Following the top Ryzen 9 7950X, let’s take a look at how AMD’s next-level Ryzen 9 7900X with the Zen 4 architecture performs this time.
test environment
For the next test, we used the most powerful GPU that NVIDIA has just released: the GeForce RTX 4090, compared to the Ryzen 9 7900X and the 7950X of the same series, as well as the game performance performance of the opponent’s current highest-end Core i9-12900K.
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 9 7900X AMD Ryzen 9 7950X |
Intel Core i9-12900K |
| motherboard | ASUS ROG Maximus X670E Hero | ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Hero |
| Memory | Kingston FURY Beast DDR5-6000 16GBx2 | |
| heat sink | ASUS ROG Strix LC II 360 ARGB White Edition | |
| heat transfer medium | Thermalright TF8 | |
| graphics card | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition | |
| store | Kingston FURY Renegade SSD 2TB Seagate FireCuda 530 NVMe SSD 2TB |
|
| power supply | FSP Hydro PTM PRO ATX 3.0 (PCIe 5.0) 1200W | |
| working system | Windows 11 Professional | |
rendering operation
Since the maximum boost clock of the Ryzen 9 7900X is slightly lower than that of the Ryzen 9 7950X, the single-core performance is about 2% ~ 3% behind, which is comparable to the Core i9-12900K.
With only 3/4 the core count of the Ryzen 9 7950X, the low multi-core performance is understandable, but it is about 10% ahead of the previous flagship Ryzen 9 5950X, and also beats the Core i9-12900K.
Comprehensive application performance
With the advancement of the Zen 4 architecture, the Ryzen 9 7900X’s CrossMark commercial application performance is only less than 4% behind the Ryzen 9 7950X, and significantly ahead of the Ryzen 9 5950X by nearly 30%. Geekbench 5’s single-core/multi-core applications even lead the Ryzen 9 5950X by 30% / 20% respectively.
3DMark
In the Time Spy test that simulates DirectX 12 games, it can be seen that the CPU score gap between the Ryzen 9 7900X and the Ryzen 9 7950X is not large, but Graphic has a slight lead. The CPU Profile test both surpassed the Ryzen 9 5950X and the Core i9-12900K.
Game performance
In fact, the game performance values of Ryzen 9 7900X and Ryzen 9 7950X are quite close, but under the overall average of the 22 games we tested, Ryzen 9 7900X is slightly better than Ryzen 9 7950X by 0.5%, and the indicative Full HD CS: GO even leads by 4%.
Power consumption and temperature
If you use the most extreme Prime95 for burn-in, the power consumption difference between Ryzen 9 7900X and Ryzen 9 7950X is not large, only within 5W. However, if the AIDA 64 FPU is used to burn the machine, the power consumption of the Ryzen 9 7900X will be reduced a lot, which is more than 30W worse, and slightly lower than the Core i9-12900K.
The temperature characteristics are inherited from the Ryzen 9 7950X. The Ryzen 9 7900X can reach 96.1°C in Prime95, and the AIDA 64 FPU drops slightly to 93°C.
Summarize
Although the rank is slightly lower, the Ryzen 9 7900X still takes advantage of the Zen 4 architecture and the advantages of TSMC’s 5nm process to bring about a high clock, as well as a lower core-to-core latency due to a smaller number of cores. The average performance of the game is slightly ahead. Ryzen 9 7950X a little bit.
Although the overall game performance is still inferior to the Core i9-12900K, it has caught up quite close, and the Ryzen 9 7900X is still dominant in multi-core applications, and the overall power consumption is slightly lower.
To sum up, the advantage of the AM5 platform this time is that it has abundant and sufficient PCIe 5.0 bandwidth, and it is more convenient to configure a PCIe 5.0 interface SSD. Unfortunately, the price of the motherboard is on the high side. If you don’t care about PCIe 5.0 applications, a motherboard with a more affordable B650 chipset will also be a less stressful choice.