This processor officially has a TDP of 65W, and may struggle to justify its price compared to the Ryzen 7 7700X and Ryzen 7 7800X3D. To make it more competitive, AMD would consider increasing its power…
AMD presented its first batch of Ryzen 9000Zen5 at the beginning of the month. The range includes four references: two Ryzen 9, one Ryzen 7 and one Ryzen 5, for configurations ranging from 16 to 6 CPU cores. These chips are expected by the end of July. One of them could, however, “slightly” differ from the one outlined in view of Computex…
| Processor | Heart / Discussions | Base Rate/Boost | Cache (L2/L3) | iGPU | TDP |
| Ryzen99950X | 16/32 | 4.3 / 5.7GHz | 80 months (16+64) | 2 WITH RDNA2 | 170W |
| Ryzen99900X | 12/24 | 4.4/5.6GHz | 76 months (12+64) | 2 WITH RDNA2 | 120W |
| Ryzen79700X | 8/16 | 3.8 / 5.5GHz | 40 months (8+32) | 2 WITH RDNA2 | 65W |
| Ryzen 5 9600X | 6/12 | 3.9 / 5.4GHz | 38 months (6+32) | 2 WITH RDNA2 | 65W |
A Ryzen 7 at 65W TDP
For several years, gamers, one of the main targets of these Ryzen desktops, have preferred the Ryzen 7. Rightly so, given that the latter generally offers a fairly attractive IPS/price ratio. And since the introduction of Ryzen with 3D V-Cache, Ryzen 7 5800X3D and Ryzen 7 7800X3D have become first-choice references for the most demanding gamers.
Suffice it to say, the Ryzen 7 9700X looked to have a bright future. The only downside: the base frequency of 3.8 GHz and the boost frequency of 5.5 GHz, while the Ryzen 7 7700X runs silently at 4.5 GHz and can go up to 5.4 GHz. On paper, a 700 MHz reduction in base frequency compensated only by 100 MHz more in boost is not very good. Above all, despite the IPC improvements brought by the new Zen 5 architecture, one wonders to what extent this Ryzen 7 9700X will be more efficient than its ancestor and will justify a – in principle – more substantial investment at the time of its release. The only certainty at the moment is that it clearly won’t be able to compete with 3DX chips in games: AMD has made no secret of the fact its Ryzen 7000X3D would remain the best for gaming until the Ryzen 9000X3D arrives.
You don’t have to look very far to understand the cause of the Ryzen 7 9700X’s rather low frequencies: they stem from a TDP lowered to 65 W. The Ryzen 7 7700X for its part benefits from a more comfortable thermal envelope of 105 W.
From 65W to 120W TDP?!
According to information collected by our colleague at WCCFTech, AMD is therefore considering giving more power to its Ryzen 7 9700X: not only reducing the TDP to 105 W, but actually increasing it to 120 W, almost double the previously expected value. AMD could then increase the base or boost frequency, and probably both. In reality, it will not be a great revelation, but granting more power allows for an increase in performance: the example of the Ryzen 7 5700X and Ryzen 7 5800X, two 8-core/16-thread Zen 3 whose TDPs are 65 W and 105 W respectively, is quite revealing.
According to our colleague, this new TDP specification is currently under evaluation. He sees two options: that it becomes the definitive specification of the Ryzen 7 9700X or that it portends a future Ryzen 7 introduced later, through a new series, such as those of the Ryzen XT.
For our part, we are rather skeptical about the first option. We cannot imagine the company changing the specifications of its processors a few weeks after their official release and so close to their commercialization. In addition, we do not yet know the power limits of the Ryzen 9000, but updating a chip initially designed for a TDP of 65 W to 120 W by drastically increasing its frequencies seems excessively dangerous; it is difficult to imagine such an unbridled orchestration by a large brand, with all the risks of failure that it could induce. The current Raptor Lake scam with numerous accidents caused by lax power limits enough to convince you…
