AMD Ryzen 7 9700X vs AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

AMD Ryzen 7 9700X

The Ryzen 7 9700X is an upper mid-range desktop CPU of the Granite Ridge product family that features 8 Zen 5 cores (16 threads) running at 3.8 GHz to 5.5 GHz, PCIe 5 support and a basic iGPU. The Ryzen was launched in June 2024, with sales slated to start some time in July.

Architecture and Features

Just like Strix Point APUs, Granite Ridge processors make use of the new Zen 5 microarchitecture. However, there are no efficient cores here; all of 9700X's cores are full Zen 5 cores. Furthermore, Granite Ridge is a multi-die design with only the CPU cores produced using a fairly modern 4 nm TSMC process. Strix Point processors are a single-die design, from what we know.

According to AMD, Zen 5 delivers a 16% IPC improvement over Zen 4 thanks to branch prediction improvements and other refinements.

Elsewhere, the 9700X has 32 MB of L3 cache and 24 direct PCIe 5 lanes (3.93 GB/s throughput per lane) with up to 12 additional PCIe 4 lanes available depending on the motherboard. It supports DDR5 RAM as fast as 5600 MT/s, ECC memory included - this too depends on the motherboard.

The 9700X is unlocked for overclocking. Naturally, the AM5 socket CPU fully supports Windows 11, 64-bit Windows 10 as well as many Linux distros.

Performance

If early July leaks are any indication, the 9700X is set to have multi-thread performance matching the fastest laptop chips such as the 24-core Core i9-13950HX. We'll update this section once we get our hands on a system powered by the 9700X.

Graphics

The Radeon 610M comes equipped with just 128 unified shaders running at up to 2,200 MHz. Its gaming performance is slated to be extremely low and only just sufficient for pre-2020 games in resolutions such as 1024x768.

Power consumption

The CPU cores are built with a 4 nm TSMC process for good, as of mid 2024, power efficiency. (Apple is the leader in this regard with the second-generation 3 nm process.)

The Ryzen 7's long-term TDP is 65 W. It'll probably consume at least 100 W when under heavy short-term loads. If overclocked, the power consumption figures will increase significantly.

AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D