AMD Ryzen 7 5700X review

Our Verdict

76%

Very power frugal, and overclocking unlocks its multi-threaded potential, but it needs a more competitive price.

Unlike the Ryzen 5 5600, the Ryzen 7 5700X isn’t aiming to battle Intel at the budget end of the market, but instead trade blows with the similarly-priced Core i5-12600K, while offering a cheaper 8-core AM4 option than the Ryzen 7 5800X.

That said, there’s barely $20 between the two Ryzen 7 chips. Plus, as we saw with the Ryzen 5 5600 and 5600X, there are slim pickings when identifying the spec differences between the two chips. Both the Ryzen 7 5700X and 5800X have eight cores and 16 threads via SMT. They also both use AMD’s 7nm Zen 3 architecture and have 32MB of L3 cache. Despite being a new model, the Ryzen 7 5700X lacks the 3D V-Cache of the Ryzen 7 5800X3D.

The only differences are the clock speed and TDP. The latter sits at 105W for the pricier chip, but at just 65W for the Ryzen 7 5700X, making it a little easier to cool at stock speed. The peak boost frequency you’ll see with the new CPU is 4.6GHz, while the Ryzen 7 5800X can hit 4.7GHz, which isn’t a significant difference. However, the 5800X can also hit upwards of 4.4GHz across all cores in multi-threaded tasks, while the Ryzen 7 5700X could only hit 3.9GHz in the same test, so it’s likely to be noticeably slower than the 5800X as you load more cores.

Sure enough, there were a few thousand points between the 5700X and the Ryzen 7 5800X in our image-editing test, but a sizeable gulf of over 11 percent in our heavily multi-threaded Handbrake video encoding test and 16 percent in Cinebench’s multi-threaded test too, thanks to that much lower all-core boost clock.

1/6

It also didn’t manage to topple Intel’s Core i5-12600K, which beat it in nearly every test – the only exception was our RealBench multi-tasking test. It’s when it comes to games that Zen 3 is really showing its age against Intel now – even the far cheaper Core i5-12400F was either faster or kept pace with the Ryzen 7 5700X in these tests, while the Core i5-12600K was noticeably quicker. In quite a few cases, the Ryzen 5 5600X is almost as quick as the 5700X.

Meanwhile, overclocking the 5700X saw us hit an all-core frequency of 4.6GHz with a 1.25V vcore, which closed the gap a little compared to the Core i5-12600K, which only offered small advantages in games and content creation. One area where the 5700X excels, though, is power efficiency. Our system drew nearly 60W less from the mains with the 5700X at load compared to the 5800X, and our Intel system drew 30W more than the 5700X system with the Core i5-12600K installed too.

AMD Ryzen 7 5700X pros and cons

Pros

• Good multi-threaded performance
• Power frugal
• Compatible with first-gen AM4 boards

Cons

• Slower than Core i5-12600K in most tasks
• Ryzen 7 5800X only $20 more
• Cheaper Ryzen 5 5600X is often as fast

AMD Ryzen 7 5700X specs

The Ryzen 7 5700X specs list is:

AMD Ryzen 7 5700X price

Price: Expect to pay $299 / £270

AMD Ryzen 7 5700X review conclusion

With just $20 separating the Ryzen 7 5700X and 5800X at the time of writing, there doesn’t seem much point opting for the former when the latter offers tangible benefits in a number of tests for such a small amount extra. However, it does draw a lot less power, requiring less lavish cooling and it can be overclocked to similar levels if the need for extra speed does take you. Even so, the Core i5-12600K is still a better overall buy – the Ryzen 7 5700X is really only worth considering if you’re upgrading from an older Ryzen CPU.

For more CPU options, check out our guide to the best gaming CPU, which details a range of different CPUs to suit different needs and budgets.