AMD Ryzen 5 7600X review: A great CPU muted by AM5’s high costs

October 03, 2022 Edit

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Announcements of CPU processors tend to focus on bigger, better, faster—which usually means concentrated attention on the flagship chip. But back in August, when AMD finally spilled details about Ryzen 7000, the most startling info wasn’t about the top-of-the-line, beefy Ryzen 9 7950X. Instead, Team Red shocked everyone by saying that the humble Ryzen 5 7600X could beat Intel’s flagship Core i9-12900K.

Now that the 7600X is here, it’s clear that AMD wasn’t exaggerating. This 6-core, 12-thread chip is beastly in gaming, able to go to toe-to-toe with rivals far above its weight class. And it can do so in multiple titles.

We’d call it a clear win for AMD—except the chip is dragged down by the very advances that help its siblings shine.

Ryzen 7000, recapped

You can read our initial write-up about Ryzen 7000 for the full technical details of AMD’s first Zen 4 chips. (Alternatively, you can zip through the condensed summary if you’re short on time.) But in a nutshell, the launch chips sport substantial improvements in clock speed and performance over Ryzen 5000, their predecessor.

AMD Ryzen 7000 prices — The launch line up for Ryzen 7000 is made up of four chips.

AMD

These advancements are the result of several firsts for AMD. Ryzen 7000 chips are the first on 5nm, first to use Zen 4 architecture, and the first compatible with the company’s new AM5 socket. AM5 offers a couple of major advancements over the long-lived, much-beloved socket AM4 platform—namely, support for lightning-fast PCIe 5 components and DDR5 memory, plus a shift to an LGA design that supports higher power use (and ends the era of bent CPU pins, as LGA moves pins to the motherboard socket instead).

AM5 socket (angled shot) — Ryzen 7000 chips use an LGA design, which moves the pins from the CPU to the motherboard socket.

Adam Patrick Murray / IDG

And Ryzen 7000 definitely stretches into that higher energy draw. For the 7600X, you’re looking at an expected wattage of 105 watts drawn under load. If the chip draws more power while boosting, its cap as provided by its AM5 socket is 230W. The 5600X was rated at 65W, with a limit of 142W through its AM4 socket.

Ryzen 7000’s other major new feature is integrated graphics, which will make it easier to troubleshoot problems with your PC—you won’t have to have a dedicated graphics card plugged in to get a video signal. And when budget chips eventually launch, you can save cash by skipping the added expense of a discrete card for basic-use PCs.

Performance

As a 6-core, 12-thread chip, the Ryzen 5 7600X is ostensibly branded as a more affordable mid-tier option—a processor meant for focused use in gaming and productivity (Microsoft Office, web browsing, photo editing, etc.) But this CPU can often flex its muscles as hard as bigger, badder processors in those areas, if not harder. Let’s dive into the numbers.

A note about our data: The benchmark scores in this review were generously provided to us by our colleague Sebastian Schenzinger from our sister site, PC Welt. (You can read his Ryzen 7600X review in German.) For detailed info on the test machines used in his benchmarks, jump to end of this article.

Gaming

We’ll start with the unexpected battle between the Ryzen 5 7600X and Intel Core i9-12900K. It’s a riveting showdown—at 1080p (the most popular resolution for gaming), AMD’s 7600X edges out Team Blue’s flagship part in 5 of the 12 games in PC Welt’s benchmark suite.

^{To view our benchmark charts at full size, right-click (PC) or long press (mobile) on the image and then open it in a new tab or window.}

The size of the wins are uneven, however, with the Ryzen 5 7600X taking a clear lead in Shadow of the Tomb Raider and the 12900K punching harder in Cyberpunk 2077. In other games, the difference is much smaller—just bare percentage points. Regardless, you can still see that AMD’s claims weren’t just carefully curated marketing. Its 6-core, 12-thread processor can hold its own against Intel’s $589 20-core, 24-thread flagship CPU. Sure, the story would be more incredible if the 7600X won in every single benchmark, but this outcome is still a feat.

Also interesting is the 7600X’s performance compared to Ryzen 5000’s gaming demon, the incredible Ryzen 7 5800X3D. The latter (and its fancy 3D V-Cache tech) stole the gaming crown from Intel upon launch back in April, but despite being superseded by Ryzen 7000, it still has plenty of pep in its step. On the whole, the 5800X3D outperforms the 7600X across the board—an interesting fact to keep in mind, given sale prices for the 5800X3D have dropped it into the mid-$300s as of late.

^{To view our benchmark charts at full size, right-click (PC) or long press (mobile) on the image and then open it in a new tab or window.}

Not convinced of the Ryzen 5 7600X’s accomplishments? We can drop down to 720p. It’s no longer a common gaming resolution, but reducing the number of pixels provides a less diluted measurement of CPU performance. Because the GPU has the easier job at lower resolutions, it’s on the CPU to keep up.

Like at 1080p, you’ll see similar trends in chip performance between the 7600X and the 12900K (including the same uneven variance between individual games), though the percentage differences widen. The same holds true for the 7600X and 5800X3D.

Production

Outside of gaming, you’ll most commonly use a processor like the Ryzen 5 7600X for light photo editing and infrequent encoding of game captures or a crunched-down home video. Impressively, the Ryzen 5 7600X sings in Adobe Photoshop—it even bests the Core i9-12900K by a tiny amount.