The Core i9-12900K processor from Intel was the top performing desktop processor. And now, nearly a year later, it's time for another fight between the two companies with the next-gen Ryzen Zen 4. The new Ryzen 7000 chips will have huge gains over the previous Zen 3 chips.
The flagship chip has 16 cores, 32 threads, and a boost clock of up to 5.7 GHz. We won't be reviewing the flagship chip just yet, as it's only been supplied byAMD, and it ships with 12 cores, 24 threads, and a 5.6 GHz boost for $549. Up to a 29 percent increase in single-threaded performance is promised by the company.
With Intel's 13th Gen launch looming and the potential for an Intel chip to hit 6 GHz out of the box, will the improvements made by Advanced Micro Devices suffice? Over the past week, I have been testing both the Ryzen 9 7900X and the Core i9-12900K.
The 7900X is more of a mixed bag than the floor with Intel.
The first big change to the sockets in six years is coming with the new Zen 4 processor from Advanced Micro Devices. The AM5 platform moves the latest Ryzen chips to a higher level of memory and speed. Even though we haven't reached the limits of PCIe 4.0 in the graphics space, support for the standard is still future proof. Corsair has teased 10,000MB/s sequential read speeds, so we should see drives soon.
You will need a new board and memory for the new chips. A new cooler isn't likely to be needed. Most coolers that already support AM4 should be able to use Corsair's H150 EliteLCD without any changes.
The four flavors of the AM5 will be X 670E, X 670E, B 650E, and B 650. The B-series boards have had a limited number of lanes, and the X-series has support for higher speeds. The flagship X670E and X670 will be available immediately, but the lower-cost B 650E and B 650 series boards won't be available until October. The high-end boards will be available for the new chip.
Corsair HX 1000W PSU: Corsair HX 1000W.
I have been testing outMSI's Meg X670E Ace with a number of other hardware items. There is plenty of space for the latest storage in this board.
The introduction ofDDR5 support on AM5 chipsets has added some early issues that will need to be addressed with bios updates. The boot time is increased by 30 seconds because of a memory training process. This will be addressed in upcoming bios updates, but it is an annoyance for early users.
Issues are caused when the machine is put into sleep mode. I wasn't able to get back to sleep fast. The fix for this is being worked on by the company.
The Corsair HX 1000 is a computer cooler and the Corsair Dominator Platinum is a graphics card and storage device.
The Verge doesn't review processors in the traditional sense, so we don't own dedicated hardware testing rigs or multiple CPUs and systems to offer all of the benchmark and comparisons. We recommend Eurogamer, Tom's Hardware, and PC Gamer for those.
I have tested both the Core i9 12900K and the Ryzen 9 7900X. The tests were done on the latest Windows 11 Update with security off.
In most of the creator tasks I threw at it, the Core i9 12900K was the only one that didn't wipe the floor. Intel holds a clear advantage in PugetBench. I didn't think that video processing advantage was present in our tests of our own standard video export test. A five-minute 4K video is exported. The same time was taken on the 7900X as it was on the 12900K.
It was more of a mixed bag in gaming The 12900K beat the 7900X in games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Watch Dogs: Legion. In our limited testing, it appears that the 7900X will edge out the 12900K at high definition gaming.
I tested the 980 Pro with the Ryzen 9 7900X because there aren't any M.2 drives yet. It has a read speed of 7,000MB/s and a write speed of 5,000 MB/s. I was close to the write speeds of 4,962MB/s but the read speeds were less than I had recorded.
The introduction of a single PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot on the Meg X670E will sit unused until these drives are available, but they should hit the market before the year ends. We are still waiting for DirectStorage games to appear in Windows 11 that take advantage of the current-gen PCIe 4.0 drives.
There's a slight gaming advantage to the Ryzen 9 7900X. How long will this last? The 12900K is almost a year old, and the Ryzen 7 5800X3D held its own against it. The 13900K will be unveiled tomorrow. There could be a 7900X3D down the line if the new 3D-stacking V-Cache technology used in the Ryzen 7 5800X3D is any indication.
Intel's 12900K can be found at retail for $589, but you can get the Ryzen 9 7900X for just $549. This is just the price for the 7900X It is easy to assume that the flagship Zen 4 chip should beat Intel's 12900K with more cores and a higher boost clock, even though it wasn't available in time for review.
Pricing and energy usage will be key as Intel responds with a processor that can boost up to 6 GHz. We could be looking at a battle for your wallet as much as a battle for performance in the coming months as a result of Intel's announcement that it will raise the prices on its flagship CPUs. The next-gen Zen 4 architecture from Advanced Micro Devices is sure to challenge Intel this year.
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