WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.520 AMD's Ryzen 9000 is a true generational step forward. 00:00:03.520 --> 00:00:08.440 I'm talking bigger level one cache, TSMC's new and improved 4nm FinFET process, 00:00:08.440 --> 00:00:13.120 and a double digit IPC uplift thanks to its Zen 5 architecture. 00:00:13.120 --> 00:00:17.480 And the best part? They're claiming they finally got a non-X3D chip 00:00:17.480 --> 00:00:22.480 that can, on average, beat their giga-chad 5800X3D 00:00:22.640 --> 00:00:28.920 all while using less power. As for Intel, well, they're in the middle 00:00:28.960 --> 00:00:32.600 of an absolute dumpster fire to the point where I actually think 00:00:32.600 --> 00:00:38.080 the more interesting question is whether Team Red can slay themselves. 00:00:38.080 --> 00:00:43.360 Or whether you should just skip this launch until they inevitably come out with an X3D variant 00:00:43.360 --> 00:00:49.920 of these chips that is so strong it makes me forget to segue to our sponsor. 00:00:49.920 --> 00:00:54.360 Because of AMD's staggered launch, we're only looking at the Ryzen 5 9600X 00:00:54.360 --> 00:00:59.880 and Ryzen 7 9700X today. Compared to last-gen, they boost slightly higher 00:00:59.880 --> 00:01:04.680 and level one cache has increased, but the other caches are otherwise untouched 00:01:04.680 --> 00:01:10.640 as our core counts compared to last-generation. However, thanks to TSMC's manufacturing process 00:01:10.640 --> 00:01:17.280 improvements, AMD has managed to pack an extra nearly two billion transistors into these little guys, 00:01:17.280 --> 00:01:22.580 about 26.5%. Too bad that wasn't enough transistors. 00:01:22.580 --> 00:01:26.400 Starting with F123, we see our previous-generation 00:01:26.400 --> 00:01:31.880 X3D chips leading the pack. Now, AMD never claimed that the 9700X 00:01:31.880 --> 00:01:36.920 would be the new gaming champ, but what they did say is that it's supposed to beat 00:01:36.920 --> 00:01:41.460 5,000 series 3DV cache chips in gaming on average. 00:01:41.460 --> 00:01:45.720 We found that the story was a bit more complicated than that, but we'll get to that later. 00:01:45.720 --> 00:01:50.360 For now, I'm happy to tell you that our new 9,000 series chips beat everything else 00:01:50.360 --> 00:01:55.360 on the field except for Intel's 14900KS, and let's be real. 00:01:55.400 --> 00:02:01.600 I can't personally tell the difference between 381 frames per second and 378, 00:02:01.600 --> 00:02:06.460 and I certainly wouldn't wanna deal with the extra heat, power consumption, or cost. 00:02:06.460 --> 00:02:10.240 Moving to a very CPU-bound eSports title in Rocket League, 00:02:10.240 --> 00:02:14.880 wow, did these things ever rip. Do I need over 800 frames per second? 00:02:14.880 --> 00:02:17.880 No, but is it cool that our 9700X 00:02:17.880 --> 00:02:24.520 is heads and tails above everything else? Absolutely, and the 9600X isn't very far behind. 00:02:24.520 --> 00:02:28.680 Now, it's clear that any of the CPUs we tested will do this job just fine, 00:02:28.680 --> 00:02:34.200 even our inexpensive 14100F, but if you were looking for a generational gain, 00:02:34.200 --> 00:02:39.840 it's clear that they can be found. Like in Returnal, where our 9700X wins again. 00:02:39.840 --> 00:02:46.040 Not by much over AMD's go-to-X3D chips, but if we narrow in on the apples-to-apples comparisons 00:02:46.040 --> 00:02:52.340 against the non-X3D predecessors, we're looking at gains of over 20%. 00:02:52.340 --> 00:02:56.900 Now, considering these processors are barely different when we compare the spec tables, 00:02:56.900 --> 00:03:01.100 and that they're using way less power, that is pretty dang impressive 00:03:01.100 --> 00:03:05.100 and makes me very excited for the inevitable X3D refresh. 00:03:05.100 --> 00:03:10.300 Of course, those aren't here yet, and we haven't finished painting a full picture of these. 00:03:10.300 --> 00:03:15.740 You might have noticed that most of what we've tested so far has been at low settings instead of ultra, 00:03:15.740 --> 00:03:19.940 so let's change it up a bit and look at maxed out Total War Warhammer 3. 