photoshop.

POV-Ray shows another odd result. The multi-threaded scores were exactly as we expect. However, the single-threaded results had the 7950X3D, 7700X, and 7900X in a photo finish—meanwhile, the 7950X was 10 seconds behind, along with the AMD Ryzen 7 7700.

The Intel 13th Gen CPUs have better single-core IPC, and the Core i7-13700K has a similar clock speed to the 7900X. The 13700K scored clear wins over the similarly priced 7900X in every discipline. Also, check out the much cheaper Intel Core i5-13600K: Apart from Blender and Cinebench, it tied the 7900X everywhere despite supporting four fewer execution threads.

Testing the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X: Discrete Graphics Benchmarks

These heavy gaming results are about as straightforward as can be. The Time Spy benchmark separates CPUs by their raw computing potential and other differences in resources. However, as a synthetic test, it's not always clear whether those differences matter in actual games. Otherwise, any Ryzen 7000 without 3D V-Cache is practically indistinguishable from another when paired with an RTX 3080. Intel's Raptor Lake CPUs have small wins in a few titles, but this comes within the margin of error as resolution increases. Games have certainly become more multi-threaded in the past 10 years, but not all benefit from having more than 12 threads.

Testing the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X: Integrated Graphics Benchmarks

No, this isn't a repeat of the above benchmarks; the integrated GPU results simply reinforce the previous results. As we've noted in all our Ryzen 7000 reviews: The integrated graphics in Ryzen 7000 CPUs are for generic home and office use, nothing more. Apart from the 3D V-Cache-equipped models, each Ryzen 7000 CPU in these tests was essentially tied with each other on IGP performance.

Testing the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X: Power and Temperature

Despite the four fewer cores, the 7900X and 7950X have the same rated power draw and thermal limits, and they are designed to use as much of it as available, so it's not surprising that power-consumption differences are small. At full tilt, with all cores engaged and utilizing special instructions, the 7950X pulls about 5% more power from the wall, but in normal daily driving, you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference.

AMD specifically designed Zen 4 to be able to run at 95 degrees C, so it's not a danger for the chip. The Ryzen 7000X CPUs are configured to draw as much power as they're allowed to ensure stability for maximum clock speed until they hit their maximum temperature. Even with a 240mm water cooler, these chips hit their thermal limit under heavy load, which means this is likely to happen with most CPU coolers you could buy. The cooler will just determine what maximum boost frequency the chip will reach at that temperature.

You can, of course, tweak power management in the UEFI to lower the maximum allowed power draw. AMD has released recommended PPT, TDC, and EDC settings to effectively lower the TDP. Doing this, the CPU will still try to reach the same maximum boost frequencies but will use a less aggressive voltage curve to do it. However, lower voltage and power draw may also limit the maximum frequency the CPU can reach and maintain.

Power draw is a weak point for Intel right now. The Core i7-13700K may outperform the 7900X in just about everything, but it does so while running hotter and sucking down considerably more power. The Core i5-13600K stays more reasonable at lower heat and power draws.

Verdict: I Was Told There Would Be No Math

First, the easy part: If frames-per-second (fps) is king for you—or more likely fps-per-dollar—the 7900X is far too much chip and doesn't deliver an appreciable improvement over the cheaper 7000 Series CPUs. If you only dabble in content creation on the side and want something beefier for those occasional projects, one of the Ryzen 7700 CPUs or the Core i5-13600K will still likely be a better option for you. However, if you're a professional or otherwise a content creator, this decision grows far more complicated.

The decision between 7950X and 7900X is reminiscent of Intel's "Haswell-E" and "Broadwell-E" from years back. Intel's Core i7-5960X and Core i7-6950X may have been the top dogs of their product stack, but they generated so much heat it was hard to keep them cool at peak clock speeds. Unless you absolutely needed all those threads, the Core i7-5930K and Core i7-6900K were often seen as more desirable chips. Not only were they considerably less expensive (almost half the price), but they were also easier to cool, and they had higher base and boost clocks, too.

