The AMD Ryzen 9 7900, Ryzen 7 7700, and Ryzen 5 7600 Review: Zen 4 Efficiency at 65 Watts
by Gavin Bonshor on January 9, 2023 9:00 AM ESTGaming Performance: 720p And Lower
The reason we test games in CPU reviews at lower resolutions such as 720p and below is simple; titles are more likely to be CPU bound than they are GPU bound at lower resolutions. This means there are more frames for the processor to process as opposed to the graphics card doing the majority of the heavy lifting.
There are some variances where some games will still use graphical power, but not as much CPU grunt at these smaller resolutions, and this is where we can show where CPU limitations lie in terms of gaming.
We are using DDR5 memory on the Ryzen 7000 series 65 W SKUs, as well as the other Ryzen 7000 processors tested, at the following settings:
- DDR5-5600B CL46 - Intel 13th Gen
- DDR5-5200 CL44 - Ryzen 7000
- DDR5-4800 (B) CL40 - Intel 12th Gen
All other CPUs such as Ryzen 5000 and 3000 were tested at the relevant JEDEC settings as per the processor's individual memory support with DDR4.
Civilization VI
World of Tanks
Borderlands 3
Grand Theft Auto V
Red Dead Redemption 2
F1 2022
Hitman 3
Total War: Warhammer 3
Cyberpunk 2077
We saw relatively decent performance across the board at very low resolutions of 720p and below, with low to minimal settings selected to bring raw CPU performance into play as opposed to discrete graphics. In most titles, the 65 W Ryzen 7000 CPUs trade blows well compared to other SKUs from both AMD and Intel, despite their power limitations.
The biggest limitation of power came in our Total War Warhammer 3 benchmark, where limited power did seem to handicap performance at 720p more than we've seen in other games so far.
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iRacer - Wednesday, February 1, 2023 - link
How do you get V-Ray benchmark values which are 35 to 50% higher than anything that can be seen on the results page?What version of the benchmark are you using?
leavenfish - Sunday, February 5, 2023 - link
Ummm....don't think he ever did the testing update he said he would try to do (but was busy) the weekened after the article came out?Gavin Bonshor - Monday, February 6, 2023 - link
It's coming, don't worry.Gavin Bonshor - Monday, February 6, 2023 - link
It isn't the latest iteration. It's the previous version (4). The critical area to consider is the consistency of the results within the same version.Of course, we will update this benchmark in our next wave to the latest version. If we did this for every benchmark, I would spend 100% of my time testing and 0% writing.
blueryu - Tuesday, February 7, 2023 - link
I'd like to know the idle power consumption of the CPUs. Apparently there is quite a difference at idle between the latest AMD and Intel options but can't seem to find much in the way of tests.