AMD Ryzen 5 7600X Review

So as always, a ton of stuff to talk about and a lot of data to chew through and also some information on what’s next for our Ryzen 7000 series coverage. Now when I first caught wind of the Ryzen 7000 series of processors, much like anyone, I was keen to see what the high-end 7900X and 7950X were going to be like, but for the most part, like the average consumer out there, I wanted to see what was going on at the mainstream end of the spectrum. It’s a much harder market to crack when variance between products is so small. What I’m trying to say is that you can only put so much focus on performance before the product starts pushing into a higher bracket of pricing, so I guess AMD had to be careful with trying to beat the 12600K and obviously improving on the 5600X without going a bit too far. Otherwise, the likes of the 7700X would be deemed redundant.

So I guess out of all of the new line-up in the Zen 4 range, the 7600X probably has it the toughest, as it has to win in so many areas, and sadly, it falls short in some.

How Much Does It Cost?

Now I mentioned that pricing was a big one for me, as it’s coming in with exactly the same price as the 5900X did when that launched and at $299, while it’s not a bad price based on performance, and does offer up a decent amount of uplift in performance over the 5900X, I was just expecting a little more in certain areas whereas other areas, it actually did extremely well. I mean, productivity-wise, I have no qualms about it. For the most part, it was either neck and neck with the 12600K or slightly behind, and I’m ok with that because it’s in the same ballpark and that makes it at least at face value, competitive.

When it came to gaming, it was a real interesting one, where depending on the title, we see it either decimating the 12600K, and in some cases, coming very close or beating the higher end 12900K, or we see it falling short, behind the 12600K making it a real frustrating situation for me to judge purely based on a value for money aspect.

Overview

The best way of drilling down performance, at least from a gaming perspective, is to look at the overall average FPS and that just makes it even more difficult because it performed exactly the same as the 12600K, albeit with a 1FPS better 1% low score over the average of 10 games. The saving grace is that compared to the 12900K, it’s also very similar in performance with the 12900K only sitting around 1.5% ahead of it, but obviously costing a lot more money.

At the end of it all, the 12600K is the slightly better value chip, but it’s been out a lot longer too, so it’s had a chance for pricing to stabilise, and at the time of making this content, the US Dollar rate is all over the place, so that goes against AMD right now.

The biggest issue that AMD have with the 7600X is that it performs the same as the 12600K for the most part, and costs around the same, albeit, coming in around $10 or £10 more expensive, so it’s already on the backfoot, and we all know that Intel’s 13th generation of processors are right around the corner, and I feel that’s going to hurt the 7600X quite badly, depending on its performance and pricing.

AMD just needed to do a little more in my opinion, and now it’s too late.

Should I Buy One?

So, don’t get me wrong. The 7600X is a great chip. It gives you great performance across productivity and workload related tasks, and of course, during gaming. The big issue right now is that it’s a new platform, it means buying a new chip, new board and new memory to get it functioning and that comes at a premium and for a similar premium, you could go Intel. Now there is one thing that’s extremely in AMD’s favour, and that comes down to the platform.

Once you buy a 7600X, you’re good to go for years to come, whereas the 12600K is about to be obsolete in one sense of the word. The 13th generation of processors are coming, and will likely be better, and will likely cost more money whereas AM5 as a platform will accept newer processors beyond that in the future so it all comes down to if you’re buying for the here and now, or if you’re buying for the future as well.

A bittersweet conclusion for the 7600X and while I’m trying to find a slightly brighter silver lining, that’s all I’ve pretty much got. Is it enough to sway me? Maybe just, and if the price comes down slightly, like we saw on the 5600X, then definitely, it could go down as one of the greatest processors in the lineup, but for now, it just has too many factors against it, bringing it down, even if it does offer extreme performance.