AMD Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X review: Zen 5 impresses, but 7800X3D still reigns for gaming
Gaming benchmarks: Flight Simulator 2020, Hitman 3, Forza Horizon 5.
Our Ryzen 9000 review marks the debut of a new benchmarking system here at Digital Foundry, which uses CapFrameX and bespoke game integrations to streamline the benchmarking process. It's still early days, with only six games at three resolutions presented in this review, but we're happy with the results so far and we've already got several additional new games (and 720p testing) in preparation for use in future CPU and GPU reviews.
Despite the significant capture and backend changes, the results are presented on Eurogamer in a manner you'll be familiar with if you have read our past CPU reviews.
On a desktop-class browser, you get an interactive bar chart showing frame-rate averages and highest/lowest one percent and five percent scores - with the option to click on the chart to swap between frame-rate readouts and percentages. You also get live metrics when the YouTube embed of the test scene is played. On a mobile browser, you'll instead get a simpler package: just a table of frame-rate averages.
Flight Simulator 2020
Microsoft Flight Simulator, Ultra, DLSS Quality
Flight Simulator 2020 is a classic CPU stress test, especially with the new New York discovery flight we're using for testing that sees our plane navigate skyscrapers at extremely close range. We're extremely CPU-limited at all resolutions with our RTX 4090, even with DLSS enabled in its quality mode.
The 5800X3D and 7800X3D chips seem to particularly benefit from the way the game is architected, with impressive scores that outperform everything - apart from the 14700K that sneaks into second place.
In terms of the 9600X and 9700X versus their predecessors, the 7600X and 7700X, we do see a noticeable 11 percent performance advantage from the newer generation - likely a result of that higher single-core performance. However, with the 7800X3D a further 16 percent clear over the 9700X, it looks likely that we'll be waiting until the inevitable Ryzen 9000X3D processors to see a new high score on this particular benchmark.
Hitman 3
Hitman World of Assassination: DX12, Default, Best Simulation Quality, TAA
Hitman 3, now known as Hitman World of Assassination, is another title that returns from our previous set of benchmarks, and offers a great test of CPU performance with the Dartmoor built-in test and simulation quality set to high and other settings kept on their default values.
Frame-rates are in the hundreds here, so you're guaranteed a smooth experience on almost any modern CPU, but there's still a clear hierarchy in terms of the results. The 7700X is about equal with the 9600X in the high 200s, while the 9700X is in the high 220s. Both Intel CPUs record higher scores than the new Ryzens, but it's the 7800X3D that turns in an astonishing 24 percent lead over the nearest AMD challenger.
Forza Horizon 5
Forza Horizon 5, Extreme, DLSS Quality
Forza Horizon 5 is a pretty GPU-limited game at the extreme settings that we're using here, but using DLSS in performance mode allows us to push the CPU enough to get meaningful differentiation between our choices at every resolution we tested.
The 9600X and 9700X record roughly five percent higher frame-rates than the outgoing Ryzen 7000 chips, with the 7800X3D not offering any significant advantages beyond the 9700X. Intel CPUs performed poorly here, with roughly a 10 percent advantage for AMD's latest over their Intel 14th-gen counterparts.
Next up: three more games, including a single-core beast (Far Cry 6), a brand-new bespoke benchmark (Cyberpunk 2077) and the return of the magnificient (Crysis 3 Remastered).