Sometimes it’s good to wait for a CPU generation to mature before taking the plunge and investing your hard earned money in a new computer. In this case, with AMD’s Zen 4 processors, the wait for the non-X versions is probably worth it as you get a lot more for what you pay for.
Ryzen 9 7900 (12)
Today, we are taking a look at the Ryzen 9 7900 CPU. This is the flagship non-X CPU of the Zen 4 lineup and features 12–cores and 24-threads. That’s more cores and more threads than the Ryzen 7 7700x for just a bit more cash. In a nutshell, it’s really good value, let’s take a look as to why.
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This Ryzen 9 7900 is almost the same as the X model that precedes it. Both have 12MB L2 and 64MB L3 cache memory pools. You’re mostly getting the same CPU but with different clock speeds and power consumption. The 7900 features a 3.7GHz base and 5.4Ghz boost clock speed, that might alert some people as it’s lower than the 4.7Ghz speed of the X model but that isn’t the case. The great part about this CPU is that it consumes less power, and in a country like ours where electricity is at a premium, 65W of power draw is just a godsend.
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It also comes with a Prism Cooler bundled, so that’s added value already as the Prism cooler performs really well and doesn’t look bad as well.
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Right now let’s take a look at this beefy CPU and see if it has a place inside your new system.
But before that, here’s what we used for our testing.
CPU: Ryzen 9 7900
GPU: AMD Ryzen 7900XTX
Motherboard: ASRock Taichi X670e
RAM: Kingston Fury Beast 32GB
Cooler: Deepcool LS720
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In terms of gaming, don’t expect to get a big difference compared with a Ryzen 7 7700 or 7700x as games skew towards single-core performance more than multi-core. So in general gaming at 1080P or even at 1440P you get the same performance even against the X version. Here are some of our benchmark results:
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Far Cry 6 (High, 1080P): 149FPS
Cyberpunk 2077 (Ultra, 4K): 82FPS
Amazing Spider-Man (Ultra, 4K): 87FPS
God of War (4K, Ultra): 120FPS
Again, it’s not a CPU built for gaming entirely. If you’re looking to build a PC for just gaming then you can go for the lower 7700 or 7700x as you will get mostly the same gaming performance from these CPUs and they are cheaper as well. It’s not to say that the 7900 is a slouch, it’s not just built solely for gaming.
Having the same number of cores as the X model of the series certainly benefits this CPU as it keeps up with its X sibling. It easily outpaces the 7700X and the 7700 in these synthetic benchmarks. So if your workflow involves taking advantage of multiple cores then the Ryzen 9 7900 is a good choice. Take a look:
Cinebench R23: 1954 – Single Core, 25325 – Multi-Core
PCMark 10: 6981
Blender 3.2: 94.5s
What’s great about the CPU is that it isn’t locked to the stock speeds. Unlike other CPUs, even these non-X CPUs can be overclocked. With a good cooler, you can easily overclock this CPU to the stock speeds of the X version.
If you’re looking for a high-end workhorse of a CPU that doesn’t consume a lot of power, the Ryzen 9 7900 is a no-brainer. If you can find it at a price cheaper than its X sibling, then I suggest you easily go for this one.
Ryzen 9 7900 (11)
Among its siblings, you can easily say that it’s the best value for money high-end CPU, especially against something like the Ryzen 7 7700x. So if you’re looking to get into the AMD ecosystem, I highly suggest the Ryzen 9 7900 and pair it with a high-end AMD GPU like the AMD Radeon 7900XTX, then you can take advantage of all the benefits of having an all AMD system.
