AMD Ryzen 7 9700X Review - The Magic of Zen 5 (2024)

Introduction

Here it is, our first next-gen processor launch of the year, the AMD Ryzen 7 9700X Granite Ridge. This, along with the Ryzen 5 9600X that the company is also launching today, are the first AMD processors implementing the new Zen 5 microarchitecture. The 9700X is a classic 8-core/16-thread processor that's built into the existing Socket AM5 package, and is backwards compatible with all AMD 600-series chipset motherboards with a BIOS update. AMD hasn't updated CPU core counts with this generation, and continues to offer 8-core/16-thread as its top Ryzen 7 tier desktop part, and 6-core/12-thread as its Ryzen 5 part. The series will be expanded next week with 12-core and 16-core Ryzen 9 series parts.

Much of the reason AMD has been sticking to the same CPU core counts as its Ryzen 3000 series from five years ago, is because the company is able to consistently deliver notable performance increases together with generally improved efficiency, with each new generation of Zen. This enables AMD to maintain competitiveness both in gaming and productivity performance with Intel. For the past two generations, AMD has even been releasing mid-lifecycle updates to its desktop processor product stack in the form of the X3D series, which tend to be a gamer's delight. Since AMD implements a new process node with each new Zen generation, it's able to contain power and thermals, too. All in all, the company's desktop processor business seems to be a well-oiled machine that's in a good position to gain market-share.

The Zen 5 microarchitecture introduces several updates to the core design, with a focus on improving the core's number-crunching machinery, particularly its floating-point math capabilities. Updates are also made to the L1 caches, L2 cache latency, the branch prediction unit, and the core's front-end; to enhance parallelism across the core. Unlike its contemporary from the Intel camp, Lion Cove, the Zen 5 core supports SMT to benefit from this intra-core parallelism. AMD replaced the dual-pumped 256-bit FPU on Zen 4 with a full 512-bit FPU, which should see significant speed-ups in floating point workloads that use AVX-512, VNNI, and other instruction sets. This should particularly benefit AI applications. All in all, AMD is claiming a roughly 16% IPC uplift over Zen 4.

Microarchitecture is just half the story, AMD also took the opportunity to improve the process node on which Granite Ridge is built, specifically its CPU core complex (CCD). AMD is building these on the TSMC 4 nm EUV node, specifically N4P. This new node is advertised by TSMC to offer a 22% reduction in power over the 5 nm N5 node that the company builds its Zen 4 chiplets on. Besides this power reduction, the node offers a 6% performance improvement, and likewise a 6% increase in transistor-density. A combination of the performance/watt gains from the N4P process node, and the Zen 5 microarchitecture's IPC gain, allows AMD to give the Ryzen 7 9700X a TDP of 65 W. This is bold, considering the company launched the 7700X with 105 W TDP, although it's not too off-character. The Ryzen 7 3700X, which was its generation's segment-leader, was a 65 W chip.

The Ryzen 9000 series Granite Ridge processors are chiplet-based, much like the Ryzen 7000 series Raphael. The CCDs are new, but AMD is reusing the client I/O die (cIOD), which it built on the 6 nm process. This chiplet contains the processor's memory and PCIe interfaces; besides a basic iGPU that's generally better than what Intel includes with its desktop Core i7 and Core i9 processors.

AMD gave the Ryzen 7 9700X processor a base frequency of 3.80 GHz, with a boost frequency of 5.50 GHz—a minor 100 MHz increase over the clock speeds the 7700X comes with, leveraging improved IPC to account for the generational performance increase despite a lower TDP. Each of the 8 cores has 1 MB of dedicated L2 cache, and they all share a 32 MB L3 cache. The processor features a dual-channel DDR5 memory interface, with native support for DDR5-5600, and certain new memory overclocking capabilities. On top of Curve Optimizer, there's now also Curve Shaper to fine-tune your OC, this feature has also become available for Zen 4, with a BIOS update.

AMD is pricing the Ryzen 7 9700X at $360, which is somewhat cheaper than the $400 it launched the 7700X at. At its price, it squares off against the likes of the Intel Core i7-14700K. As we mentioned, the chip is compatible with any existing 600-series chipset motherboard, and most of these support USB BIOS Flashback. The company is also launching the new AMD 800-series chipset later this summer, led by the AMD X870E, and X870, which offer a few new platform features such as USB4 and Wi-Fi 7.