00:03:19.940 --> 00:03:24.180 This is still a fairly CPU-dependent game, which is why we chose it, 00:03:24.180 --> 00:03:28.380 because we're testing CPUs, but you can see that once you start to turn the details up, 00:03:28.380 --> 00:03:32.580 things get pretty close at the top of the charts. To show you why this matters, 00:03:32.580 --> 00:03:38.540 we also ran this title at low, where you can see that the AMD CPUs do pull farther ahead, 00:03:38.540 --> 00:03:43.300 but realistically, if you're spending this kind of money on your CPU, you're probably not 00:03:43.300 --> 00:03:47.580 gonna be running everything at low. So it's worth taking all of these results as what they are, 00:03:47.580 --> 00:03:51.060 an illustration of how much faster these CPUs are 00:03:51.060 --> 00:03:54.620 in a completely non-GPU bottleneck scenario. 00:03:54.620 --> 00:04:01.700 Probably the most interesting thing here, though, is our little 1400F that could just chugging along down there, 00:04:01.860 --> 00:04:06.560 but we'll come back to that later. First, I wanna talk about our results from our X3D chips. 00:04:06.560 --> 00:04:11.560 The 7800X3D does typically be the prior generation 5800X3D, 00:04:12.580 --> 00:04:18.740 but not by as much as you might think, both in averages and in all important 1% lows. 00:04:18.740 --> 00:04:23.940 So if you're a gamer, realistically, our recommendation from two and a half years ago 00:04:23.940 --> 00:04:28.380 hasn't really changed other than that, you might be able to save yourself a buck 00:04:28.380 --> 00:04:31.820 with the newer, cheaper 5700X3D. 00:04:31.820 --> 00:04:36.580 We didn't actually run the numbers on this chip, but it's only marginally slower than its big brother, 00:04:36.580 --> 00:04:39.860 and when paired with a budget board and some DDR4 memory, 00:04:39.860 --> 00:04:45.020 it is an outstanding value. X3D's weakness, however, is in productivity, 00:04:45.020 --> 00:04:50.380 and this is where the fun begins. Intel was already behind in PugetBent Photoshop, 00:04:50.380 --> 00:04:55.180 but now AMD has increased their lead with a 10 plus percent gain 00:04:55.180 --> 00:05:00.560 over their last-gen 7000 series. In handbrake, our H.264 results were disappointing 00:05:00.560 --> 00:05:04.380 with the last-generation Ryzen 7 beating the new hotness, 00:05:04.380 --> 00:05:07.500 but AV1 encoding is a whole other story 00:05:07.500 --> 00:05:11.460 thanks to AM5's switch to a true 512-bit data path 00:05:11.460 --> 00:05:16.900 instead of double-pumping 256. We see a similar improvement on the 9600X in Blender, 00:05:16.900 --> 00:05:21.020 but curiously, the 9700X isn't gonna give you a reason 00:05:21.020 --> 00:05:27.620 to upgrade over last-gen. Perhaps it's not as powerful as we thought it would be? 00:05:27.660 --> 00:05:32.180 More on that later. And unfortunately, that trend of barely changing 00:05:32.180 --> 00:05:36.420 continues with Godot Compile, where we have some marginal-generational uplift 00:05:36.420 --> 00:05:40.100 on the Ryzen 7 and then slightly better results on the Ryzen 5. 00:05:40.140 --> 00:05:44.580 7-Zip is a tad better for both in compression, but then worse in decompression, 00:05:44.580 --> 00:05:47.700 and while Cinebench does see an improvement, it's minimal. 00:05:47.700 --> 00:05:51.540 So what's going on here? As it turns out, a lot of it has to do 00:05:51.540 --> 00:05:54.860 with the lower power consumption that we mentioned earlier. 00:05:54.860 --> 00:05:59.860 In Cinebench, our 7700X consumes an average of 144 watts, 00:06:00.140 --> 00:06:04.420 while the 9700X is steady at 88 watts. 00:06:04.420 --> 00:06:09.100 That is almost a 40% decrease in power consumption 00:06:09.100 --> 00:06:14.860 while netting slightly more performance. And here in this part of Canada, where power is cheap, 00:06:14.860 --> 00:06:17.940 it's hard to get too excited about this kind of efficiency, 00:06:17.940 --> 00:06:21.340 but for other parts of the world, you could save so much on power, 00:06:21.340 --> 00:06:24.360 you could treat yourself to a PTM7950 thermal pad 00:06:24.360 --> 00:06:32.020 from LTTstore.com. And check this out. Sure, our 14700K is streets ahead in terms of raw numbers, 00:06:32.020 --> 00:06:36.700 but it's using almost 250 watts out of the box to get there. 