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The AMD Ryzen 7000 Series processors are here, and they’re a big step forward for Team Read in the eternal battle between AMD and Intel that has been raging for more than a decade.
Announced in August 2022, the initial launch lineup of the Ryzen 7000 series impressed us up and down the board, and briefly AMD claimed the title of best processor with its flagship Ryzen 7950X.
There have been some pain points, however, as upgrade costs are atypically high this generation, due almost entirely to the jump to the new AM5 platform. This requires a few new hardware components beyond the processor, much like Intel had to struggle when it made the jump from Rocket Lake to Alder Lake in late 2021.
Despite all that, the launch of AMD’s Ryzen 7000 series has been impressive so far, and we expect some great things from Team Red in the coming year. So what’s the fuss about these new Zen 4 processors, and is it worth upgrading to the new chips or waiting to see what’s in store for 2023? We’ve got all the details on the best AMD processors available right now, and we’re here to tell you everything you need to know about the AMD Ryzen 7000 Series and what it means for your next install.
AMD Ryzen 7000 Series: Getting to the point
- What is it? AMD’s next-gen desktop processor series
- What does it cost? The Ryzen 5 7600x costs $299, the Ryzen 7 7700x costs $399, the Ryzen 9 7900x costs $549, and the Ryzen 9 7950x costs $699.
- When is it out? Announced at AMD’s “together we advance_PCs” event on August 29, the chips will go on sale on September 27, 2022.
AMD Ryzen 7000 Series: Release date
The Ryzen 7000 Series launched on September 27, 2022, with an initial launch lineup of the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X, AMD Ryzen 7 7700X, AMD Ryzen 9 7900X, and AMD Ryzen 9 7950X.
Noticeably absent were any 7000-series X3D chips, which will use AMD’s latest vertical chip stack technology, first demonstrated to great success with the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D.
We expect some of these chips to be announced in early 2023, and with CES 2023 just around the corner we may not have to wait too long.
Given that the Ryzen 7000-series chips we’ve seen so far all have integrated RDNA 2 GPUs, we’re not expecting a dedicated G-series lineup like we did with the last-gen Ryzen 5 5600G and Ryzen 7 5700G.
Whatever potential low-power or atypical SKUs we might get in 2023 (such as an AMD gaming Chromebook CPU or similar) also remains to be seen, but it certainly can’t be ruled out as competition between AMD and Intel renews itself in the new year.
AMD Ryzen 7000 Series: Specifications
With the release of the first lineup of AMD Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs in September, we’ve got a lot more concrete details on what this generation of processors will be. So far this is the specification of the available processors:
| Fashion model | Cores/Threads | Clock (Base/Boost) | Cache Memory (L2 + L3) | TDP | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ryzen 5 7600X | 6 / 12 | 4.7GHz / 5.3GHz | 38MB | 105W | $299 |
| Ryzen 7 7700X | 8/16 | 4.5GHz / 5.4GHz | 40MB | 105W | $399 |
| Ryzen 9 7900X | 12 / 24 | 5.6GHz / 4.7GHz | 76MB | 170W | $549 |
| Ryzen 9 7950X | 16 / 32 | 4.5GHz / 5.7GHz | 80MB | 170W | $699 |
We don’t know how it fares with any Ryzen 7000 series processors with 3D V-Cache, but the 5800X3D packs in 100MB of on-chip cache, making it a beast of a chip for gaming, especially at lower resolutions where the extra cache can pack even more game assets and instructions than the regular chips.
AMD Ryzen 7000 Series: Performance
The biggest performance boost between the Zen 3 and Zen 4 chips is the latter’s use of the 5nm process. This upgrade will result in a 1.87x improvement in transistor density over the TSMC 7nm process used by the AMD Ryzen 5000 series. But while the density has almost doubled, that doesn’t really translate into a doubling of performance (although that would be nice!).
The Ryzen 9 7950 has a total of 16 full-performance cores with a base clock of 4.5 GHz and a boost clock of 5.7 GHz. This makes it an almost 40% faster base clock compared to the Core i9-12900K performance cores, and a 12% faster boost clock. Compared to the Ryzen 9 5950X, the base clock of the 7950X runs about 32% faster and the boost clock is about 16% faster.
In terms of benchmark performance, the CineBench R23’s multi-core score was a whopping 38,531, a 52% increase over the Ryzen 9 5950X’s score of 25,347. Meanwhile, the GeekBench 5 multi-core score of 22,167 is a massive 60% increase over the Ryzen 9 5950X’s 13,975.
The Ryzen 9 7950X also outperforms the Ryzen 9 5950X on average by about 35% in the Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro, Handbrake, and Blender benchmarks.
However, there is no denying that when you look at raw performance, the Intel Raptor Lake processors released in October 2022 are the clear winner, with the Intel Core i9-13900K scoring over 40,000 points in CineBench R23 while the price of the chip remains lower than the Ryzen 9 7950X, forcing AMD to lower its prices recently.