Ryzen 7000 - The new xeriff in town, maybe?

AMD 70000 Series CPUs

Let’s face something head on fellow tech nerds: 2022 has been one of the most uninteresting years for laptops that I can remember. Even in the dark days of the pandemic, with shortages of everything, something new and exciting (some more than others) would pop up.

Right now, this website about all things laptop has no things about laptops worthy of publishing. However, we can make a trip to the desktop side of things and hype ourselves a bit in the prospect of new laptop components. This time, courtesy of our beloved Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.

When the 7000 Series presentation rolled out a few weeks ago, AMD didn’t make a big fuss about it, being relatively tamed and understated. But oh, boy, we weren’t ready.

Gains, Gains, Gains

Specs

One of the most refreshing things for me to do when a new gen of goods comes along is to compare them with older gens. So let’s see what we get, courtesy of Jarrod’s Tech 2 amazing comparison between various series of Ryzen silicon.

Put the 2 spec screenshots side by side with description “Evolution of Ryzen specs over the generations”

So, as we can see, core count hasn’t changed, and AMD hasn’t followed the trend of MORE CORES of Intel. The main differences are the base and turbo clock speeds, up between 25-30%, which is an amazing generational leap, and one deeply appreciated. I also appreciate how AMD doesn’t simply break the 5 Ghz magic barrier, it just goes up and beyond, a refreshing sight. Also to note a very important double increase in L2 cache, which should be good news especially for the server prospects of Zen 4 Threadripper and/or Epyc CPUs that should come out in the future.

Performance differences and comparison

But these small differences in paper shouldn’t mean a big difference in performance, right?. Wrong.

Cinebench R23 benchmark results and comparison with other processors

We can verify a 51% increase in single core performance between the 7950X and 3950X and a 56% increase in multicore. Between the 7950X and 5950X we can observe a 25% increase in singlecore performance and 49% increase in multi core. Even the Threadripper is looking in range despite the latter having double the cores. One can imagine how those will come up in Zen 4, oh boy oh boy. For the 7700X, there is a 45% uplift in multicore score in regards to the 5700X and 31% faster in singlecore. For the 7600X, we observe it being almost on par with the 5800X on multicore scores, albeit still slower than an “equivalent” i5-12600K. This concludes that in the midrange of desktops, Intel may still be the way to go on multicore heavy applications. However, on singlecore performance the 7600X seems on par with a 12900K which is bonkers to me, and 26% faster than a 5600X. Didn’t it use to be the other way around?

This level of gains is explained very simply: IPC uplift and the frequency uplift already observed. However, now AMD is following Intel’s lead on power consumption, and also heat, with the CPU hitting it’s maximum operating temperature of 95 degrees consistently. Even with all of the architecture and node developments and inovation, there is clearly a point where AMD realized that in order to at least match Intel, power levels had to be raised. However, AMD is stating this is normal and by design, which in a nutshell means that instead of dropping clocks to prevent the CPU from running hotter, the CPU is designed in a way that, with sufficient cooling, 95 degrees (TJMax for the 7000 series) should correspond to stable max turbo clocks.

Generation difference between AMD Processors

The level of gains in terms of productivity and gaming are very impressive between generations and compared with new 12th Gen Intel CPUs, and I advise you all to check out the videos referenced below for more detailed information and all of the comparisons in multiple productivity benchmarks and games. On top of CPU evolution, I’m very much looking forward to the improved sinergy that hopefully will come with new 7000 Radeon GPUs as well, as they should be better suited to squeeze as much gaming potential as possible from these processors. On top of that, one can also be looking forward to the 3D V-Cache based processors, which promise to up gaming performance even more, if the 5800X3D is an indication of what’s to come.

But what about laptops?

AMD already showed some snippets of what 7000 series will look like in laptops. We are already aware that it will be a mix of old and new, with even Zen 2 being “revived” to challenge Pentium based devices for browsing. The bigger question is that AMD can’t and won’t stay at 8 cores maximum for their top of the line H chips and will try to stretch them to possibly 16 Zen 4 cores, exactly as the desktop side. However, that may mean that AMD will follow Intel’s path of designing less power efficient parts, and we will no longer see Ryzen parts having a ton of thermal headroom. However, this is fine for me. For too long I felt, for example in my old Legion 5 Pro with the 5800H, that these chips had potential for much more and were badly optimized mainly for gaming. Therefore, I think we should all look forward for beefy boys with these chips pushing 100+W and shredding those benches. Furthermore, it still should be possible to design chips for the users that still crave the thermal efficiency typical of Ryzen, just have lower clock boost parts.

For me, the main advantage that AMD right now has in the market is that they are able to do anything they want with this platform: chips for huge heavy desktop replacements, chips for thin and light gaming (with or without dGPU because their iGPU is also great), chips that meet the middle ground, chips with 3D cache for pure gaming laptops or chips for pure productivity laptops, all with the potential to surpass Intel in almost every way. The only thing that can stop them in their tracks is… themselves, I guess. And supply chains, because reasons.

The only thing I’m certain of is that this new generation of AMD products is a very exciting prospect, and hopefully these following months pass quickly.

References

Ryzen 9 7950X has BIG Gains! But At What Cost?

Comparing 4 Generations of Ryzen 7 CPUs! 7700X vs 5700X vs 3700X vs 2700X

AMD Ryzen 5 7600X Review & Benchmarks, Gaming Beast!

AMD Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 Specs, Release Date, Benchmarks, Price Listings