It is an exceptional time to be a PC hardware enthusiast – especially when it comes to CPUs! This past fall, we saw AMD and Intel trade blows with their latest silicon. With benefits on both sides of the aisle, modern system builders have a tough decision when it comes to deciding on a CPU platform.
In our testing, we found that both Ryzen 7000 and 13th Gen Intel platforms provided fantastic performance, but they ran hot and were incredibly power hungry. It’s a big flex on both sides, really, but not an uncommon strategy—show off what the chips can do first and then fill in the ranks with a variety of options.
And, with Dr. Lisa Su’s CES 2023 keynote address, we are about to see the Ryzen 7000 series product stack bulk up! Enter the 65W Ryzen 7000 Series processors.
We got our hands on AMD’s 65W, “non-X” Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs to put through the paces. I know, I know – these aren’t the 3D V-cache variants that you’re itching to see. Trust me: I can’t wait to see those in the wild either. But hang in there; AMD’s leaner and cheaper options might just surprise you!
AMD brings power efficiency to the Zen 4 CPU Series without sacrificing a heap of performance.
AMD brings power efficiency to the Zen 4 CPU Series without sacrificing a heap of performance.
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If the power draw, thermals, and price range of the Ryzen 7000 series (or Intel’s 13th Generation Core CPU series, for that matter) have been prohibitive or off-putting to you, AMD’s non-X Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs provide a solution to those problems without requiring too much sacrifice.
These non-X CPUs offer the same core count and cache size as their closest X-family members while turning down the TDP by a fairly significant margin, especially at the higher end. Lower power drawn does translate into reduced base clock speeds across the product family, but the boost clock of the non-X CPUs run just about 200 MHz lower than their 7000X counterparts. We’ll go into more detail in a bit, but this is fantastic news on a number of levels.
For the environmentally conscious or those simply looking to keep their power bill in check, the lower power draw means you have an option for a modern CPU that doesn’t have to increase your utility usage. Is there a compromise? Sure. Is it worth it? We’ll talk about that in a bit.
For those looking to build smaller form factor PCs or those that just don’t trust anything but air cooling, the non-X Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs are designed for just that. AMD is so sure of that last part that it’s bundling these processors with Wraith air coolers – Wraith Stealth for the Ryzen 5 7600 and Wraith Prism for the Ryzen 7 7700 and Ryzen 9 7900. Is that enough to tame those hot and beefy Zen cores? We’ll talk more about that later.
With all of the features that the AM5 platform has to offer, such as AMD EXPO, PCIe 5.0, DDR5, and more, the Non-X Ryzen 7000 series shows some promise on paper, but can they deliver?
When it comes down to it, the specifications for the Ryzen 5 7600, Ryzen 7 7700, and Ryzen 9 7900 are, as stated above, very similar to those of their X-family counterparts.
Beginning at AMD’s newest entry-level CPU, the Ryzen 5 7600 remains a six-core, twelve-thread (6C/12T) offering. Its 3.8GHz base clock leans closer to the 5600X (3.7GHz) than the 7600X’s 4.7 GHz. Max boost speeds are a fair bit more similar, with the 7600 boosting up to 5.1GHz – 200MHz shy of the 7600X’s 5.3GHz. However, this is all done at athermal design package (or TDP) similar to the 5600X: 65W. Not too shabby.
Moving on to the Ryzen 7 7700, we have an eight-core, sixteen thread (8C/16T) CPU with a base clock speed of 3.8GHz and max boost of 5.3GHz. For comparison with this generation of CPUs, the 7700X runs at a base clock of 4.5GHz and max boost speed of 5.4GHz, with a TDP of 105W. To look further back for comparison, the 5700X had a base clock of 3.4GHz and a max boost of 4.6GHz. While the 7700 leads the 5700X in overall speed, they share a similar thermal design power (TDP): 65W.
On the higher end, we have the Ryzen 7900 – a 12-core, 24 thread (12C/32T) powerhouse. Coming in at a base clock speed of 3.7 GHz and boost clock speed of 5.4 GHz, the 7900 trails its X-family counterpart by the largest margin (1GHz) while keeping in modest step at the top end. Again, for comparison, the Ryzen 7900X has a base clock of 4.7GHz and a max boost of 5.6GHz. That, however, is at a whopping TDP of 170W – 105W more than the 7900’s 65W TDP.
Strap yourselves in, because what I am about to show you may bake your noodle… but with less overall power draw and heat.