00:06:36.700 --> 00:06:40.780 That is almost triple the power for just under twice the score. 00:06:40.780 --> 00:06:44.780 And if you toss out those e-cores, we can see that in single core testing 00:06:44.780 --> 00:06:49.780 on both the 97 and 9600X, Intel is losing by a wide margin. 00:06:50.500 --> 00:06:53.540 Now part of this could be because AMD seems to be leaving 00:06:53.540 --> 00:06:59.820 some performance on the table. Check this out. In Cinebench, our Ryzen 7 refuses to reach 00:06:59.820 --> 00:07:05.540 the advertised 5.5 gigahertz boost clock, capping out instead at around 5.2. 00:07:05.540 --> 00:07:09.780 And I know what you're thinking. Well, that 5.5 is just a single core boost. 00:07:09.780 --> 00:07:13.380 It's just for gaming, except that on our Ryzen 5, 00:07:13.380 --> 00:07:17.140 it does manage to hit its maximum advertised boost 00:07:17.140 --> 00:07:22.980 across all cores in multi-threaded workloads. Not all the time, mind you, but sometimes, 00:07:22.980 --> 00:07:29.540 our Ryzen 7 doesn't seem to be defective. It hits 5.5 in games and even in other stress tests, 00:07:29.540 --> 00:07:33.020 like OCCT-Linpack and outside of games, 00:07:33.020 --> 00:07:36.380 it's using the same or a similar power envelope to do so. 00:07:36.380 --> 00:07:41.020 So what gives here? And I know what you're thinking. It's gotta be cooling, right? 00:07:41.020 --> 00:07:45.460 Well, here's the thing. This might be clear to some of you already, 00:07:45.460 --> 00:07:50.700 but less watts means less heat. So where AMD was already crushing Intel, 00:07:50.700 --> 00:07:55.060 now we're seeing even better performance. These chips run so cool. 00:07:55.060 --> 00:07:58.620 I'm talking a 22 degree drop on average on the Ryzen 7 00:07:58.620 --> 00:08:01.900 and 16 degrees on the Ryzen 5. 00:08:01.900 --> 00:08:05.020 So for anyone who hates seeing high CPU temps, 00:08:05.020 --> 00:08:09.060 AMD just dummied Intel and did it efficiently. 00:08:09.060 --> 00:08:12.500 So it's not thermals. What is it? We'll get to it. 00:08:12.500 --> 00:08:15.820 First, I wanna talk about where this efficiency uplift comes from. 00:08:15.820 --> 00:08:19.860 It's partially thanks to AMD's new two-ahead branch prediction. 00:08:19.860 --> 00:08:23.260 This is gonna be really simplified down, but here we go. 00:08:23.260 --> 00:08:27.780 Let's say you're running a program and that program is trying to get from point A to point B. 00:08:27.780 --> 00:08:33.060 Without branch prediction, at every fork in the road, it has to stop and figure out which way to go, 00:08:33.060 --> 00:08:36.220 then go down the right path. With branch prediction, 00:08:36.220 --> 00:08:41.540 your CPU can predict the path ahead of time, removing the need to stop and think at each fork. 00:08:41.540 --> 00:08:46.100 With two-ahead prediction, the CPU is guessing the next two steps. 00:08:46.100 --> 00:08:50.860 And by dual porting the instruction fetching, AMD is able to basically check the guesswork 00:08:50.860 --> 00:08:54.980 about twice as quickly, which speeds up the entire process. 00:08:54.980 --> 00:08:58.460 Now there is still a penalty if they get a prediction wrong, 00:08:58.460 --> 00:09:03.460 but it's not any worse than how they were doing things before. So it's all gains, baby. 00:09:03.460 --> 00:09:07.180 So what's not to love here? Well, there are a few things. 00:09:07.180 --> 00:09:10.380 We are not getting the XDNA2 AI component 00:09:10.380 --> 00:09:14.140 that is present in the StrixPoint mobile counterpart to these chips. 00:09:14.140 --> 00:09:18.180 Instead, AMD is claiming that the CPU can act as an AI accelerator, 00:09:18.180 --> 00:09:22.740 which is a pretty honest takedown of the whole AI frenzy 00:09:22.740 --> 00:09:27.780 that AMD themselves is participating in, but it could make a slight difference down the line, 00:09:27.780 --> 00:09:31.300 especially for power consumption. A bigger issue for me though, 00:09:31.300 --> 00:09:34.420 is that more Ryzen 9000 chips are coming, 00:09:34.420 --> 00:09:39.980 but everything AMD has announced is going to be more expensive than what we're looking at today, 00:09:39.980 --> 00:09:45.340 which continues AMD's troubling trend of ignoring their Ryzen 3 customers. 