AMD Ryzen 9 7900X and Ryzen 5 7600X review: welcome to the future

As we mentioned earlier, we've tested with both DDR5-5200 and DDR5-6000 RAM for our Ryzen 7000 and Intel 12th-gen systems. For DDR4-based systems, including Intel 11th-gen and AMD Ryzen 5000, we're using DDR4-3600. The 6000MT/s results are labelled as such; if a result is unlabelled then it is DDR5-5200 for the DDR5 systems and DDR4-3600 for DDR4. We'll examine the impact of different DDR5 speeds in more detail on page five of this review.

Anyway - in these tests, we'll examine how the 7600 and 7900X behaves in Cyberpunk 2077, as well as two recent releases from series that have featured prominently in our previous CPU benchmarks: Far Cry 6, renowned for its single-core reliance, and Crysis 3 Remastered, a Digital Foundry staple. We've opted for highly repeatable scenes here from a variety of sources here - an in-game cutscene, a brief open gameplay segment along a fixed route and an in-game benchmark.

Remember that you can mouse over the results in the tables below (as long as you're using a desktop browser rather than a phone) to get dynamically generated performance readouts for all processors we've tested. Meanwhile, clicking the graph swaps you into percentages, making it a bit easier to judge relative performance at a glance.

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 is our second RT benchmark, showing how RT performance can add even more load to the CPU and cause CPU bottlenecking in some scenarios. This benchmark, taken from a motorcycle run along the busy city streets, also demonstrates the game's reliance on high-speed memory, with big performance advantages evident with DDR5-6000 over DDR5-5200.

This also ensures a big performance lead for Ryzen 7000 and Intel 12th-gen over their predecessors. Intel maintains the gaming crown here, with a 10 percent lead over the 7900X, while the 12600K is six percent faster than the 7600X. In terms of gen-on-gen numbers, the 7600X is a stunning 48 percent faster than the 5600X - that's the double whammy of DDR5 and a new process node, amongst other changes. The 7900X is also 39 percent faster than the 5950X in this bench.

Far Cry 6

The single-core reliance from Far Cries past returns in FC6. Here, the 12900K is faster than the 7900X when both are afforded 6000MT/s RAM, to the tune of six percent; we see the same margin for the 12600K over the 7600X. The 7600X remains a solid step over the 5600X, with a 17 percent frame-rate edge at 1080p.

Crysis 3 Remastered

Crysis 3 Remastered allows us to revisit our favourite scene from early on in the original game's campaign, which oscillates between character closeups and complex distant geometry to load both CPU and GPU. We see less of an improvement from faster RAM here, so it's not surprising that the generational difference between Ryzen 5000 and 7000 is also muted. The 7600X is just six percent faster than the 5600X, while the 7900X is two percent to the good over the 5950X. Intel remains top dog in this test, with a 10 percent lead for the two companies' flagships and a five percent lead in the mid-range.

Now let's move onto one final diversion: testing the 7600X and 7900X at different RAM frequencies. Where's the price/performance sweet spot for DDR5? The next page reveals all.

AMD Ryzen 9 7900X and Ryzen 5 7600X analysis

• Introduction, test rig and content creation benchmarks
• Gaming benchmarks: Flight Simulator 2020, Hitman 3
• Gaming benchmarks: Counter-Strike: GO, Metro Exodus EE, Black Ops Cold War
• Gaming benchmarks: Cyberpunk 2077, Far Cry 6, Crysis 3 Remastered [This Page]
• Gaming benchmarks: Memory bandwidth analysis
• AMD Ryzen 9 7900X and Ryzen 5 7600X: the Digital Foundry verdict