AMD Ryzen 9 7900X Review (13)

(Credit: Michael Justin Allen Sexton)

Unlike the LGA 2011-3 days of the Core X-Series, the cost difference between the 7950X and 7900X is much less, so the decision is much less obvious. As the cream of the crop, the 7950X has extra leeway in its pricing and value consideration. The "premium tax" for squeezing that last 2% of extra performance is always going to demand a disproportionate amount of money. To professionals who judge value by renders-per-day instead of fps, the 7950X has an undisputed lead on the 7900X. From that perspective, the 20% higher MSRP is reasonable.

However, retail pricing right now is volatile. As of this writing, instead of $699 and $549, respectively, a 7950X runs about $600, and a 7900X is about $450. Not only do the lower street prices make both more affordable, but that also makes the 7900X closer to 25% cheaper, not just 20%. Plus, despite having 25% of the cores disabled, the higher base clock and lower total heat output mean the 7900X is less than 20% behind the 7950X in many workloads. Again, if you can saturate a full 32 execution threads for eight hours a day, then you will want the 7950X, and it will likely be less expensive for you in the long run. If you have a more mixed workload, the 7900X can give you closer to 90% of the performance you want for only 75% of the cost.

The 7900X also needs to address the two blue elephants in the room: Intel's Editors' Choice-award-holding Raptor Lake chips, the Core i5-13600K and Core i7-13700K. The i5 is far less expensive than the 7900X while mostly nipping at its heels. (In fairness, it loses quite badly to Team Red in a few tests too.) But with a similar power envelope, and a slight but noticeable advantage in gaming, the little i5 punches well above its weight class. Even the 13700K has a much lower list price than the 7900X, but current retail pricing puts them on the level. The 13700K handily beats the 7900X in many regards, especially single-threaded performance. However, it does so on a significantly higher electrical budget, with an even higher running temperature.

Again, pricing is volatile, and this could all change quite quickly. But perhaps that's part of the fun. For right now, your decision largely comes down to how faithful you are to AMD, the level of work you need to accomplish with a CPU, and whether efficiency is a concern for you.

AMD Ryzen 9 7900X

3.5

See It$339.43 at Amazon

MSRP $549.00

Pros

  • Ideal for mid-to-high-end content creation work

Cons

  • Pricey at MSRP for what it provides

  • Power-hungry

  • Needs heavy-duty cooling to reach full potential

  • No stock cooler in box

ViewMore

The Bottom Line

AMD's Ryzen 9 7900X is essentially a cut-back 7950X at a lower price. For heavy-threaded workloads (but not "32 threads" heavy), the 7900X delivers—but AMD's 7900 performs just about as well for even less.

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About Eric Vander Linden

Contributor

AMD Ryzen 9 7900X Review (15)

From an early age I was destined for a career in technology and testing. As a young child, my mother worked as the administrative assistant to the Senior VP of Hardware and Peripherals at a little startup called Microsoft, long before they went public. The test and design engineers invited me often to the office, because if anything can break a computer peripheral, it's a 3-year-old toddler. They let me use a heavily modified IBM PCjr running MS Flight Simulator, that could also run Pac-Man at near superluminal speeds.

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About Michael Justin Allen Sexton

Analyst

For as long as I can remember, I've had love of all things tech, spurred on, in part, by a love of gaming. I began working on computers owned by immediate family members and relatives when I was around 10 years old. I've always sought to learn as much as possible about anything PC, leading to a well-rounded grasp on all things tech today. In my role at PCMag, I greatly enjoy the opportunity to share what I know.

I wrote for the well-known tech site Tom's Hardware for three years before I joined PCMag in 2018. In that time, I've reviewed desktops, PC cases, and motherboards as a freelancer, while also producing deals content for the site and its sibling ExtremeTech. Now, as a full-time PCMag analyst, I'm focusing on reviewing processors and graphics cards while dabbling in all other things PC-related.

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