AMD Ryzen 5 7600X 'Zen 4' CPU: 6C/12T at up to 5.3GHz for $299

AMD's new Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" family of CPUs are now official, led by the flagship Ryzen 9 7950X with 16 cores and 32 threads, but there's also the mid-range Zen 4 chip: the new Ryzen 5 7600X.

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The new AMD Ryzen 5 7600X is a mid-range Zen 4-powered CPU that packs 6 cores and 12 threads that have a base clock of 4.5GHz and boost up to 5.3GHz, with a 105W TDP and price of $299. That pricing is competitive AF, given that the mid-range Ryzen 5 7600X chip keeps up with and trades blows with Intel's very best Core i9-12900K processor that costs almost twice as much.

AMD's new Ryzen 5 7600X is made on the same 5nm process node at TSMC, with it keeping up with the Core i9-12900K in 1080p gaming with titles like Middle-earth: Shadow of War, F1 2022, GTA V, Cyberpunk 2077, and Rainbox Six: Siege. In AMD's own internal benchmarks, we see the Ryzen 5 7600X ties with the Core i9-12900K in Cyberpunk 2077, is 3% slower (you wouldn't notice that) in GTA V, and beats the 12900K in everything else.

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This means that AMD's new Ryzen 5 7600X should easily beat Intel's next-gen mid-range Core i5-13600K "Raptor Lake" CPU, given that the Ryzen 5 7600X beats Intel's best Alder Lake CPU. In previous leaks, we heard about the Intel Core i5-13600K "ES3" engineering sample CPU, which is a 14-core, 20-thread CPU with up to 5.1GHz clocks and power consumption of around 173W (105W on the Ryzen 5 7600X).

• Read more: AMD's new Ryzen 9 7950X 'Zen 4' CPU: 16C/32T at up to 5.7GHz for $699
• Read more: AMD Ryzen 7000 series 'Zen 4' CPUs are official: September 27 launch

Intel's new mid-range Core i5-13600K is rumored to have an official 160W TDP, while leaks at the time said there was still a lot of room for improvement. But if AMD is able to provide a 6-core, 12-thread CPU at up to 5.3GHz for 105W... that's all you'll need for some truly awesome bang-for-buck when it comes to next-gen PC hardware.

There aren't many games out there pushing past 12-16 threads of CPU performance, and if they are... you'll know about them and adjust your PC specs -- like buying the higher-end Ryzen 9 7950X -- for those games. For 90%+ of gamers, a 12-thread Zen 4-powered CPU at 5.3GHz for sub $300 (and cheaper once AMD really needs to push these CPUs out there, and once Intel launches its new Raptor Lake CPUs) is fantastic.

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Given that you get DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 technologies as well, you can have a sub $300 CPU with a sub $300 motherboard, choosing to go for some DDR5 memory and a new PCIe 5.0 SSD and PCIe 5.0 graphics card? Quite the potent PC there, now we need to see how the RDNA 3-powered Navi 3X-based Radeon RX 7000 series GPUs go.