AMD Ryzen 5 7600X Review | Affordable Gaming Beast?

AMD’s Zen 5 Architecture is just around the corner (with the launch of Ryzen 9000 Series CPUs). But the Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs, which were launched back in September 2022, are still a hot commodity due to their high performance and reasonable price. The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X and AMD Ryzen 9 7900X are the top-of-the-line enthusiast CPUs at the time of the launch, with an MSRP of $699 and $549 respectively. Next, we have the mid-range beasts in the form of the AMD Ryzen 7 7700X and the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X. Of the four CPUs, the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X is an interesting processor with its 6 core and 12 thread offering and a tempting price tag of $299. But what about its performance? Is it a good choice for entry level gaming systems? We will find out in this AMD Ryzen 5 7600X Review.

First, let us explore the theoretical aspects of the 7600X such as the features and specifications. Later, with the help of a test setup, we will compare the gaming and multi-threading performance of the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X against some popular Intel and AMD CPUs.

A Brief Note on AMD Ryzen 5 7600X

With a brand-new architecture in the form of Zen 5, the AMD’s Ryzen 9000 Series CPUs are ready to rock the PC world. But going back a couple of years, we had the Zen 4 Architecture and the whole Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs. These were the first batch of CPUs from AMD that featured a brand new socket in the form of AM5 (this also marks the transition from PGA to LGA Socket). Apart from the socket there are a couple of other highlights such as support for only DDR5 memory and all the PCIe Lanes from the CPU are only Gen 5. Very futuristic approach from AMD.

While the big boys i.e., the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X and the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X are more of a “high-end” processors, the mid-range and budget-friendly Ryzen 7 7700X and Ryzen 5 7600X seem to hit the sweet spot for entry to mid level gaming rigs.

With a launch price of just $299 and the traditional 6 core 12 thread design, the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X is one of the contenders for the best bang for the buck gaming CPU and ready to take over the reins from the famous AMD Ryzen 5 5600X.

Architecture

Unlike Intel and Apple, who moved on to a hybrid architecture approach for their latest CPUs, AMD for their latest Zen 4 CPUs designed them in the “traditional” way. There are no “efficient” cores as all the cores are powerful cores. Specifically, the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X has 6 cores and 12 threads.

Similar to their powerful comrades, the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X also features a chiplet design. Under the hood, the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X CPU consists of 2 chiplets, one of them is the Core Complex Die (CCD) with 6 cores and the other one is the Input – Output Die (IOD).

While a CCD consists of 8 CPU Cores in total, AMD disables two cores in the CCD of the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X. The AMD Ryzen 9 7950X has the same CCDs but utilizes all the 8 CPU Cores per CCD.

Another interesting thing about this Chiplet design is AMD designed the CCDs using TSMC 5 nm process technology and the IOD using the TSMC 6 nm process technology. This way, it could keep the overall cost of the manufacturing down.

AMD completely revamped the architecture with Zen 4 that has 13% better IPC performance. The next biggest change is the CPU socket. AM4 has been a successful platform for both AMD and the consumers. They supported it well beyond their initial promise.

But starting with Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs, AMD moved away from the PGA AM4 socket to the new LGA AM5 socket. That’s right. Now the pins are on the motherboard rather than the CPU.

Memory and Cache

With the new Zen 4 Architecture, AMD completely ditched the support for DDR4 Memory. So, all the Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs support only DDR5 Memory in dual channel configuration. The maximum frequency of the memory that the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X supports is DDR5-5200.

AMD with their Ryzen Series of processors, changed the scene of CPU cache. Coming to the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X, it has L2 Cache of 1 MB per core. So, this makes the total L2 Cache of AMD Ryzen 5 7600X at 6 MB (6 * 1 MB).

Coming to the L3 Cache, AMD assigned a total of 32 MB of L3 Cache per CCD. As the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X has only one Core Complex Die, the total L3 Cache of the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X is 32 MB (1 * 32 MB).

