AMD Ryzen 7600x Review

Introduction

Thanks to the new Zen 4 architecture, the Ryzen 5 7600x was able to achieve what the Ryzen 5600x did before. Taking the reins as the best mid-tier gaming-focused go-to chip. But this is not all. Thanks to generational improvements, such as a considerable Clock- uplift, the Mid-Tier model is now also capable of harder workflows. It may not be comparable with specifically build hardware such as the Ryzen 9 lineup, but definitely comparable to last year's Ryzen 7.

Ryzen 7000 Lineup and Pricing

On September 27, 2022, AMD's Ryzen 7000 lineup of mid to high-tier CPU launches. Similarly to the Ryzen 5000 launch in 2020, there will be 4 models available immediately:

• Ryzen 9 7950X
• Ryzen 9 7900X
• Ryzen 7 7700X
• Ryzen 5 7600x

Although launching 4x models at once can be seen as a tradition by now, this year's Ryzen Lineup will not feature a Ryzen 7 X800x, but a 7700X instead. As of now, there has been no announcement or confirmation of additional CPU's for the near future. However, as AMD has filled up its lineup with other models in the past, we believe it is just a matter of time until a 7800x/7300x/... will be unveiled.

 Pricing

Although we have expected it, the new Ryzen 7000 does not come with a price increase. Quite the reverse! While the Ryzen 7600x and 7900x are getting the same price tag as their Ryzen 5000 predecessors did, the 7950x got a $100 price reduction over the last generation's predecessor.

AM5 Socket

Although the price stayed the same (or lower) despite inflation, upgrading to a new Ryzen 7000 CPU is not as easy as it was before.
With Ryzen 7000, AMD introduced 4 new types of Chipsets: X670E, X670, B670E, and B670. All of which, are using their new AM5 Socket.

Since the first Ryzen CPU as well as most other CPUs before that, AMD has been using a PGA system for their chips. In contrast to Intel, the connecting pins between the CPU and the Motherboard have been sitting on the CPU side. 

With this year's Ryzen 7000 lineup, this will change. From now on, AMD's Ryzen CPUs will rely on the same approach Intel has been using for decades. 

This does come with quite some consequences though. One of Ryzen most beloved features is it's backward and forward compatibility. Not only did AMD keep up their promise of making their Motherboards and CPUs compatible for an unprecedented amount of time. The moment their customers wanted to enlarge this timeframe for the Ryzen 5000 Line, AMD followed their wishes.

With the introduction of a new socket, however, keeping this promise becomes an impossible task. 
Therefore, although the prices have not increased, an upgrade to a Ryzen 7000 CPU will not only include the CPU and a new Motherboard, but also a new Set of RAM as Ryzen 7000 is simultaneously updating its socket and RAM generation.

Zen 4

Zen 4 is the architecture powering AMD's new Ryzen 7000 Lineup. Similarly to Zen 3, the new iteration still features up to 2 CCDs, however, this year it is built on TSMC's 5nm process.

Hidden under the generational number increase is also a doubling of L2 Cache, Up-to 15% IPC increase, DDR 5 support, PCIe Gen. 5 Support and 5Ghz boost by default.

On the higher end, Zen 4 is limited by a maximum of 24 cores, a version that may come out at a later date.

A useful addition to Zen 4's capabilities compared to previous versions is the mandatory addition of AMD's RDNA 2 graphical unit. Although it has been emphasized multiple times by AMD, and we would confirm it, it is NOT a Game-ready GPU. Featuring only 2 cores at 2200Mhz, this miniature of a GPU is meant to be used solely to run a monitor.
Thanks to the addition of a iGPU, debugging of a system has been made much easier.

Benchmarks

Testing Equipment

In order to fully explore the Ryzen 7600x's capabilities, we compared it to the previous Ryzen lineup as well as Intel's 12th Gen Lineup.

The Ryzen 7000 Benchmark setup consist of a Gigabyte Aorus Master X670E in combination with 2x sticks of G.Skill TridentZ5 Neo DDR5 6000MhzCL30 16Gb.

