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The AMD Ryzen 7 9700X and the Ryzen 9 7900X are some of the most powerful mid-premium gaming chips you can buy. Both processors are designed to handle the most powerful graphics cards on the market. However, choosing between a newer Ryzen 7 and an older Ryzen 9 has always been quite difficult. With the IPC jumps of this generation, things aren't any easier.
Let's dissect the offerings and find out whether waiting for the Zen 5 chip would be worth it.
The AMD Ryzen 7 9700X and the Ryzen 9 7900X are some of the most powerful gaming CPUs
The Ryzen 7 9700X and the Ryzen 9 7900X are chips that are filled to the brim with hardware. However, things work a bit differently for both of them given they are based on slightly different architectures. A head-to-head specs comparison won't reveal much about what you can expect in real-world test scenarios.
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Specs comparison
For a brief overview, the upcoming 9700X is an eight-core and 16-threaded processor. The 7900X, on the other hand, was launched as a premium offering. Under the hood, it's got 12 cores and 24 threads.
However, given the chip is based on the older 7000 series offering, each one of those cores is slower. This gives an opportunity for the newer processor to catch up.
Newer technologies also mean jumps in power and thermal efficiency. While the 9700X is just a 65W chip, the older 7900X can draw up to 170W. In our review of the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X, we noticed the chip go even further under full load.
The detailed specs of the chips are as follows:
Read more: AMD Ryzen 5 9600X vs Ryzen 7 7700X
Performance comparison
Performance is the real manifest of what you can expect from CPUs. However, we still don't have independent reviewer data of any of the Ryzen 9000 processors. We'll have to wait for the launch date to get the full details.
For now, we have the synthetic benchmark scores of the two chips, which should give us some good idea of how big the difference would be. Below is a comparison of the scores achieved by either processor in Cinebench R23 and Geekbench 6. We sourced the data from Nanoreview.
The 9700X beats the older CPU in terms of single-core performance by a huge margin. Since gaming performance is mostly determined by this metric, we expect the upcoming processor to be the better deal. However, in terms of multi-core performance, the older chip still takes the lead. It could be better for content creation and 3D rendering purposes.
AMD Ryzen 7 9700X vs Ryzen 9 7900X: Final verdict
Looking at the prices, the recommendation tips towards the new AMD Ryzen 7 9700X. However, you must wait for the independent reviewer data before pulling the trigger on the chip. Looking at the advertised IPC improvements, there's no reason to upgrade to the new chips right now if you're already on the Ryzen 7 7700X or the Ryzen 9 7900X.