As there is no support for DDR4 and the fact that you need a new AM5 Motherboard means, you need to make a significant upfront investment with the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X CPU (or any Zen 4 AMD Ryzen 7000 Series CPU). But the industry is moving towards DDR5 and the cost of DDR5 RAM kits is slowly coming down.

PCIe and Power

The AMD Ryzen 5 7600X processor has 28 PCIe lanes from the CPU and the impressive thing here is that all these lanes are PCIe 5.0.

Of these, 24 PCIe Gen 5 Lanes are available for Motherboard Manufacturers to use with GPU, Storage etc. and the remaining 4 are reserved for communicating with the Chipset. The final configuration of the PCIe lanes will depend on the motherboard you select and the corresponding chipset.

AMD is still announcing only the TDP of their processors. The TDP of the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X is 105W. If you compare this with the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X, it has a TDP of only 65W.

Specifications of AMD Ryzen 5 7600X

Specifications of AMD Ryzen 5 7600X
Cores (Threads)		6 (12)
Base Clock Rate		4.7 GHz
Turbo Clock Rate		5.3 GHz
Cache	L2	6 MB (1 MB per Core)
	L3	32 MB (32 MB per CCD)
Power		TDP 105 W
Process Technology	Core Complex Die	TSMC 5 nm
	Input Output Die	TSMC 6 nm
Socket		AM5 (LGA)
Code Name (Architecture)		Zen 4
PCIe Lanes		Total 28 PCIe 5.0 Lanes of which 24 are available for Motherboard Manufacturers and 4 are reserved for Chipset
Memory Support	DDR4	—
	DDR5	Up to DDR5 5200 MT/s
Integrated Graphics		AMD RDNA2 GPU (Base Clock 0.4 GHz and Boost Clock 2.2 GHz)
Price		MSRP $299

AMD Ryzen 5 7600X Review

Now that we have seen some basic information about the 7600X, let us proceed with the review of the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X processor. We will see the benchmark results for synthetic applications, mainstream applications, and games. We will also see some numbers regarding the thermals and power consumption.

Test System

We will be testing the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X CPU against similar tier processors from both Intel and AMD. Before we begin, here is a quick look at our Intel and AMD test systems.

Application Benchmarks

Cinebench R23 Multi-Core (Higher is Better)

Let us start with the most popular benchmark tool, the Cinebench R23. After the 10-minute multicore loop test, the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X got a score of just under 15000 points. If we compare this with the AMD Ryzen 7900X, then the performance is almost half.

But if you compare the performance of AMD Ryzen 5 7600X and AMD Ryzen 5 5600X, then the former boasts a 30% performance improvement.

Cinebench R23 Single-Core (Higher is Better)

Coming to the single core performance in the Cinebench R23, the story doesn’t change much. The single-core performance of the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X is significantly better than the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X and is very similar to that of the Intel Core i9 12900K.

PassMark’s CPUMARK 10.2 Multi-Threaded/Overall (Higher is Better)

Next, we have another popular benchmark tool from PassMark, the CPU Mark. The following results show the overall or multi-threaded CPU Mark Score of all the processors in this test.

While the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X shows a lot of improvement over the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X, it falls short in front of the Intel Core i7 12700K.

PassMark’s CPUMARK 10.2 Single-Threaded (Higher is Better)

Coming to the single threaded performance in CPU Mark, the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X and the Intel Core i9 12900K show very similar results. Surprisingly, the AMD Ryzen 7 7700X also offers a very similar performance.

Blender Open Data Render Time (Lower is Better)

Another popular open-source tool is Blender. For the next couple of tests, we will see the render times and number of samples per minute in Blender version 3.4. The AMD Ryzen 5 7600X took 10 seconds over 14 minutes while the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X took just 7 minutes and 30 seconds.

Blender Samples Per Minute (Higher is Better)

The results for number of samples in a minute for Blender Render is also very similar to the render time results. Here you can see the samples per minute score across the three test scenes: monster, junkshop, and classroom.

Adobe Photoshop 2022 Puget System Benchmark (Higher is Better)

The Adobe suite has a couple of important tools that many creators and artists use. We will start with the Adobe Photoshop 2022. It has a built-in Puget System Standard Benchmark.

