AMD Ryzen 9000 Series Review – 9600X & 9700X

Introduction and Technical Specifications

Introduction

Relentless. The pace of product development is utterly relentless. It doesn’t seem five minutes ago we were cautiously optimistic about the new ‘Ryzen’ idea of processors from AMD and they appeared, delivering on all counts. If the initial Zen/Ryzen range was good, the 2000 series genuinely challenged for top-spot honours. We have no idea whether it really did, but it always felt like AMD slapped Intel out of their complacency and forced them to bring new hardware to market quicker than they planned.

Even if that was true, the 3000 Ryzen series really eliminated any and all doubt. AMD were back with a bang. Wallets everywhere were suddenly emptied. The 5000 series Ryzen processors were the last major product upgrade.  It was the sunlit uplands at the end of a very long, hard road. Not many companies get to see a goal and attain it. Fewer still recognise there was a fault in the foundations of their design. With the Zen architecture AMD totally did a 180 on their whole prospects. So much so they could even investigate the X3D V-Cache idea, with great success. The 7000 range of processors refined the 5000 ones, and included a lot of cutting edge, high bandwidth elements. Now the AMD Ryzen 9000 series are upon us. What are they bringing to the table?

Well, like those that came before, this is a refinement rather than a wholesale revolution. Rightfully so. Intel haven’t really reinvented the wheel since the 12th gen, merely refined, and so we’re not shocked to see AMD do likewise. Especially as the 5000 series was already great, the 7000s even better, but neither had a significant flaw that required addressing. Now AMD have brought us more efficient processors and very strong memory performance. That isn’t all that’s available on the newest Ryzen CPUs. Let’s crack on.

Technical Specifications

There are four new processors in the Ryzen 9000 Series. We’ve got the first two today. Given that manufacturers usually lead with their flagship model it’s a refreshing change that AMD are starting at the other end. If you’re the type of power user who is only interested in the biggest Ryzen 9 models then you can at least stare at this specification table whilst you await our review later on this month. For now, we have the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X. Unquestionably dropping the TDP down to 65W is the headline feature. It is mind-blowing that AMD have managed to take a very similar underlying CPU design and made it so much more efficient than the equivalent 7000 models.

Box Design

Processor boxes are never going to be very interesting. Since CPUs have stopped having rubbish coolers included with them we’ve managed to get much smaller package sizes. What we enjoy here is how AMD have designed the packaging to focus the eye to the centre where the processor is.