In something of a shocking turn of events, the upcoming Zen 5 AMD CPUs, such as the Ryzen 9 9700X won’t actually be faster in games than AMD’s existing X3D processors. That’s despite AMD claiming that Zen 5 provides a significant 16% improvement in instructions per clock compared to its older Ryzen 7000 series CPUs based on the Zen 4 architecture.
The revelation comes only weeks ahead of the expected Ryzen 9000 release date in July 2024, and puts a dampener on our expectations when it comes to the new AMD Zen 5 chips earning a spot on our best gaming CPU guide. They still look likely to be great CPUs, even for gaming PCs, but it looks like we’ll have to wait for the first Ryzen 9000 X3D CPUs before gaming performance takes a significant leap.
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