AMD Ryzen 7000: high prices but no surprises in France, and high-level performance

Finally, the rate card for AMD’s Ryzen 7000 processors is available for France and we will not be surprised (too much) by the prices offered, which range from 369 euros for the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X (without cooler ) at 849 euros for the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (still without cooler), the “intermediate” models Ryzen 9 7900X and Ryzen 7 7700X being offered respectively at 669 and 489 euros.

As a reminder, the new AMD Ryzen 7000 processors are designed under ZEN 4 architecture and socket AM5 and engraved in 5 nm. Size of the integrated L1/L2 caches, compatibility with AVX-512 extensions (so far exclusive to Intel), AMD has reviewed large parts of its chiplet (several chips on the same SoC), optimized everything that could be in the state of technology in order to offer a processor with an average raw performance gain of 13% compared to the Zen 3 architecture. is a less spectacular progression than the transition to ZEN 3 (+19% gain in IPC compared to ZEN 2), but we must not forget in the equation the engraving at 5 nm (compared to 7 nm for ZEN 3) which allows, according to AMD, an improvement in energy efficiency of around 40%!

This new increased fineness of engraving also makes it possible to integrate an RDNA 2 iGPU into the SoC, the iGPU being a first for AMD on such a high-end processor. However, the performance of this iGPU is still limited despite the RDNA2. With 128 processing units, it is difficult to work miracles, and the graphics processor will mainly be used to support the display in 4K and 60 frames / second and to allow the encoding of H.264 and HEVC as well as the decoding of the AV1 format. .

Among the big changes brought by the Ryzen 7000, it is also impossible not to mention the abandonment of the connection pins, the pins now being moved to the socket of the CM (motherboard). The SoC, still with dimensions of 40mm x 40mm, therefore goes to AM5 format (1718 pines) against 1331 pines for the AM4. The AM5 comes with PCIe 5 and allows the management of DDR5 RAM… and only DDR5 for that matter. AMD is indeed completely dropping DDR4 with its new generation of Ryzen 7000 processors, unlike Intel which manages both generations of RAM with its latest chips. By the way, for those who would like to know more about the differences and the respective contributions of DDR4 and DDR5 RAM (especially for gaming), a quick jump on gamertop is better than a big cobblestone. Still on the RAM front, AMD introduced its EXPO functionality, a system that allows you to overclock the DDR5 RAM of your machine, the only constraint being that the RAM be compatible with EXPO. A simple activation of a specific profile in the BIOS, and it’s done!

As a reminder, the 4 models of Ryzen 7 currently offered for sale in France:

• Ryzen 5 7600X (6 cores, 12 threads), 4.7 GHz/5.3 GHz, 38 MB L2+L3 cache, TDP 105W, 369 euros
• Ryzen 7 7700X (8 cores, 16 threads), 4.5 GHz/5.4 GHz, 40 MB L2+L3 cache, TDP 105W, 489 euros
• Ryzen 9 7900X (12 cores, 24 threads), 4.7 GHz/5.4 GHz, 76 MB L2+L3 cache, TDP 170W, 669 euros
• Ryzen 9 7950X (16 cores, 32 threads), 4.5 GHz/5.7 GHz, 80 MB L2+L3 cache, TDP 170W, 849 euros (or even more…)