Gamers Nexus called it a “wasted opportunity.” Hardware Unboxed declared it a “flop.” Even in our own Ryzen 7 9700X review, I said the CPU doesn’t have “enough meat on the bone to justify an upgrade.” So, why does the Ryzen 7 9700X top the list of the best processors? And more importantly, why am I using one in my personal PC?
I’ll do my best to answer these forced questions. The disappointment in the Ryzen 7 9700X isn’t truly universal — no opinions about PC hardware are — but there’s no doubt that it’s the outcast in AMD’s lineup of Ryzen 9000 CPUs. It’s not great for gaming in the face of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, and you can save $50 to $70 with the Ryzen 7 7700X while getting largely similar productivity performance. But AMD’s trusty little Zen 5 octa-core is still at the heart of my high-end gaming PC, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
A flexible little devil
Like all Zen 5 CPUs, the Ryzen 7 9700X was the target of some major performance updates shortly after it released. Most of the disappointment around launch came from issues between the Ryzen 7 9700X and Windows, as well as the processor’s oddly low power draw. Most reviewers — including myself — either updated their review or issued some other piece of content addressing the performance updates. First impressions can last a lifetime, however, so I wouldn’t blame you for being out of the loop.
The big issue that AMD addressed was branch prediction in Windows 11 — newer versions of Windows have better branch prediction, which the entire Zen 5 range heavily relies on for performance improvements.
That’s great, but AMD went ahead and added something else with these updates: a new 105-watt power mode. The Ryzen 7 9700X normally runs at 65W, while the last-gen Ryzen 7 7700X topped out at 105W. Even prior to launch, there was speculation that AMD had somehow nerfed the Ryzen 7 9700X with its lower power draw. That wasn’t true, but at release, the Ryzen 7 9700X was seen as a slightly faster Ryzen 7700X that consumed less power. The recommendation from there is simple — buy the Ryzen 7 7700X, save some money, and deal with slightly higher power draw.
That’s not the case any more. The 105W power mode offers a ton of extra performance. In my testing, it’s upwards of 17% faster in productivity applications, which, in this day and age, is akin to a full generational uplift. You could overclock the base Ryzen 7 9700X to see these performance gains, but there’s something to be said about an official power mode from AMD. Not only is it an easy setting to change in your BIOS, but it’s even covered under warranty.
This flexibility is the main reason I use the Ryzen 7 9700X. Based on my testing, there are basically no performance gains in games by using the 105W mode, but there are huge gains when using the mode in productivity apps. It’s like I have two CPUs in one. I run the processor in its 65W mode most of the time, but I can easily toggle over to the 105W mode if I need to do anything more serious. That’s a huge deal for me, as I’m running a small form factor gaming PC that only has room for a 55mm cooler. I can’t handle 105W at all hours.
But what about the games?
I use my PC for work, but that doesn’t require much horsepower. I could do my job off of a Chromebook if I really needed to. As long as my internet is fast and my screen is large, I’m set. The main reason I have a high-end PC is for what I do in my off hours — playing games. And as much as AMD and Intel probably wouldn’t like me saying it, your CPU just isn’t as significant to your gaming experience as your graphics card is.
Don’t take that to mean that your CPU doesn’t matter. It absolutely does, but the degree to which it matters depends on a lot of factors — far more factors than your graphics card, at least. Let’s look at some examples. Above, you’ll see the highest and lowest result I saw in my Ryzen 7 9800X3D review. At the low-end, that CPU is just 2% faster than the Ryzen 7 9700X in Black Myth: Wukong. At the high-end, it’s 19% faster in Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail. That’s a range of 2% to 19% faster at 1080p with the High preset in games, which more clearly shows performance differences between CPUs.
Let’s flip the script and look at graphics cards. Comparing a $300 graphics card like the RTX 4060 to a $400 graphics card like the RTX 4060 Ti at 1440p, things are a little different. In Forza Horizon 5, the RTX 4060 Ti is 14% faster. In Red Dead Redemption 2, it’s 29% faster. And in Cyberpunk 2077, it’s 34% faster. With a CPU, you’re looking at no performance improvement to an uplift of nearly 20%. With a GPU, you may have a larger range of 14% to 34%, but it’s easier to say you’ll see an improvement across most games.
Put simply — almost every game cares about your graphics card, but only some games care as much about your processor. The games I typically play care much more about graphics performance.
Now, careful. We don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I chose the Ryzen 7 9700X for a reason, and I don’t want anyone to leave this article assuming they should just buy the cheapest CPU they can get their hands on and get the same gaming experience. That’s not true. For my purposes, the Ryzen 7 9700X makes sense due to a handful of factors.
