Hardware & Technical AMD Zen 4 Reviews

[Robert Maynard]

Just spotted the first review of an AMD Zen 4 CPU (that I have encountered) - the 7600X - here:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRaJXZMOMPU

.... and another:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WubXd2tXOA+

.... and again:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQHPE3Z4kmA


.... and there's more:

AMD Ryzen 5 7600X Review - Affordable Zen 4 for Gaming

Ryzen 5 7600X is the company's most affordable offering for the Zen 4 family. Our review of the 7600X confirms that this new $300 CPU offers huge performance gains over Zen 3, and can even beat the Ryzen 5800X3D in gaming. In applications, the 7600X is faster than the Intel Core i9-11900K.

www.techpowerup.com

AMD Ryzen 7 7700X Review - The Best Zen 4 for Gaming

With the Ryzen 7 7700X, AMD is introducing their fastest Zen 4 processor for gamers. In our review we found out that gaming on the 7700X runs better than the 7900X and 7950X, thanks to the single CCD design of the 7700X. Just like on other high-end AM5 CPUs, temperatures are a problem though.

www.techpowerup.com

AMD Ryzen 9 7900X Review - Creator Might, Priced Right

The Ryzen 9 7900X is a creator's dream. It offers 12-cores and 24-threads that perform fantastic not only in highly-threaded workloads, but single-threaded performance is also there. Priced at $550 it sits right in the middle between Ryzen 9 7950X and Ryzen 7 7700X.

www.techpowerup.com

AMD Ryzen 9 7950X Review - Impressive 16-core Powerhouse

The Ryzen 9 7950X is a monster CPU. When paired with the right workload it will eat even the 12900K for breakfast. As our review shows, the performance uplifts can be massive: +30-50% gen-over-gen is totally possible. What makes things complicated though, is that keeping the beast cool is almost...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[Morbad]

Only surprising thing about the launch is how good AVX-512 is on the Zen 4. I was expecting less performance here as Zen 4 takes two cycles for it to execute 512-bit instructions as opposed to a single cycle for Golden Cove. Not that it would have mattered much for most consumers as Intel disabled AVX-512 functionality on it's consumer parts, making Zen 4 the only choice here on a mainstream platform.

Rest is pretty much as leaks and AMD themselves showed or implied. Some thermal issues (IHS is way too thick, to maintain cooler compatibility) at unconstrained power settings, but efficiency is extreme when power capped. Latency is also concern with the decoupled and rather low frequency FCLK, which evidently limits gaming gains. However, it's a content creation monster.

Probably wouldn't recommend the current line up as gaming CPUs and the platform evidently has some early firmware issues, but anyone who was looking at a 5900X, 5950X, or 12900-anything before will probably find the 7900X or 7950X very tempting. Gamers and those who don't need AVX-512 will probably want to either stick with their existing platforms, wait for the v-cache variants of Raphael and see how Raptor Lake competes.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Succumbed to temptation (again) and I have a 7900X and Noctua NH-D15S on order and an ASUS Prime X670-P on pre-order. Short of a GPU, I'll have everything I need to fill the new case (Fractal Design Define R6) on the arrival of the new components.

 

[GuruNot]

Succumbed to temptation (again) and I have a 7900X and Noctua NH-D15S on order and an ASUS Prime X670-P on pre-order. Short of a GPU, I'll have everything I need to fill the new case (Fractal Design Define R6) on the arrival of the new components.

I am looking to build a completely new machine to rebuild my ageing 5930K, so I will be interested in what you think.

I have been pretty much set on Zen4 for a while, although I need to do a little more reasearch, I will be waiting for the new ATX 3.0/PCIe5 PSU's to come out though so my build wont probably happen until next year.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Again succumbed to "I'd like a new component sooner" - so cancelled the pre-order for the ASUS Prime X670-P (as it still was not in stock) and ordered an Asrock X670E PG Lightning, which arrives on Monday.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Pleasantly surprised by the carrier - they brought forward the Monday delivery to this afternoon.

Mechanical side of the build is now complete (without GPU) - now to migrate "all the things" over from what is now my son's PC.

 

[Morbad]

Should be able to do most setup with the IGP..

That ASRock board have any memory training or boot time issues with current firmware?

 

[Robert Maynard]

Indeed - the onboard graphics did fine - a pleasant addition, in terms of not having to have a second GPU or needing to remove it from the old PC when setting up the new one.

On first boot the DDR5-6000 was at 4800 then I selected the XMP 6000 settings in BIOS and it worked flawlessly.

I had read reports about the sticker over the RAM sockets leaving residue on ASRock and some other boards - thankfully none from the sticker I removed, although the board was at about 10°C to 15°C (straight out of the carrier's van).

 

[Robert Maynard]

Stock: Cinebench r23: single-core: 2,027 pts; multi-core: 28,648 pts.
PBO all core curve negative 20: Cinebench r23: single-core: 2,037 pts; multi-core: 29,441 pts.

Significant increase when compared to my 3900X / DDR4-3600 combo (single-core: 1,253 pts; multi-core: 17,073 pts).

A side effect of the onboard graphics is that I can't install 22.5.1 - so I'll have to make do with 22.9.2 or later (22.10.1 has just released - so I'm giving that a try).

 

[Robert Maynard]

Re-ran the Superposition benchmark in 720p Low / 1080p Extreme / 4K Optimised, with the same RX 6800 as was in the 3900X build.

The 7900x got 40,904 / 8,577 / 12,401 vs the 3900X with 25,392 / 8,242 / 11,658, increases of 61.9% / 4.1% / 6.4% respectively.

 

[Morbad]

A side effect of the onboard graphics is that I can't install 22.5.1 - so I'll have to make do with 22.9.2 or later (22.10.1 has just released - so I'm giving that a try).

You can probably force 22.5.1 in manually, but it's not hard to make later versions work with Odyssey.