If you look at the overall scores, the Intel Core i9 12900K and AMD Ryzen 5 7600X go neck on neck. The AMD Ryzen 7 7700X is also very close.

Adobe Premier Pro 2022 Puget System Benchmark (Higher is Better)

Next application in the Adobe suite is the Premier Pro 2022. The results in this test are not that similar to the Adobe Photoshop 2022. Here, the performance of the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X is very identical to the AMD Ryzen 7 7700X and the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X.

7-Zip File Manager Compression (Higher is Better)

One of the popular and widely used open-source applications is the 7-Zip File Manager. It helps in archiving files. For this test, we are performing the built-in benchmark feature.

Here is the result in million instructions per second (MIPS) for compressing using a standards 32 MB dictionary size and 10 passes.

7-Zip File Manager Decompression (Higher is Better)

In decompression, the AMD Ryzen CPUs dominate the charts with AMD Ryzen 9 7900X and Ryzen 9 5900X while the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X and the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X sit at the bottom.

Chromium Code Compilation Time (Lower is Better)

Developers working on large projects need a stable multi-threaded system with a powerful CPU. So, we tested the code compilation performance by taking the open-source Chromium project code.

The performance of AMD Ryzen 5 7600X is not that great as it took over 82 minutes to compile the code.

Corona 1.3 Render Time (Lower is Better)

The last “application” benchmark is the Corona 1.3, which is a high-quality shading engine for production rendering. Let us now see the rendering time of different Intel and AMD CPUs.

Gaming Benchmarks

Let us move to some gaming performance. We tested some popular titles at a resolution of 1920 × 1080 (1080p) as anything beyond, the GPU will dominate the performance. We are running all the games in DirectX 12 with Ray Tracing and DLSS off.

Far Cry 6

• Resolution: 1920 × 1080
• DirectX 12
• Game Setting: Ultra
• DirectX Raytracing: Off

The first game is Far Cry 6. The Intel Core i7 13700K leads the chart. But the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X shows its dominance over the Intel Core i9 12900K. Here are the rounded off average frames and also 1% low fps.

Cyberpunk 2077

• Resolution: 1920 × 1080
• DirectX 12
• Game Setting: Ultra
• Texture: High
• Ray Tracing: Off
• DLSS: Off

Next, we have another popular title, Cyberpunk 2077. The story is the same, where current gen Intel CPUs can pump over 140 fps on average while the Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs struggle to push past 130 fps.

The performance of all the Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs is very similar.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

• Resolution: 1920 × 1080
• DirectX 12
• Game Setting: High
• DLSS: Off

Last but not least, we tested the Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Once again, the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X and the Intel Core i9 12900K show very similar results.

What surprised in this game is the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D beating all the current gen Intel and AMD flagships. Based on this result, we are very excited to get our hands on the upcoming Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs with 3D V-Cache.

Clock Speed

We ran the AIDA64 Stress Test for 10 minutes and here are the maximum frequency and average frequency of all cores.

CPU Temperature

During the same AIDA64 Stress Test, we monitored the CPU Temperatures with Corsair iCUE H150i RGB Elite Liquid CPU Cooler. Here are the CPU temps for your reference.

Power Consumption

During the Blender render, we measured the CPU Package Power Draw using the HWiNFO tool. The following table consists of the peak CPU Package Power Draw as reported by HWiNFO.

Final Verdict

With a 6-core design and the performance it offers, the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X is not an ideal choice for productive applications. In gaming, the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X is equal or sometimes better than the Intel Core i9 12900K.

The AMD Ryzen 5 7600X is not the most powerful processor in the market as the maximum power draw we noticed was around 120 Watts. It also runs cooler than most of the other CPUs in this test.

With a retail price of $299, we cannot complain about the performance of the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X. But with a new motherboard and DDR5 Memory, the Ryzen 7 7700X seems like a better choice for only $100 more. If you are on a strict budget though, especially to build a gaming PC, then the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X is a good choice. On the Intel side, the Intel Core i5 13600K is a better alternative.