AMD Launches AM5 Platform: Zen 4 Processors Deliver Nice Performance Upticks Over Prior Generation

Today is the day you get to learn a lot more about the performance factor of AMD’s latest-gen Ryzen CPUs, part of the Zen 4 family. If the schedule goes off without a hitch, you should be able to order one of the new chips tomorrow, along with the accompanying motherboards – and don’t forget the DDR5 memory.

 

 

 

While the performance embargo lifts today, we’re still in the middle of testing, so our full review will come soon. We’re going to start off with a lighter look at encoding, rendering, and system benchmarks, and expand later once we receive an updated cooler (we’ll explain in a moment).

As we covered last month, AMD’s new Zen 4-based CPUs promise an IPC boost of around 13%, and despite the performance increases, pricing has largely remained the same vs. the previous gen. This is the first AMD launch in a while that doesn’t support the AM4 platform, however, so if you’re interested in upgrading, you’ll need to add a new motherboard and memory to your shopping list.

Speaking of new motherboards, the one we received for testing is ASUS’ ROG Crosshair X670E HERO, sporting a name that’s long enough to make us feel out-of-breath after typing it out. So far, our experiences with this motherboard have been fantastic from a hardware and stability perspective. The board features many NVMe and SATA slots/ports, and enough fan headers to please most builders. For those interested in checking out the board in more detail, please feel free to look through the photos in the carousel below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The DDR5 memory kit we received for our testing comes from G.SKILL. This TridentZ kit is comprised of 2x16GB modules, clocked at what AMD considers the “sweet spot”, of DDR5-6000. Its timings are 30-38-38-96, although it’s important to note that if you are comparing those timings to DDR4, you’re going to be missing some of the nuance. Ultimately what matters is how each chip and memory combo perform in real-world tests.

If you haven’t seen AMD’s Zen 4 CPUs yet, then its aesthetic (seen at the top of this post) might catch you off guard. Admittedly, we worried about the complications of swapping CPUs when each side is prone to having thermal paste “drip” down the sides, but surprisingly enough, we’ve actually found these chips easier to swap than any previous AMD chip we’ve tested. We’ve swapped our two chips a couple of times so far, and somehow haven’t bled thermal paste down those crevices, which is great, as our outgoing AM4 test platform’s socket began to look like a warzone by the end.

At any rate, we’re covering a bit of territory best-suited for a review, so before we get too off-track, here’s a look at AMD’s current CPU lineup:

You may notice that some CPUs in this list are older, but to this day, they still haven’t been outright replaced. The Ryzen 3 series, for example, never saw a Zen 3-based release. You might also notice that between the last- and current-gen processors, the latest and greatest have received some notable clock boosts. The Ryzen 9 7950X, in particular, can peak at 5.7GHz.

When we test CPUs, we typically don’t pay that much attention to the raw clocks, because what’s ultimately important is how the entire package comes together to deliver strong performance. However, we have to say it was amusing to see 5GHz+ clocks in CPU-Z as we monitored some benchmarks.

Another important distinction seen in the table above is that these new Ryzen CPUs include integrated graphics, although despite that, AMD doesn’t seem to be calling them “APUs”. We have yet to test the IGP in these chips, but do plan to after clearing through our ongoing benchmarking.

That all said, we earlier alluded to the fact that we’d be talking a bit more about the cooling solution on our platform, and the crux of that is, both of our received chips appear to be overheating at present, something that delayed us further as we tried to figure out what was going on. This is despite us using the exact same CPU cooler AMD did in its reference. The fact that our Cinebench scores are falling behind the reference proves that we’re dealing with some throttling issues.

Interestingly, NZXT posted ahead of the weekend that it would be providing an AM5 bracket for those planning to upgrade to AM5, specific to X and Z products (eg: Kraken X63). We have a Kraken X63, so we can’t help but imagine that’s the source of our performance discrepancies, as the mounting height has changed. If you plan to upgrade to AM5, and own one of these affected coolers, definitely hit up the link above.

As mentioned before, we’re continuing to test a collection of CPUs in order to get a worthwhile performance look posted. Our first performance look is going to be simpler in nature, and after we receive a proper cooling upgrade, we’ll be retesting all of our Zen 4 chips in the full benchmark suite. Stay tuned.

Addendum: After looking over launch reviews, we now realize that we were not alone in dealing with overheating issues, and now regret even more wasting so much time trying to get down to the bottom of them, instead of just continuing on with testing other CPUs. AMD’s Cinebench MT reference for the Ryzen 9 7900X was 29,600, and we hit 28,000. After looking at four results on other websites, we see that not a single one came close to that 29,600 reference score. So… back to benching for us, and we hope to deliver our initial performance report soon.