The Intel 12th gen setup consists of an ASRock Z690 Taichi motherboard combined with the exact same ram used in the Ryzen 7000 Setup.

The Ryzen 5000 setup consists of an Asus X570 motherboard and 2x sticks of Thermaltake Thoughram 3600Mhz CL18.

Each setup has been used with an individual Samsung 980 Pro SSD, a be quiet! Dark Power Pro 12 power supply and an Asus TUF RTX 3090 TI GPU.

The result of each benchmark shown below is an average value gained upon 3 individual runs.

Synthetic Benchmarks

Cinebench R23 Single Thread

In Cinebench R23, the 7600x scored 1957pts, placing it at the very top of the list directly underneath its bigger 7900x counterpart. Although high clock speeds and strong single-thread performance have always been one of Intel's strengths, the Ryzen 7000 was able to dominate in this category.

Cinebench R23 Multi Thread

Allowing every core and thread to do the work changed it quite significantly. Understandably, the 7600x could not make it to the top of the list due to its 6c/12t design compared to a 24-core 12900k. Despite the relatively low core count, however, the 7600x stayed just a tiny step behind its 12600k counterpart.

PCMark 10

The general system benchmark PCMark 10 positioned the 7900x on the 4th spot with 9025pts. Similarly to the Cinebench Single-Thread, it was just a step behind the 7900x. Compared to the 12600k however, it has a significant lead.

Handbrake h264-h265

Encoding a 2-minute-long h264 4k video file into h265 took 427 seconds for the new 6700x. This positions it slightly ahead of the 12600k, but far behind the i7 12700k.

Premiere Pro

Exporting a 2-minute-long timeline with multiple effects using the 4k YouTube preset took 251 seconds. Surprisingly, this places the 7600x behind the lower-tiered 12500.

Time Spy

The Time Spy benchmarks suite gave the 7600x a total of 18564 points on a system level and  10602 points for the CPU alone. In both cases, this positions the 7600x slightly behind the Ryzen 7 5700x, but far in front of the 5600x.

Immediately noticeable is the fact that this benchmark is heavily favorable for Intel CPUs as nearly all of them are glued to the top of the benchmark chart.

Corona Render

Rendering the standard Corona image took the 7600x a total of 91 seconds. Similarly to many benchmarks before, this one highlights the comparable performance levels of the 7600x and 5700x. Compared to its predecessor, the 7600x was able to complete the task significantly faster.

Blender 

Using Blender, we rendered the iconic BMW image. This took a total of 155 seconds positioning the 7600x 20 seconds behind its 12600k counterpart

3DMark CPU Profile

By using 3DMark's CPU Profile Benchmark, we can compare how the CPUs perform compared to each other in relation to the thread count used.

We were able to observe that the superior single-core performance of the Ryzen 7000 line stacks up from start to finish until the total thread count on the chip prevents any further improvement. Compared to Ryzen 5000, each additional Thread was able to vastly improve the overall performance. The only CPU that was able to compete with the 7600x was the Intel 12900k.

Gaming Benchmarks

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the 7600x managed to keep the FPS counter at 253FPS on average. This positions it at the top of the list with the other Ryzen 7000 CPUs and AMD's own 5800X3D.

The only Intel CPU that was able to keep up with AMD's lineup was their top-tier 12900k.

Far Cry 6

In Far Cry 6, the 7600x scored 190 average FPS, this positions it again at the very top of the list next to all the other AMD Ryzen 7000 and the 5800X3D CPUs.

Metro Exodus

In Metro Exodus, the 7600x got his time to shine. Keeping the Average FPS above 207, it landed at the very top of the list with a significant distance from any comparably priced alternative.

F1 2020

As shown in AMD's Ryzen 7000 reveal presentation, F1 2020 is the game that allows the new CPUs to show their true potential. Keeping the average FPS counter above 429 FPS created an obscene distance to any other CPU including Intel's best 12900k.

