AMD Ryzen 7 9700X Review: Why Zen 5 Falls Short of Expectations

Zen 5 architecture delivers modest real-world gains that struggle to justify higher pricing against established Zen 4 competitors

Hardware by Tasnim Yoshi on Dec 05, 2025

Ryzen 7 9700X from AMD is a new Zen 5-based CPU with 8 cores and 16 threads that is meant to replace 7700X. The price is $360, which is 10% less than 7700X's original MSRP but 24% more than 7700X's retail price of $290.

AMD says that IPC has improved by 16%, and since the clocks are only 2% faster than the last generation, most of the gains must come from IPC. The processor can run at up to 5.5GHz and as low as 3.8GHz at the base frequency.

AMD, Ryzen 7 9700X, Review, Why Zen 5 Falls Short of Expectations, NoobFeed

It has a TDP of 65W. Cache stays the same, with 8MB of L2 and 32MB of shared L3. AMD says the CPUs are safe to run continuously at 95 °C. The official supported memory speed is DDR5-6000, and AMD says that for the best results, RAM and IMC should work together at a 1:1 ratio at 2000MHz.

Cinebench Performance

When we looked at Cinebench multicore performance, we saw that 9700X was only 2% quicker than 7700X. This isn't a major improvement, and it means AMD is still behind Intel's Core i5-4600K in multicore workloads. However, the single-core performance has improved by 10%, which could be good for gaming.

The average power use during Cinebench all-core workloads was 221W, which is 11% less than 7700X and saves 27W.

7-Zip and Application Benchmarks

When tested with 7-Zip, 9700X was 3% slower than 7700X when compressing files and 1.5% slower when decompressing them. The blender's performance remained the same, with both CPUs scoring 129 samples per minute. This puts the 9700X 11% behind the Core i5-4600K. But Corona 10 was 11% better for 9700X, which is something we wanted to see more of.

Photoshop ran on the 9700X 3% faster, making it the fastest CPU tested. However, it was still underwhelming compared to the chip it was designed to replace. Premiere Pro got 6% faster, yet 4600K was still a little faster.

Gaming Performance

Baldur's Gate 3

The game started off badly, with 9700X being only 2% faster than 7700X.

The Last of Us Part 1

Here, 9700X was actually 3% slower. Performance remained consistently lower after extensive retesting with different boards and memory kits.

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty

A small 2% improvement—still not great.

AMD, Ryzen 7 9700X, Review, Why Zen 5 Falls Short of Expectations, NoobFeed

Hogwarts Legacy

The CPUs don't make any real difference.

Assetto Corsa Competizione

This title eventually did well, with an 18% increase that brought performance closer to 14900K.

Spider-Man Remastered

A small 5% increase, however, performance is still similar to that of previous Intel i7-12700K models.

Homeworld 3

A 3% rise that brings it up to 14900K in averages, but has superior 1% lows.

A Plague Tale: Requiem

Another 3% gain, but still behind 7800X3D.

Counter-Strike 2

One of the few wins by more than ten points: 9700X was much quicker, averaging 536fps, and was only behind 7800X3D.

Starfield

Under our conditions, performance was 4% lower than 7700X; however, other reviews may differ depending on the settings or scene chosen.

Horizon Forbidden West

The performance is almost the same, with 7700X being a little better.

AMD, Ryzen 7 9700X, Review, Why Zen 5 Falls Short of Expectations, NoobFeed

Hitman 3

A small 1% increase—nothing to write home about.

Watch Dogs: Legion

In Legion, 7700X was a little faster, but after running the tests 6 times, both CPUs performed about the same.

9700X was only 3% faster than 7700X across 13 games evaluated. Our tests showed that AMD's claim that it was 9% quicker than the 14700K was wrong; it was really 5% slower.

Gaming Power Consumption

There wasn't much of a difference in power use while gaming. 9700X only cuts the total system power by 16W (3%). It saved 23W (4%) in The Last of Us. Compared to Intel's 14900K, which only used 253W, the savings were more obvious. However, compared to Zen 4, the benefits were small.

PBO Scaling

PBO was highly advertised because of its 65W rating, but it didn't make much money. Cinebench multicore improved by 9%, but power consumption increased by 25%. Single-core stayed the same. At best, gaming went up by 4%, but most of the time it was closer to 2%.

Cost-Per-Frame Analysis

When you only look at the CPU cost, 9700X costs 21% more per frame than 7700X and 11% more than 7800X3D. It costs 11% more per frame than 7700X and 133% more than 7800X3D, even with a motherboard and 32GB of memory. If you want to play games, you would clearly just buy 7800X3D.

Final Thoughts

We left thinking that 9700X was mostly disappointing. It's a little faster and uses a little less power, but after two years, it works the same way. There isn't much incentive to think about it because it costs 24% more. If the price were $290 like 7700X, the minor increase would be fine, but not spectacular. It was also annoying how AMD handled things.

There was no information on how it should compare to 7700X, and their review guide didn't even mention such comparisons. AMD said our findings were only 1–2% lower than they had hoped, which means 9700X isn't significantly faster than 7700X.

The chip's inconsistency—sometimes it's slower, and sometimes it's a little faster—makes it even more disappointing. It also lowers expectations for future X3D models. We were really disappointed after a week of testing. The release doesn't change anything; you still buy 7700X or 7800X3D. 7800X3D is still considerably quicker and costs only $20 extra, so it's hard to recommend 9700X.

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