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AMD Ryzen 9 7900X and Ryzen 5 7600X review: welcome to the future

Flight Simulator 2020 and Hitman 3.

Will Judd avatar
Review by Will Judd Deputy Editor, Digital Foundry
Updated on

Our benchmark results are presented a little differently to what you might be used to elsewhere on the web. On mobile, you'll get a basic overview, with metadata from the video capture of each GPU being translated into simple bar charts with average frame-rate and lowest one per cent measurements for easy comparisons.

On a desktop-class browser, you'll get the full-fat experience with embedded YT videos of each test scene and live performance metrics. Play the video, and you'll see exactly how each card handled the scene as it progresses; you can even choose exactly what GPUs at what resolutions you're interested in and it'll update in real time. Below the real-time stuff is a bar chart, which you can mouse over to see different measurements and click to switch between actual frame-rates and percentage differences. As always, all the data here is derived from video captured directly from each GPU, ensuring an accurate replay of real performance.

We'll start with two games that offer a stern test for gaming CPUs: Flight Simulator 2020 and Hitman 3.

Flight Simulator 2020

Flight Sim is our first contender, as we take an autopilot flight from London City to London Heathrow over some of the city's most well-known landmarks. This game is incredibly heavy on the CPU, even at 1440p and Ultra settings, and CPUs generally fit into different tiers based on their core count and speed.

The 7600X and 7900X both acquit themselves well, scoring the highest average frame-rates we've recorded for this test - but only by a small margin. The 7900X is five percent faster than the 12900K when both are using 6000MT/s RAM, but if we look at the outgoing Ryzen 9 5950X with DDR4-3600 versus the 7900X + DDR5-6000 the advantage is more convincing: 24 percent. Going from 5200MT/s to 6000MT/s alone is worth an extra 10 percent for both AMD CPUs.

Note that the 5800X3D remains a terrifyingly strong competitor here, equalling the 7900X with DDR5-5200 despite having significantly slower RAM. It would be fascinating to see how a potential '7900X3D' that combined Ryzen 7000's advantages with 3D V-Cache would fare here - would 80fps or even higher be possible?

Flight Simulator 2020: DX11, Ultra, TAA

Hitman 3

Hitman 3's Dartmoor benchmark comes next. Of the two integrated benchmarks provided in the game's out-of-game option menu, Dartmoor offers the greater CPU load with a demonstration of the Glacier Engine's destruction physics.

Here, the 12900K beats out the 7900X when both have access to DDR5-6000 RAM, but it's a narrow margin at three percent. We see up to a 20 percent uplift for the 5950X to the 7900X, while the 7600X is a more impressive 28 percent when using the faster RAM configuration. Once again, the 5800X3D remains an outlier, and this time maintains the highest average frame-rate by five percent over even the Ryzen 7900X with DDR5-6000.

Hitman 3: DX12, Default, TAA

It's interesting stuff so far with some strong results for 7900X and 7600X, but we've got plenty more to see. Let's take a look at the next set of games, this time three FPS titles.

AMD Ryzen 9 7900X and Ryzen 5 7600X analysis