As mentioned, I’m mainly playing graphically intensive games. That means I’m looking for a minimum viable frame rate to saturate the 138Hz refresh rate that my monitor is capable of. Anything above that, and I’m wasting resources. For someone like me, that 2% uplift in Black Myth: Wukong is more representative of the difference between two CPUs than Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail. And as you can see from the Dawntrail benchmarks, it really doesn’t matter which of these CPUs I choose because they’re all able to go far above my monitor’s refresh rate.
Next, the Ryzen 7 9700X is an eight-core part on AMD’s latest architecture. First, the eight cores. Most games can’t scale beyond eight cores. Some can — see the Ryzen 9 9950X results in Dawntrail above — but most don’t. However, there’s strong evidence that gaming performance decreases below eight cores. Once again, it depends on the game. Some titles really only care about two cores, while others see a performance improvement up to 16 cores. But since I’m looking for the most well-rounded gaming experience, eight cores is where I want to be.
On the architecture front, I have to be honest. It’s a bet. Generally, newer architectures perform better for longer as new games release. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but based on years of CPU releases, older architectures will generally struggle to keep up in games faster than newer architectures. As an illustration, look at TechPowerUp’s 1080p results for the Ryzen 7 9800X3D. The Ryzen 7 9700X is 11% slower, while the Ryzen 7 7700X is 13% slower on average. Not a huge difference. However, the Ryzen 7 5700X is 30% slower, while the Ryzen 7 3700X is 40% slower.
Isolating two generations side by side might not show a massive difference, but over time, as new, more demanding games release, those differences become more pronounced. This isn’t a steadfast rule, but generally, it’s best to pick the newest architecture you can when buying a gaming CPU to get the best longevity — assuming, at least, the new architecture isn’t a complete flop like we saw with the Core Ultra 5 245K.
The 4K question
I have a 4K monitor, and I play games at 4K. I could roundly excuse the idea that my CPU matters for gaming with that fact alone, leaning on some flimsy reasoning that, because I play at 4K, my graphics card is far more important. There’s some truth to that, but it doesn’t really capture the role your CPU plays in a gaming PC. Once again, it’s just one of several factors.
Hardware Unboxed recently published a video on this topic surrounding the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, and I’d highly recommend giving it a watch to get a better grip of how resolution factors into CPU performance. I want to focus in on one specific aspect of CPU performance at 4K, which once again comes down to the games you play.
In this video, the channel highlights Counter-Strike 2 as an example of an esports game where CPU performance is more important, even up to 4K. In these types of games, you may turn down your graphics settings or exceed the refresh rate of your monitor, both of which can provide a legitimate competitive advantage. If you play these types of games a lot — I dabble from time to time, but they aren’t my main focus — your CPU performance is going to play a bigger role.
The reason why there’s an assumption that your CPU doesn’t matter for 4K gaming is that, at that high of a resolution, your graphics card is put under too much stress for your CPU to make a big difference. And in a lot of games — I’d even reckon the majority of them — that’s 100% accurate. However, games like Counter-Strike 2, Overwatch 2, or Valorant aren’t demanding, even all the way up to 4K. It’s easy work for your graphics card to spit out hundreds of frames. Less pressure on your graphics card means more pressure on your CPU, regardless of resolution.
Here’s a way to think about it. Let’s say you keep the CPU inside a gaming PC the same, but you incrementally increase the performance of the graphics card. You’ll see pretty clear scaling at 4K for a while, but at some point, increasing the power of the graphics card won’t improve your performance any more. Eventually, the increases will level off as your CPU becomes a limiting factor — you’re left with a CPU bottleneck. It’s not the resolution that matters. It’s the balance between the work your CPU and GPU are doing in the games you play that matters.
Keeping this in mind, I’m not dismissing more expensive CPUs simply because I’m playing at 4K. I’m dismissing them because I don’t need the extra power they offer based on the games I play. Resolution plays a role in that, but it’s far from the only factor that went into my decision.
This is all a very longwinded way of saying — the Ryzen 7 9700X fits my needs. You don’t need to think this deeply about your hardware decisions, but it’s very helpful to evaluate what exactly your needs are. It’ll help you dissect reviews for new hardware in your personal context, and it’ll allow you to go beyond whatever conclusion a reviewer came to based on their testing process. You might even stumble upon something that’s perfect for your rig like I did with the Ryzen 7 9700X, despite what the general consensus of the CPU is.
