Conclusion

Final Words 

Out of the three new processors released today in the non-X range, we like the 8-core (7700) and this 12-core (7900) the best. It seems that for gaming, the 7700 part has a tiny edge over this tested 7900. This is mainly because 8 cores on a PPT of 88W perform a little stronger per core than 12 cores on a PPT of 88W. This sincerely is excellent performance for something at 65W with twelve cores. These new 65W 7900 processors have been binned skillfully; also, what draws our attention is the low temperature it runs; it's just really impressive.  In general speaking, AMD couldn't launch 65W processors anytime sooner, as the heat of the flagship model X SKU's haunting the sales, well that and the total cost of ownership, including DDR5 and a new motherboard. The Ryzen 7 7700 features eight cores and can be purchased for $329, offering roughly 5% less performance than its X counterpart, and that's a very reasonable proposition. Its lower operating temperatures are a big plus, and it's number of cores are quintessential for gaming. It has PCI Express Gen 5, Dual Channel DDR5, and a CPU that can reach 5.4 GHz with ease; therefore, it can become AMD's sweet spot processor if you can find cheap motherboards to go along with it. 

Price and value

The price premium for Series 7000 processors is a little despicable when you look at the total cost of ownership; it differentiates and, I suppose, is not cannibalising the current Ryzen 5000 series. We expect the 7900 to retail for $429, and if it is more expensive, we ask that you hold off on buying it until the price has stabilised due to high demand. What retailers dare to ask these days is incredible. You will spend roughly $36 USD per core for this Ryzen 7000 processor, and that's just proper value. Factor in the cost of ownership for the complete ecosystem, as well as DDR5 and a new AM5 motherboard of course. Because of its price level, I am not a fan of X670(E) motherboards. I strongly advise you to pursue a B650 series motherboard have to offer, as the difference will be primarily USB/SATA related, that and WIFI6e. Unless you require dozens of USB connections and PCIe gen 5.0 GPU slots, the infrastructure provided by these boards remains excellent.

Gaming performance

The new architecture and high clock rates assist AMD in regaining ground on Intel's 12th Gen devices, but Intel is poised to win with 13th Gen processors. However, both had some wins and losses (in comparison to 12th Gen Alder Lake). Individual wins per brand and processor segmentation (mainstream, high-end, and enthusiast) are now exact. So, on average, this processor can feed frames as quickly as Intel's equivalent with a powerful graphics card. However, your gaming experience will be excellent at six or eight cores; we believe that eight cores are the norm these days for a truly fantastic gaming PC and overall PC desktop. 

DDR5 Memory

While DDR5 memory is already becoming more affordable, you will most certainly pay a premium right now. AMD indicates that 6000 MHz is a sweet spot, however, please read our memory scaling article, as 5200 MHz gets you there 99% of the time as well. We test with two 16GB G.Skill memory modules rated 6000:CL30. With this frequency and latency, the sweet spot will never be pricing. We had no stability difficulties, but since AMD provided these kits, they have been thoroughly tested for compatibility. This is not a complaint; with the introduction of a new architecture, Intel and AMD are always racing against the clock to ensure memory kits are firmware compatible. First-time PC post delay - The first time you'll start up your system, it'll trains memory. Once you set your XMP/EXPO profile, it'll do that again. This process can take 2-3 minutes. Once your memory is trained, POST and, thus, boot times will ramp up as fast as you usually can expect. So don't worry about that. 

Energy efficiency and heat

The Ryzen 7 7900X is a processor rated at 105 Watts, and the 7900 is a 65 Watts part. The thing is, much like Intel's PL2 states, AMD now applies a PPT of 142 W for the X model and an 88W PPT for the 7700 as tested, so that means your processor can utilize that wattage and in essence is an 88W TDP processor. All these factors produce all that heat we've been talking about. Our processor hovers in the 50~60 Degrees C domain with a mainstream LCS cooler; we're even a little impressed with that. 

Overclocking

As with all processors, you still have a bit of leech to overlock. With proper liquid cooling (an LCS kit with enough capacity), selecting all cores towards your maximum multiplier is the easiest way to overclock. With these temps at hand, we advise the voltage regulated by the motherboard (auto voltage). For Ryzen 7 7900, the all-core max seems to be in the ~5300 MHz area with LCS; again, that's all cores.

Conclusion

We prefer the 65W processor's low power requirements and thermal output far better; performance wise the 65W parts hold up well. Interestingly enough, the 12-core parts are a preferred buy by consumers, as that is what we hear back from the industry. 12-core parts outsold the 8-core part. Purely looking at what your average PC user needs, the 8-core part is fine, but for that little extra and at 36 USD per core the 12-core part can offer substantial value. This processor's thermals behaved better than the other two non-X procs, and that was a bit amazing to see. But that all has to do with the 88W PPT distribution over 12 cores. Performance wise it's roughly 10% maybe 15% away from the X model, depending on how and where you measure, that's not a bad proposition and performance bracket to be at. It behaves extremely well; even with the most advanced and high-end graphics cards, it will perform adequately. In addition to the new AM5 platforms, PCIe Gen 5 is now available. However, it serves no function at this time because no graphics card requires PCIe Gen 5. We also anticipated that AMD would have seeded some Gen5-ready NVMe SSD samples. However, they have not yet been seeded or are even available. To be clear, we are not convinced that the PCIe Gen 5 SSD will make a major difference in real-world performance and user experience; yes, sustained rates will reach +10GB/s, but you will still get the same 4K read/write performance because the most important thing going on is bandwidth. In conclusion, we are impressed by AMD's 65W performance level; Zen 4 is an improvement in performance, but the total cost of ownership (of the platform) is high for customers. It should be great to learn that we experienced zero instability concerns, which is especially nice for such a fresh platform. As expected, thermals, this round are gorgeous. Ultimately, this is an excellent processor to get your hands on with its 12-core / 24-thread design; it might be a pure win for creators. All things considered, this is a fantastic processor, as we like the 65W parts so much more than the original X models. At 36 USD per core at 429 USD for the processor, including an IGP, we'd even dare to call this processor good value.

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