Ryzen 7600x vs 5600x

The most important factor when deciding if a generational upgrade is worth it will always be the performance gain.

Comparing the 7600x to the 5600x head-to-head in all of our performed benchmarks demonstrates how big the generational upgrade going from Zen 3 to Zen 4 truly is.

While the average Performance is being pushed by 29%, the biggest gain stems from the 7600x superior Gaming performance. 

Averaging all of Game-Benchmarks showed that the 7600x can maintain 36% more performance compared to its predecessor. 

But the 7600x is not only for gamers. Pushing the Heavy-workload performance by 24% showed that the 7600x can also be used in a working environment. In fact, looking back at all of our Work-Peformance-related benchmarks, we were able to observe that the 7600x behaves in a similar fashion as the 5700x did. But with an additional Gaming advantage.

Ryzen 7600x vs 12600k

After the generational upgrade, the next most important question is how it stacks up against the competition.

Summarizing all of our benchmarks showed that, although there are significant improvements, they are not as apparent as compared to a 5600x.

In the gaming department, however, they are. With a 24% uplift, there is no question that the 7600x will dominate the gaming market compared to the 12600k.

However, with a 12% overall performance bump, the difference between a 12600k and 7600x isn't as big as you might have hoped. Looking closer at the benchmark results shows that this low score stems from the Average Sofware score consisting of -3%.

This however was indeed expected. While the 7600x dominated in thread-oriented performance benchmarks such as Cinebench Single Thread, 3DMark CPU Profile 1-8, PCMark 10, and Handbrake. There was no possibility that the Ryzen 7600x's 6c/12t could provide as much multi-thread performance as a 10c/16t 12600k.

This is then the reason why we can see such a mixed-up result.

Looking back at the average performance increases, we can now understand why the 7600x is such an improvement in the gaming category, while the working category consists of a single-threaded sub-category dominated by the 7600x, and a multi-threaded category dominated by the 12600k.

Summary

A Gaming Machine with an additional Tool Case.

This is the best description we could come up with regarding the new 7600x.

In the gaming category, there were just a few instances in which the 7600x couldn't dominate. And as far as the benchmarks we did are concerned, those were dominated by the bigger 7900x counterpart.

Compared to Intel's current lineup, there is nothing comparable to a 7600x at this time. None of their 12th gen CPU's were able to keep up with Ryzen 7000's superior performance. The CPU that came the closest to the 7600x was the Intel 12900k, a CPU much more expensive and not primarily designed with gaming in mind.

Looking at AMD's own lineup, there are indeed better alternatives. Each of this year's Ryzen 7000 CPUs was able to perform similarly give or take a few fps. However, compared to the Ryzen 7700x, 7900x , and 7950x, the 7600x is much more affordable. This makes it the perfect candidate for a gaming-oriented PC.

Coming back to our fitting description, the Tool Case. Additionally to the 7600x dominating the gaming-related benchmark charts, it can also act as a workhorse. As most of our work-oriented benchmarks showed, the 7600x's performance is shockingly close and mostly above, the 5700x, a CPU that was pretty well equipped to be used for heavy-duty workflows.

However, we believe the 7600x's time has not come yet. Additionally to the built-in 2-Core GPU, AMD made sure to hide an encoder inside the new Zen 4 chips. Similarly to how Intel's Quicksynch technology works, this could provide AMD's current lineup with a significant increase in performance related to workflows that include videos. 
Our Benchmark of a Premiere Pro Export showed that the 7600x is currently 20% behind the 12600k. However, at this stage, the 12600k's encoder is helping this process. Something that the 7600x is not yet doing.

As the usage of the new encoder has to be implemented on the software side, we would like to wait for our final verdict on the 7600x's overall working-related performance. This may be one of the first times that an update gives performance instead of taking it.

Disregarding the Video-performance section until the updates arrive. The Gaming performance is undisputed As of now, we do not see any alternatives available that can push as much FPS while having a sub 300$ pricetag. Therefore, if we had to build a PC with Gaming being the primary focus, the 7600x would be a go-to choice.