AMD Ryzen 5 7600X: The most popular Core i5 declassed

Conclusion

The cheapest Ryzen 7000 processor (7600X) is a class above Intel’s cheapest Core i5-class processor (12400). Ryzen dominates in virtually everything, and it does so at higher efficiency. Yes, it’s not the same price range, and the R5 7600X is ultimately “killed” by the high price (not just in terms of the CPU itself, but the entire platform), but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a great processor.

Conclusion

A top-notch mid-range processor for a gaming PC. That’s how Ryzen 5 7600X could be described in a nutshell. Why is it so good? Because it has more gaming performance than the Core i5-12400 (i.e. the most efficient gaming CPU Intel has to offer from the more powerful processors), and that’s quite a score.

Ryzen 5 7600X’s gaming performance is on par with Ryzen 9 7900X. The smaller number of cores are made up for by the 150–200 MHz higher “gaming” clock speeds so that the results end up being very even, and in some games Ryzen 5 even has the upper hand. Higher clock speeds matter more, for example in v Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, v DOOMe Eternal, v F1 2020 or v Total War Saga: Troy. More cores (R9 7900X) in turn benefit more Microsoft Flight Simulator, Shadow of the Tomb Raider or Cyberpunk 2077.

We’ll make a quick stop at the Cyberpunk 2077 results. Overall, there’s something wrong with the Ryzen 7000s in this game, as they achieve lower performance than the Ryzen 5000. Most tests present it the other way around. We’re not pointing fingers at anyone, and I’m sure you know from your own experience that few people do things really properly and honestly. When the majority says something, it doesn’t make it true. But what the majority needs is to act sovereign at all costs and present things in a way that “makes sense”, which is kind of at odds with the Ryzen 7000’s inferior results. But they really are, and just like us, Overclock3D doesn’t need to embellish them, in whose tests the Ryzen 7000s also abnormally lag behind Intel’s Alder Lake processors in Cypeberpunk 2077…

… and on top of that, OC3D uses a weaker graphics card than we do and unlike our own scene, they test in a built-in benchmark (i.e., under a significantly different situation). There’s not much more to add, except perhaps that CP77 is one of the few games where the Ryzen 5 7600X doesn’t do well. In terms of overall average results, however, it has no proper competition in its class at the moment.

Raw performance has increased between generations in a similar proportion to the Ryzen 9 7900X. The Ryzen 5 7600X, too, has a multi-threaded performance increase of almost 40 % over the Ryzen 5 5600X (whether it’s 3D rendering or video encoding, for example). Efficiency is weaker though, below Ryzen 5 Vermeers (5600X and 5600). Ryzen 5 7600X is suitable for gaming and multimedia computers. In a web environment and overall in “ordinary” undemanding use it is exceptionally snappy for its high single-threaded performance. And efficient. Speaking of single-threaded performance, the R5 7600X does with the Core i5-12400 exactly what the headline of this article says. When encoding an audio recording (which is typically a single-threaded task) The Ryzen 5 7600X delivers 20 % more computing power at more than 20 % lower power draw, which can be considered a significant difference.

The six-core Raphael is also well suited for productive PCs where fast filter work without GPU acceleration matters. This is confirmed by the top-notch results in Adobe After Effects or Affinity Photo. When the R5 7600X doesn’t finish first in one of the subtasks, it’s usually only ever beaten by one of the more expensive processors. There’s also a huge leap over older processors in the same class when it comes to photo restoration in Topaz Labs’ AI apps. That more than twice the performance of the Core i5-12400 is unrealistic? It is not, this is due to the effective implementation of VNNI instructions, which older processors do not use. We will discuss this issue more in a separate article.

The decrease in idle power draw is also nice. The latter is already very low, between the Ryzen 5 3600 and 5600X. The only reason we can’t give the Ryzen 5 7600X a more valuable award than “Approved” is its high price. The processor can’t really be described as a reasonable purchase. While it’s technically much more attractive than the Core i5-12400, the price increase after taking the entire platform into account is very significant. In addition to the more expensive memory, the compatible motherboards are significantly more expensive for now (we’re waiting for the B650 chipset models to be released), and there are also those significantly higher cooling requirements that come with a more powerful and more expensive cooler. For example, the SilentiumPC Fera 5 is already on the edge for full-performance cooling. You don’t even have to think about something like “regulating for silent operation”. It’s good that those processors can handle such high temperatures for a long time, but it’s a bit scary that silent cooling could exceed the amounts of money for the processors themselves. And things can’t go that far.

English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš

Testing games are from Jama levova

Special thanks also to Blackmagic Design (for DaVinci Resolve Studio license), Topaz Labs (for licenses to DeNoise AI, Gigapixel AI and Sharpen AI) and Zoner (for Photo Studio X license)

• Contents
• AMD Ryzen 5 7600X in detail
• Methodology: performance tests
• Methodology: how we measure power draw
• Methodology: temperature and clock speed tests
• Test setup
• 3DMark
• Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla
• Borderlands 3
• Counter-Strike: GO
• Cyberpunk 2077
• DOOM Eternal
• F1 2020
• Metro Exodus
• Microsoft Flight Simulator
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• Total War Saga: Troy
• Overall gaming performance
• Gaming performance per euro
• PCMark and Geekbench
• Web performance
• 3D rendering: Cinebench, Blender, ...
• Video 1/2: Adobe Premiere Pro
• Video 2/2: DaVinci Resolve Studio
• Graphics effects: Adobe After Effects
• Video encoding
• Audio encoding
• Broadcasting (OBS and Xsplit)
• Photos 1/2: Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom
• Photos 2/2: Affinity Photo, Topaz Labs AI Apps, ZPS X, ...
• (De)compression
• (De)cryption
• Numerical computing
• Simulations
• Memory and cache tests
• Processor power draw curve
• Average processor power draw
• Performance per watt
• Achieved CPU clock speed
• CPU temperature
• Conclusion