Processors

AMD Ryzen 5 7600X Review

The Ryzen 7000 series are here, and while the majority of you will want to see how the high-end Ryzen 9 parts do in terms of performance, the average consumer is still going to end up buying a mainstream part, like the Ryzen 5 series of processors. If history has taught us anything, the Ryzen 5 3600X and Ryzen 5 5600X were extremely popular, so it makes sense that the new Ryzen 5 7600X will follow that trend, but before we get into that, here’s a quick word from this video’s sponsor.

Now a quick caveat before we delve into the Ryzen 5 7600X, but we do have other content available on the other skus that are being released so definitely check them out on both eTeknix.com in written form, or on our channel.

Now, the 7600X from a core and thread standpoint, when compared to its predecessor, has seen nothing change, but as we drill down a little further, the changes become a bit more evident. Not only have we seen a huge increase in base clock speed from 3.7GHz up to 4.7Ghz, the boost clock has also taken a healthy increase too, from 4.6GHz on the 5600X, to 5.3GHz on the 7600X showing us that even the lesser high-end parts, have not been forgotten about and at least on paper, mean business.

It doesn’t just stop there, as we also see the L2 cache now doubled from 3MB to 6MB, Radeon graphics embedded directly into the chip, though it’s more aimed at desktop graphics opposed to gaming and support for both DDR5 and PCI-Express 5, not that we have any devices on the market, just yet. All of this is thanks to the new TSMC 5nm process node that the core is made from which also sees IPC improvements by up to 13%, which all sounds well and good.

There is however, a less favorable update, shall we say, where we see the default TDP of the 7600X being increased from 65 Watts on the Ryzen 5 5600X to 105 Watts. What that means in terms of temperatures and efficiency, we’ll be finding out later on because while the performance should in theory be better, we have to ask, if that’s worth sacrificing in other areas, like thermals for instance.

Now, at this point, you’ve probably see tons of images and videos of the processors design, but it’s still worth commenting on, as this is the first time we’ve seen a completely new IHS design from AMD since 2003, and while I did fear that thermal paste getting into the grooves would be an issue, after testing, I found that to be a completely non-issue, so hopefully that at least puts your mind at ease, if that was some cause for concern.

Now one area that, at least in my eyes was a cause for concern, came down to the pricing. When the Ryzen 5 3600X launched back in 2019, it did so with a MSRP price of $249. The next generation 5600X launched at a slightly higher $299, but it offered a very large jump in performance that warranted the extra cost. My fear now, is that with the Ryzen 5 7600X coming in at the same $299 price tag, how much extra performance are we really going to see?