AMD Ryzen 7 7700X "Zen 4" CPU Review

TweakTown's Rating: 95%

The Bottom Line

AMD's Ryzen 7 7700X processor is likely the better option for streamers and professionals, offering more cores and higher boosts clocks for more intensive workloads.

Pros

• LGA Socket AM5
• ~20% boost over the 5800X
• Efficiency (Performance per Watt)

Cons

• IPC
• Single CCD lowers memory throughput

Should you buy it?

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Introduction and Pricing

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We are back to look at the next two SKUs in the AMD Zen 4 lineup, focusing first on the Ryzen 7 platform with the 7700X. This single CCD solution offers eight cores and sixteen threads with a total 40MB cache and 105W TDP. Base clocks for this CPU come in at 4.5GHz with a boost of 5.4GHz, which should offer slightly better productivity performance over the 7600X, but the entry-level 7600X will likely hold its own in gaming due to the higher base clock.

Pricing

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As mentioned in the last two Zen 4 reviews, four SKUs were launched on September 27th. These range from the 7950X, which we will look at in our next review and the 7600X that you can read here. We also took a look at the 7900X on launch day and you can read that here.

For the 7700X, it lands right in the middle of the product stack. With an MSRP of $399, it is likely to be a sweet spot for a mix of productivity and gaming. It is also the CPU we will use for an upcoming overclocking guide, so be on the lookout for that!

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Zen 4 Architecture

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Zen 4 uses much of the design AMD launched with Zen 3, including the eight-core complex and cache topology. That said, there have been significant improvements in the design, allowing for higher boost clocks, up to 5.7GHz on the 7750X, a larger L2 cache, and finally, integrated graphics from the RDNA2 family.

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Moving to Zen 4, the CPU design was tweaked to add larger Op caches, IRQ, and larger FP registers. AMD has also introduced deeper buffers into the design and added AVX512 support.

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Zen 4 includes branch prediction improvement on the front end with 50% larger L1 and an overall 68% larger Op cache.

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Digging more into the cache, based on Zen 3, each Core for Zen 4 has its own 1M L2 sharing the L3 across the core complex.

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Evolution from Zen 3 to Zen 4 shows the advancement in each CPU part.

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With Zen 4, we do finally get a better IOD. This is a much smaller 6nm design with RDNA2 graphics, support for DDR5, and 28 PCIe 5.0 lanes.

Packaging and Test System

Packaging

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The 7700X is the only CPU to carry the Ryzen 7 brand this time, as seen on the packaging above. No cooling is provided with any Zen 4 CPU, so we have a thin profile box with the new Zen 4 box art.

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Unboxing, we have the 7700X with an identical HIS design to the two previous solutions. This is socket AM5 compatible.

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Again, the bottom has no caps, all placed on the top of the CPU. The bottom holds only the 1718 pins needed for AM5.

Test System

• Motherboard: X670E AORUS Master BIOS 813b
• GPU: Radeon RX 6800 XT
• RAM: Corsair Dominator RGB DDR5 6000 CL30
• Cooler: 3x140mm Custom Water
• OS Storage: Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 2TB
• Power Supply: AORUS GP AP1200PM
• OS: Microsoft Windows 11

Cinebench, Crossmark and AIDA64

Cinebench R23

Cinebench is a long-standing render benchmark that has been heavily relied upon by both Intel and AMD to showcase their newest platforms during unveils. The benchmark has two tests, a single-core workload that will utilize one thread or 1T. There is also a multi-threaded test that uses all threads or nT of a tested CPU.

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Getting into our test results with the 7700X, it surprisingly runs towards the top in 1T scoring 1999.

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Over to Multi-thread, the 7700X runs in the middle of the pack with a score of 20155.

Crossmark

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CrossMark gave us a score of 2332 overall, landing the 7700X between the 7600X and 12900K.

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Breakdown in CrossMark again anded the 7700X between the 7600X and 12900K.

AIDA64

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Tasks using AES certainly benefit from Zen 4. As seen above, the 7700X beats out the 12700K and gets close to the 12900K with a score of 198281.

