Introduction

AMD’s next-generation Ryzen “Zen 4” is here and we have the reviews! The new Ryzen 7 7700X is designed for high-performance gaming PC builds, letting you play at any resolution and with any game settings, when paired with a fast graphics card. It comes with the latest connectivity, including DDR5 memory and PCI-Express Gen 5, and a brand-new platform built around the new Socket AM5 LGA. The new “Zen 4” core aims to deliver a 13% IPC uplift over “Zen 3,” while the much higher clock speeds enabled with this generation amount to a 29% single-threaded performance uplift in total over the previous-generation. With these, AMD claims to have stormed to the top, beating Intel’s 12th Gen Core “Alder Lake.”

This Ryzen 7 7700X review covers the 8-core/16-thread processor at its $400 price-point, which compares to Intel’s Core i7-12700K (8P+4E). AMD is unfazed with Intel’s Hybrid architecture, E-cores, believing its processors can overcome the core-count deficit and beat Intel’s offerings. The homogeneous core design localized to a single CCD also ensures the highest possible performance with less-parallelized applications, such as games and content-creation tools that don’t need too many cores. AMD is also the first to offer CPU-attached PCIe Gen 5 NVMe that doesn’t eat into the PEG lanes. Increases in the PCIe lane budget means motherboard designers can now opt for up to two CPU-attached Gen 5 NVMe, besides up to three chipset-attached Gen 4.

The “Zen 4” architecture is designed to make most of the added bandwidth that DDR5 memory brings to the table, and to ensure support of PCIe Gen 5 devices such as next-generation SSDs and graphics cards. Besides the latest connectivity, it also introduces support for AVX-512 and VNNI, making it capable of accelerated AI inferencing, bringing it on par with Intel in this area. AMD has increased the L2 cache size, so the total cache (L2+L3) is now up to 40 MB, from 36 MB on the previous-gen 5700X.

Ryzen 7 7700X, as we mentioned, is an 8-core/16-thread processor. It comes with clock speeds of 4.50 GHz base, and 5.40 GHz boost. Each of its eight cores features a 1 MB dedicated L2 cache, and access to the 32 MB of shared L3 cache. The processor puts out 28 lanes of PCIe Gen 5 (compared to 16 Gen 5 and 12 Gen 4 lanes from “Alder Lake”), and comes with a DDR5-only memory interface (no backwards-compatibility with DDR4, unlike Alder Lake). AMD has also added integrated graphics across the lineup. This levels the playing field with Intel, as now all the non-gaming productivity users who chose Intel for their integrated graphics, can pick a competing AMD processor without having to wait for APUs with large iGPUs.

In this review, we take the Ryzen 7 7700X for a ride to find out how it measures up to Intel. We have rebenched every processor before this review with the latest selection of benchmarks and game-tests, and up-to-date software; additionally we’ve used a vast selection of processors, dating all the way back to several years ago, so you know if it’s time to upgrade.