00:09:45.340 --> 00:09:49.060 We also think that while efficiency is exciting to the data center folks 00:09:49.060 --> 00:09:54.860 who are eagerly awaiting Epic Turin with its unthinkable 192 core counts, 00:09:54.860 --> 00:09:57.860 most desktop users might have preferred to see AMD 00:09:57.860 --> 00:10:00.940 give these chips a little more juice by default. 00:10:00.940 --> 00:10:04.900 And it's finally time to talk about the weirdness that we observed. 00:10:04.900 --> 00:10:08.420 We tested the 9700X with PBO enabled 00:10:08.420 --> 00:10:14.820 and with its power set to unlimited. And what we found was that it easily drew over 140 watts, 00:10:14.820 --> 00:10:19.060 putting it in the same neighborhood as its predecessor in terms of power consumption 00:10:19.060 --> 00:10:22.340 and resulting in some measurable performance gains. 00:10:22.340 --> 00:10:27.180 Of course though, this is technically overclocking and with the recent reliability issues 00:10:27.180 --> 00:10:32.360 that have plagued Intel users, I can understand why some of you might shy away from this. 00:10:32.360 --> 00:10:37.460 So I guess what I'm saying is, I wish AMD had just officially under warranty 00:10:37.460 --> 00:10:41.620 given these things more juice so that we could reach those advertised boost clocks 00:10:41.620 --> 00:10:45.940 across all cores like we did once we enabled PBO. 00:10:45.940 --> 00:10:50.860 Also, last thing, the lowest tier AM5 B840 motherboards 00:10:50.860 --> 00:10:54.540 that are supposedly supposed to help make this platform more affordable 00:10:54.540 --> 00:10:58.100 don't officially support PCIe Gen 4. 00:10:58.100 --> 00:11:03.220 So if you do try to save a buck on your motherboard, you could end up seriously limiting your graphics 00:11:03.220 --> 00:11:07.060 and your storage bandwidth, which is just, it's one more knife in the side 00:11:07.060 --> 00:11:12.300 of AMD's budget conscious customers. With that in mind, we thought it would be interesting 00:11:12.300 --> 00:11:17.460 to see how AMD's new offerings stack up against what you can't buy from AMD right now. 00:11:17.460 --> 00:11:23.860 A CPU that costs less than half as much money, fits in a cheaper board that does support PCIe Gen 4 00:11:23.860 --> 00:11:27.500 and comes with a stock cooler. The results aren't amazing, 00:11:27.500 --> 00:11:31.700 but when you don't even have a competitor in the weight class, you kind of forfeit the fight 00:11:31.700 --> 00:11:35.260 and Intel's 14100F puts up pretty respectable results 00:11:35.260 --> 00:11:38.700 at less than half the price. Now it struggles in productivity 00:11:38.700 --> 00:11:44.580 and struggles even more in CPU-bound games, but if you're on a budget, it's a pretty compelling value. 00:11:44.580 --> 00:11:48.940 Of course though, it's based on a platform that has no future upgrade path 00:11:48.940 --> 00:11:52.580 and you aren't saving that much compared to AM4, 00:11:52.580 --> 00:11:56.700 which by the way, AMD just released another refresh for 00:11:56.700 --> 00:12:00.140 with the XT lineup. And they also confirmed that AM5 00:12:00.140 --> 00:12:05.260 is gonna be supported until at least 2027. In conclusion then, solid chips, 00:12:05.260 --> 00:12:10.700 even better if you're adventurous and turn on PBO, but not really for gamers. 00:12:10.700 --> 00:12:16.420 So I'm kind of more excited to see the matchup that's coming then between the 9800X3D 00:12:16.420 --> 00:12:21.620 and Intel's Aero Lake, which supposedly is dropping hyperthreading altogether. 00:12:21.620 --> 00:12:26.100 Huge move and I don't think anybody knows what that's gonna mean for gaming performance 00:12:26.100 --> 00:12:29.140 as they go to a purely big little architecture. 00:12:29.140 --> 00:12:33.220 Just like nobody knows what on earth would happen if I didn't segue to today's sponsor. 00:12:33.220 --> 00:12:37.540 If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe go check out our review of the 7800X3D. 00:12:37.540 --> 00:12:41.860 Somehow that chip and even its predecessor are just killing it. 00:12:41.860 --> 00:12:44.780 Years later, outstanding gaming CPUs.