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SHA3 is very similar, the 7700X taking a score of 5415.

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We added memory bandwidth back in for this and the 7950X article coming up, as we were waiting for an update from Finalwire. 7700X pulls 59K read, 80k write, and 60K copy.

UL Benchmarks

Procyon and 3DMark

UL Procyon Suite

The UL Procyon Office Productivity Benchmark uses Microsoft Office apps to measure PC performance for office productivity work.

The Photo Editing benchmark uses Adobe® Lightroom® to import, process, and modify a selection of images. In the second part of the test, multiple edits and layer effects are applied to a photograph in Adobe® Photoshop®.

The Video editing benchmark uses Adobe® Premiere® Pro to export video project files to common formats. Each video project includes various edits, adjustments, and effects. The benchmark score is based on the time taken to export the videos.

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In each of the workloads within Procyon, the 7700X offers solid increases over the 5800X. Peak performance came from the Photo workloads and offered a near 15% improvement over 5800X.

3DMark

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The first of our 3DMark workloads has us in CPU Profile. This workload put us right in the middle between the 12600K and 12700K.

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Our first "gaming" scenario lands us a score of 18367, just above the 5900X.

Gaming and Power Consumption

Gaming Performance

Diving into gaming, we added a few new games to our list, keeping Tomb Raider as its cornerstone at this point. We added CyberPunk 2077, Ac Valhalla and Far Cry 6.

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Starting things off with Valhalla, the 7700X was a touch better than the 7600X grabbing an extra frame at 1080p.

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It was pretty clear Far Cry 6 enjoys more cores, 12 being a sweet spot with our 7900X, but the 7700X did well, too, grabbing 173 FPS at 1080p and 97 FPS at 4K.

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Cyberpunk pushes the 7700X to 200 FPS in 1080p, a near 60 FPS improvement over 5800X. 4K lands at 91 FPS.

Power and Thermals

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Looking at power, the 7700X pulled 150W at peak CPU only. Idle power was 21 watts.

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Thermals were also added in this review, but it's important to note our cooling solution is massive overkill (a triple 140 rad, heatkiller block, D5 pump pulling in cold air), we keep the loop temp between 15c and 20c during testing. That said, the 7700X peaked at 69c in gaming and 63 for productivity.

Value and Final Thoughts

Value

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Looking at Performance vs. Price, the 7700x lands in the middle at 64%, and the 7600x is the best Zen 4 solution for those looking for bang for your buck.

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Adding cost vs. the gaming performance of each CPU, the 7700X is towards the top at 98.1%, the 7600X being the current best.

Final Thoughts

The 7700X, as I expected, looks to be a solid point of entry for those wanting a bit more than a gaming machine. It has enough cores to handle heavier multi-threaded workloads, while the higher boost clock helps in workloads like gaming, which don't always use the full amount of cores.

Procyon is probably the best suite to test productivity performance outside PugetSystems workloads as it utilizes real applications like Office, Photoshop, Lightroom, and Premier Pro. The 7700X offered fantastic performance in this workload, even beating out the 7900X in the Lightroom/Photoshop workload.

As for gaming, the 7700 does quite well, beating out the 7900X in most workloads and going back and forth with the 7600X. Games like Valhalla preferred the extra boost, but the 76 and 77 ran near identical testing. Far Cry likes more cores, which allowed the 7700X to open up a bit more, rivaling the performance of higher-end SKUs and putting a good 15 FPS on the 7600X at 1080p. CyberPunk also likes the extra core count, which allowed 200 FPS with the 7700X and 4K performance close to the 7950X.

Power draw was as expected, right between 76 and 79 with 150 watts CPU only full load R23. Thermals, as discussed above, shouldn't be looked at in our reviews as we went full overkill to ensure we left no performance behind and likely won't reflect what you see with your system on air or even AIO cooling.

All this wrapped up, the 7700X is a fantastic CPU and offers a huge boost over 5800X. We measured up to 20% in several of our workloads!