First announced at COMPUTEX 2024, the Ryzen 9000 Series of desktop processors brings AMD’s latest and greatest Zen 5 architecture to reality. Further building on the Zen architecture, the 5th iteration of Zen has yet again brought both improvements in architecture, new features and further improved efficiency to the table.
AMD has positioned the AMD Ryzen 9000 series desktop processors as the World’s most powerful consumer processor at the date of launch. It is still designed for the AM5 platform, which means that it is drop-in ready for any of the AM5 motherboards in the market today. Of course, completing the ‘5’, it also supports PCIe Gen 5 and DDR5.
With the confidence which they have, we wanted to dig further into these new products. What exactly makes them different from its predecessors? Let’s find out.
4 SKUs at Launch
AMD is preparing to launch four new CPUs in its Ryzen 9000 series on July 31, 2024.
The Ryzen 9 9950X is designed for high-end desktops, providing substantial performance improvements for both productivity and gaming tasks. It competes with Intel’s Core i9-14900K.
Moving down the line, the Ryzen 9 9900X offers a balance between high performance and power efficiency, with significant improvements in power efficiency compared to its predecessor.
The Ryzen 7 9700X targets users who need high performance for gaming and content creation, offering a good balance of power and efficiency.
Lastly, the Ryzen 5 9600X is aimed at mainstream users, providing solid performance for everyday tasks, gaming, and light content creation.
These CPUs are fabricated on TSMC’s 4nm process, which enhances efficiency and performance. They support DDR5 memory and are compatible with existing AM5 motherboards, ensuring an easy upgrade path.
Performance Leadership
Just comparing with the Intel Core i9 14900K, the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X excels across all, we saw how the latter was able to perform much better on both productivity and gaming use cases.
The performance improvements are further extended and obvious, when comparing between the 8-core parts from both AMD and Intel. AMD’s latest Ryzen 9700X was able to perform better in all the tests shown.
Moving on to the Ryzen 5 9600X, the differences were even more significant.
Particularly, on the Handbrake benchmark, which was able to take advantage of AVX 512 capabilities of the Zen 5 CPUs, we saw how the Ryzen 9000 series have massive leaps over the competition.
More Efficient Systems
Less Power Usage, Cooler Systems, Quieter Operations
One of the most popular gaming CPUs produced by AMD, is the Ryzen 7 5800X, which features the first generation 3D V-Cache technology. Comparing with the Ryzen 7 9700X to the 5800X3D, there was an average of 12% improvement in gaming performance.
For gamers who are currently on the AM4 platform and are looking to upgrade, AMD is recommending that this is the time. With improved performance, and the advantage of PCIe Gen5 and DDR5 technologies, there won’t be any compromise when making that upgrade. The Ryzen 7 9700X will be an excellent choice for a new gaming PC.
There were substantial changes when it comes to the efficiency of the new Ryzen 9000 series processors. With improvements to the lid design and the thermal interface materials on the CPU’s heat spreader, compared to the Ryzen 7000 series, there is a 15% thermal resistance improvements, which leads to a 7 degree reduction of temperature. At the same TDP, this means that the processors are able to deliver even more performance, as they aren’t constrained by thermal limits.
This allows the reduction of TDP of the Ryzen 9 12-core part, Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5 without compromising on performance.
Supports for Overclocking
With the new Ryzen 9000 processors, AMD will be bringing some new overclocking features to it. First of all, there will be support for DDR5-8000 speeds, new Overclocking On-The-Fly feature and Memory Optimized Performance Profiles.
Secondly, on the CPU end, with lower TDPs, we will be expecting improved performance with Precision Boost Overdrive enabled, with thermal limitations out of the question.
These will be covered separately in a dedicated article on the overclocking features of the Ryzen 9000 series.
Platform Longevity
When AMD first started the AM5, they understood the need for the same level of support of users, just like what the AM4 platform provided. That is why, AM5 will be extending the support for AM5 through 2027 and as long as they possibly can.
Conclusion
The Ryzen 9000 series launch shows a capable and promising product by AMD for the market. With their dedication to providing excellent performance, efficiency and long-term support for their products and platform, consumers may find it compelling to go team red this time.
We’ll have our hands on the new Ryzen 9000 series processors. Stay tuned as we find out more about how these processors actually perform.
