Ryzen 5 9600X & Ryzen 7 9700X Review: Low Power AMD Zen 5 Impresses
Running AI workloads natively on local hardware, or at the edge instead of in the cloud, is just now emerging into the mainstream on PCs. As a result, reliable, easily repeatable benchmarks for these workloads aren't prolific just yet, though UL has already built a few into its Procyon benchmark suite.
UL Procyon AI Machine Vision Benchmark
Let's take a look at how these processors do with the UL Procyon AI Computer Vision benchmark, running solely on the CPU cores using Integer precision. Though Ryzen AI 300 features an NPU, Granite Ridge and the Ryzen 9000 series do not, hence all of these tests being run on the CPU cores.
The larger L1, wider data path, faster memory support, and other architectural enhancements really help the Ryzen 9000 series processors in the Procyon AI benchmark. Here, the Ryzen 7 9700X comes out on top, followed by the 9600X, with all of the other chips trailing behind.
The larger L1, wider data path, faster memory support, and other architectural enhancements really help the Ryzen 9000 series processors in the Procyon AI benchmark. Here, the Ryzen 7 9700X comes out on top, followed by the 9600X, with all of the other chips trailing behind.
LAME XP Audio Encoding
In our custom LAME XP MP3 encoding test, we convert 16, large uncompressed WAV files to the MP3 format, which is a common use case for many end users, to provide portability and storage of their digital audio content. The LAME engine is an open-source MP3 audio encoder that is used widely in a multitude of third party applications. For this test, we created 16-copies of our own 223MB WAV file (an 11 minute Grateful Dead jam) and converted it to the MP3 format using the multi-thread capable LAME XP tool. Processing times are recorded below, listed in minutes:seconds. Shorter times equate to better performance.
The Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X showed only modest performance improvements in this audio encoding benchmark. Although they have lower TDPs and are technically clocked lower than their previous-gen counterparts, the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X still managed to shave a few seconds off their encode time, which bodes well for their efficiency.
Blackmagic RAW Video Encoding Speed
The Blackmagic RAW Speed Test is a CPU and GPU benchmarking tool that tests full-resolution Blackmagic RAW video decode performance. The tool can be used to evaluate the performance at various resolutions and bitrates on the CPU or using OpenCL on a GPU. We're reporting two results here, both using 8K resolution, but at differing bitrates and compression levels.
We had some odd results with the BlackMagic Speed Test. The Ryzen 5 9600X squeaked past the previous-gen Ryzen 5 7600X with both 4K and 8K video workloads, regardless of the compression level, but the Ryzen 7 9700X actually trailed the 7700X by a few FPS across the board.
We had some odd results with the BlackMagic Speed Test. The Ryzen 5 9600X squeaked past the previous-gen Ryzen 5 7600X with both 4K and 8K video workloads, regardless of the compression level, but the Ryzen 7 9700X actually trailed the 7700X by a few FPS across the board.
x265 Video Encoding
The multi-threaded HWBOT x265 Benchmark is based on the open source x265 video encoder that leverages modern CPU instructions to speed video encoding. We tested the CPUs represented here with the 64-bit encoder using the default 1080p and 4K workloads.
You'll notice there are only AMD systems in the chart above. Unfortunately, the MSI motherboard in our 14th Gen Intel test rig doesn't perform as expected when HPET (the High Precision Event Timer) is enabled, and HPET is required to run this test. HPET works properly on our Socket AM5 Asus mobo, though. As you can see, the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X outrun their previous-gen counterparts by a few percentage points, but there's no making up for additional cores here.
You'll notice there are only AMD systems in the chart above. Unfortunately, the MSI motherboard in our 14th Gen Intel test rig doesn't perform as expected when HPET (the High Precision Event Timer) is enabled, and HPET is required to run this test. HPET works properly on our Socket AM5 Asus mobo, though. As you can see, the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X outrun their previous-gen counterparts by a few percentage points, but there's no making up for additional cores here.
Cinebench 2024 Rendering Benchmark
Cinebench rendering performance test based on Cinema 4D from Maxon. Cinema 4D is a 3D rendering and animation tool suite used by animation houses and producers like Sony Animation and many others. It's very demanding of system processor resources and can utilize any number of threads, which makes it an excellent gauge of computational throughput. This is a multi-threaded, multi-processor aware benchmark that renders and animates 3D scenes and tracks the length of the entire process. The rate at which each test system was able to render the entire scene is represented in the graphs below.
Cinebench 2024's multi-threaded workload will essentially scale with as many cores as you throw at it. In these tests, the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X put up very strong single-threaded results that trail only the Core i9-14900K. Their multi-threaded scores are also good, but ultimately they only outrun the previous-gen Ryzen processors with similar core/thread counts. Intel's higher thread count processors finish well ahead.
POV-Ray CPU Ray Tracing Benchmark
POV-Ray, or the Persistence of Vision Ray-Tracer, is an open source tool for creating realistically lit images. We tested with POV-Ray's standard 'one-CPU' and 'all-CPU' benchmarking tools on all of our test machines and recorded the scores reported for each. Results are measured in pixels-per-second throughput; higher scores equate to better performance.
Our results with POV-Ray mirror Cinebench. The Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X leapfrog their predecessors, but there's no catching the higher-end processors with bigger core counts.
Blender Rendering Benchmarks
Blender is a free and open source 3D creation suite that can handle everything from modeling, rigging, and animation to simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking. It has a purpose-built benchmarking tool that will track the time it takes to complete rendering a particular model (or models). We used the CPU-focused benchmark with all three models currently available...
All of Blender's models tell the same story. The Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X perform well, but they offer only marginally higher performance than their 7000-series counterparts.
Y-Cruncher Multi-Threaded Pi Calculator
Y-Cruncher is a multi-core-capable tool that calculates the value of pi to a specified number of digits. In this case, we ran the tool on all threads and had the application calculate the value of pi to 1 billion digits. The values below are the time required to perform the calculation expressed in seconds. As a result, lower values indicate better performance.
The Zen 5-based Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X offered a significant performance uplift in Y-Cruncher, most likely due to their support for faster memory and high cache bandwidth. Here, the 6-core Ryzen 5 9600X is actually able to overtake the 8-core Ryzen 7 7700X and the 8-core Ryzen 7 9700X slots in just behind the 24-core (8P / 16E) Core i9-14900K.
The Zen 5-based Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X offered a significant performance uplift in Y-Cruncher, most likely due to their support for faster memory and high cache bandwidth. Here, the 6-core Ryzen 5 9600X is actually able to overtake the 8-core Ryzen 7 7700X and the 8-core Ryzen 7 9700X slots in just behind the 24-core (8P / 16E) Core i9-14900K.
