Final Thoughts
It is always great checking out the latest processors when they come out and like I said AMD’s Ryzen 7000 series was highly anticipated. Remember the Ryzen 5000 series launched two years ago, so AMD fans have definitely been waiting for this. While most people were all-in on the Ryzen 9 7950X I opted to pick up the Ryzen 9 7900X, which seemed like it would be perfect for me as I do a lot of video editing and more CPU-intensive tasks and just a little bit of gaming. This 12-core, 24-thread processor seemed perfect for that.
So going right into our testing results the Ryzen 9 7900X was at the top of our charts in CPU intensive tasks, not only in multi-core, but single-core tests. Going up against Intel’s previous top dog, the Core i9-12900K it dominated. This is because the Ryzen 9 7900X makes use of 12 performance cores and does not have performance and efficient cores like the Core i9-12900K. So if you are doing any type of video encoding, streaming, or CPU-intensive tasks this is going to be a great processor for you.
Gaming is a bit of a mixed bag. In our testing we saw the Ryzen 9 7900X beat all of the other processors in some tests and be in the middle of the pack in others. If you are upgrading to Ryzen 7000 strictly for gaming I would say you could save some money and get the Ryzen 7 7700X. This processor has a single chiplet design so the entire gaming workload is on a single die, whereas on the 7900X it shares this workload across the dual-chiplet design. We also have to consider that AMD has not yet announced the X3D models yet, which we expect to see at CES in January. These processors are expected to be AMD’s definitive gaming CPUs for the Ryzen 7000 series.
With Zen 4 AMD has moved down to TSMC’s 5nm processor for the compute dies, so we expect these new processors to be very energy efficient. In our testing the Ryzen 9 7900X was extremely energy efficient at both idle and load. One interesting thing we did notice was very high temperatures. Luckily we upgraded our CPU cooling solution from an air cooler to a 360mm AiO, but even then in high-load tests like Cinebench we were getting very close to our thermal limit of 95C. While 95C is the TJMax it was just odd to see the processor get so hot so quickly. I can see why AMD is not including a cooler with these processors as it would sound like a rocket ship taking off when you put any load on your CPU.
When it comes to upgrading to any new CPU we need to talk about platform and platform costs. The big improvements with Ryzen 7000 and the new motherboards is that you will get PCI-Express 5.0 and DDR5 support. This does come at a cost as you will need to buy a new motherboard to run these processors and you’ll have to buy more expensive DDR5 memory. Unlike previous Ryzen processors you can’t slot these into older boards and new motherboards only support DDR5. So those are some things to consider.
I think if you are someone like me when does a lot of video editing and has highly-threaded tasks you are going to be very happy with the Ryzen 9 7900X. Right now it is selling at our favorite online retailer for $549. Overall ThinkComputers gives the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X Processor a 9 out of 10 score and our Recommended Award!
Pros:
– Great multi-core and single-core performance
– Energy efficient over the previous generation
– PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 support
– Older AM4 coolers will fit
Cons:
– Temperatures are a bit of a concern
– No CPU cooler included
– Platform cost
