6 must-know details about AMD’s divisive new Ryzen 9000 CPUs

After a brief delay, AMD’s Ryzen 9000 finally has hit shelves—but to everyone’s surprise, the first processors come with surprising caveats. Despite offering plenty to like, the $279 Ryzen 5 9600X and $359 Ryzen 7 9700X also sport uneven performance improvements.

The reasons for those benchmark results are nuanced, however. We at PCWorld have even delayed the release of our review to better tease out those fine-grain details. (You can watch us explain why in this YouTube video, where we also discuss our initial results in-depth.) But for those of you at home, wondering if Team Red’s latest silicon is worth your time and cash, here are the top 6 things you should know about Ryzen 9000—at least until the Ryzen 9 processors launch next week on August 15.

Big improvements in single-core performance

The 6-core, 12-thread Ryzen 5 9600X and 8-core, 16-thread Ryzen 7 9700X may post similar numbers in single-core performance, but those results put them at the top. In Cinebench R23, one of the rendering benchmarks we use to put CPUs through their paces, the 9700X posted an almost 15 percent increase over the 7700X. Similarly, the 9600X outdid the 7600X by 13 percent. Both gains are solid upticks.

Adam Patrick Murray / PCWorld

Adam Patrick Murray / PCWorld

Adam Patrick Murray / PCWorld

Meanwhile, when pitted against Intel and its current 14th-generation chips, AMD has the edge. Against the Core 7 14700K, the 9700X offers a 4.7 percent boost in performance, and is neck-and-neck with the more powerful Core 9 14900K. For its part, the 9600X pulls ahead of the Core 5 14600K by a little over 8 percent, which is a nice win for users mindful of their budgets.

But lackluster gains in multi-core performance

However, Ryzen 9000 loses some shine when you look at its multicore performance. In Cinebench R23’s multithreaded test, the 9700X shows essentially the same performance as the 7700X—the thin 1.48 percent doesn’t exceed a normal testing margin of error (usually between 2 to 3 percent).

The outcome is better for the 9600X, with a roughly 7 percent increase in Cinebench compared to the 7600X, but that kind of uplift is modest compared to previous generational jumps. Typically, 15 to 20 percent begins to push the envelope (as seen in single-core performance).

^{For Cinebench and Blender, longer bars indicate better performance. For Handbrake (which evaluates speed of test completion), shorter bars are better.}

This story repeats with similar effect in our other rendering and encoding benchmarks used to evaluate multicore performance. And unfortunately, with such minimal gains, Ryzen 9000 lags behind Intel’s 14th-gen processors. Opting for a 14700K is a whopping 72 percent performance increase in Cinebench over the 9700X, while a 14600K is an almost 60 percent boost compared to the 9600X. For anyone who needs strong multicore performance (whether for intensive work like rendering or just heavily threaded games), Intel will be your better bet—provided you’re comfortable with the recent concerns around 14th-gen chip performance and longevity.

However, there’s a twist: Ryzen 9000 multicore benchmark results can be notably affected by motherboard settings—and the way many reviewers test (including PCWorld) doesn’t show the silicon’s full range.

Motherboard settings matter

Two settings in your motherboard UEFI (sometimes still colloquially referred to as the BIOS) can greatly influence how well Ryzen 9000 performs: Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) and RAM voltage.

Of the two, PBO plays a greater role in whether you’ll see merely meh gains, or if you’ll get closer to what AMD promises. When enabled, it dynamically feeds more voltage to the processor for clock speed increases—which provide better performance.

Not all motherboards enable PBO by default, so if you buy a Ryzen 9000 processor and want the most out of it, you’ll need to go into UEFI and ensure it’s on.

Additionally, AMD recommends running RAM at a voltage of 1.2V, rather than 1.25V (a common setting). Similar to PBO, the latter voltage can be a default on some mobos—like on PCWorld’s own test hardware, a ASRock X670E Taichi.

Changing these settings isn’t difficult, but most users are accustomed to dropping in a chip and moving on. These necessary tweaks make Ryzen 9000 feel finickier than previous generations, which didn’t need such precise handling. However, according to AMD, part of the reason for this outcome is due to the lower TDP of the Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 processors. With a tighter ceiling on power efficiency, the balance between performance and acceptable operating temperature is a finer line to walk.

Spectacular power efficiency

From a chip nerd’s perspective, AMD’s ability to coax high-end performance out of lower-wattage CPUs is incredible. The power efficiency speaks well of the engineering—Team Red’s first two Ryzen 9000 CPUs have a default TDP of 65W, or nearly half of Intel’s base TDP of 125W for the 14700K and 14600K.

In other words, AMD’s processors are posting single-core performance as good as Intel’s using far less juice. The weaker multicore performance is less to do with an inherent weakness with the silicon design, and more to do with how hard AMD’s willing to gun the engine for the 9700X and 9600X. We’ve already seen in recent CPU generations that much of their gigantic performance leaps have to do with amount of electricity run through the chips. So as hinted by the situation with motherboard PBO settings, that’s the contrast we’re seeing here.

Stagnant gaming performance gen-on-gen

CD Project Red

CD Project Red

CD Project Red

However, the frame rates you get are the frame rates you get—and if you’re a gamer who’s been waiting to upgrade, you’ll want to feel that your money is being invested in a solid bump up.

Fact of the matter is, the 9700X’s gaming performance doesn’t move the needle much past the 7700X. You’ll see it most in challenging games, as evidenced by our Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark results where the 9700X and 7700X basically perform the same. (The small dip can be attributed to that standard margin of error for testing, as mentioned above.)

Even in games more sensitive to CPU improvements, the gains are modest, topping out at about 7 percent in Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Siege Six and F1 2023. For Total War: Warhammer III, the uplift is even smaller, coming in at just over 4 percent.

Lower prices than Ryzen 7000

Willis Lai / Foundry

Willis Lai / Foundry

Willis Lai / Foundry

To AMD’s credit, the company is asking for less money this time around—so for those watching their budgets like a hawk, a minimal boost in gaming performance may not matter as much.

The entire lineup sees a reduction, with the Ryzen 9 processors dropping by $50 compared to last gen, the Ryzen 7 9700X going down by $40, and the Ryzen 5 9600X shaving $20 off the asking price. (AMD hasn’t confirmed Ryzen 9 prices yet but Best Buy leaked them.)

• Ryzen 9 9950X – $649
• Ryzen 9 9900X – $499
• Ryzen 7 9700X – $359
• Ryzen 5 9600X – $279

While these prices don’t return to AMD’s incredibly affordable MSRPs from earlier generations (like Ryzen 3000), they definitely undercut the competition. Currently, Intel’s rival chips have street prices of approximately $550 for the 14900K, $380 for the 14700K, and $300 for the 14600K. If you want additional multicore performance, you’ll have to pay for it.

Author: Alaina Yee, Senior Editor, PCWorld