We made every effort to keep our testing parameters as close to our previous Ryzen 7000 Series and 13th Generation Intel Core processor testing methodologies as possible. Since we swapped motherboards between earlier testing, we retested the original Ryzen 7000 Series release alongside the non-X variants.
These numbers collected with our charts are out-of-the-box performance – no overclocking or no settings tweaks. The only features that we enabled were Smart Access Memory and an AMD EXPO profile for low memory latency and speed. The data from the Intel chips that you’ll see reflects similar options.
For comparison, we are going to include test data collected from AMD’s Zen 4 release (you can find our full reviews here and here) as well as the Core i9-13900K and Core i5-13600K. While Intel has announced its 65W Raptor Lake CPUs, we won’t be drawing any comparisons to them. We will, however, be touching on data that was collected for Gizmodo’s review of the Ryzen 5950X by Joanna Nelius.
Like with any testing, your mileage may vary! It is important to keep in mind while drawing comparisons between their data and mine that some testing environments were different, as was some of the equipment used for these tests.
Here is the hardware we used to collect our data from the Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs (X and non-X alike): X670E AORUS Master motherboard, NVIDIA RTX 3090 Founders Edition GPU, 32 GB G.Skill Trident Z5 NEO DDR5-6000 RAM, 1TB WD_Black SN770 M.2 NVMe SSD, NZXT C1000 Gold 1000W PSU, NZXT Kraken Z73 360mm all-in-one liquid cooler with three 120mm fans, and an NZXT H7 Elite mid-tower PC case equipped with four 140mm fans.
Now, on with the show!
For our productivity tests, we ran the same suite of software benchmarks that we ran the earlier Ryzen 7000 Series and 13th Generation Intel chips through. These tests highlight single and multi thread performance in scenarios that evaluate how each CPU performs under a variety of computational loads.
In Geekbench 5, we see a score relating to day-to-day, single thread tasks – things like web navigation, .PDF rendering, image compression, text compression, and more. Here we see the 7600 reach single thread performance within ~5% of the 7600X while superseding Intel’s Core i5-13600K by 2.85%.
As we move up to the Ryzen 7, the 7700 scored within 2.72% of its juiced up brother, the 7700X, while trailing the 7600X by ~1.5%. This trend continues with the Ryzen 9 7900. We say the 7900 non-X comes within ~2.5% of the performance of the 7900X, ~1.3% of the 7700X, and ~1.4% of the Intel Core i9-13900K.
In the Geekbench 5 multi core test, we see scaling performance from the bottom of the Ryzen 7000 series to the top. While the 7600 gets within ~6% of the 7600X and the 7700 gets within ~4.6% of the 7700X, the delta between the 7900 and 7900X is far more wide. There is an ~11% performance difference at this stage.
While the 7900 does outperform the Core i5-13600K, it is nowhere near the multi core, multi thread power of the 7950X or the Core i9-13900K. However, when we look at these numbers from a generational standpoint, the Ryzen 7 7700 performed so closely to the previous generation’s flagship CPU, the Ryzen 9 5950X. We’ll see just how close these two get in our next test.
For all of our video encoding friends, we ran the non-X CPUs through Handbrake, converting a 4K video file to a 1080p30 file format. While the poor 7600 had a rough time keeping up with the rest of Zen 4, the 7700 hung out with the former Ryzen champ, hovering at a 1 second difference better than the 5950X.
In Blender, we saw a similar picture of multi core, multi thread performance as we rendered everyone’s favorite shiny, red BMW. The 7600 kept in closer step with the 7600X this time, but the 7700 might have gotten bit too full of itself in the last round. It fell 8 seconds behind the 7700X and a whopping 38 seconds behind the ever beefy dad-bod of the 5950X. The 7900, on the other hand, split the difference between the 7700X and the 7900X nicely.
To limit as much GPU dependency as possible, we ran each of our gaming tests at 1080p. This gives us the best picture of the CPU’s impact on frame rate performance. These tests were taken from games that had synthetic benchmarks, allowing for repeatable, consistent data.
Instead of lumping all of the processors together in one chart, we’re going to present them each within their product families. That way, you can see a clearer side by side comparison.
After compiling all of the averages across multiple benchmark runs, it’s wild to see just how close these numbers are, especially with the Ryzen 7 7700 and Ryzen 9 7900 non-X CPUs. We mentioned this in our initial look at Zen 4, but it’s worth mentioning again: Zen 4 as a platform is powerful at every price point. With the non-X CPUs, we have an even clearer picture of just how powerful it is. Not to leave the 7600 out of the conversation, the 65W Ry Source: Gizmodo