The reception of the Ryzen 7 7700X convinced us of the qualities of the Zen 4 architecture. As is often said, the Ryzen 9 7950X is there to drive the point home, to pass the second layer. Powerful in all areas, practically leader in each of our tests, the most efficient of AMD’s new processors suffers mainly from two faults: a pronounced tendency to overheat and a memory subsystem that is a little behind.
Nothing that is really detrimental to it and this Ryzen 9 7950X clearly stands out as a monster prepared for all eventualities. A monster certainly, but one that doesn’t sacrifice everything on the altar of performance. Certainly, it heats up a lot, but it is also – and by far – the most efficient of the processors tested in terms of energy. Limited to 125 Watts of power, it even pulverizes any of our competitors.
To make matters worse, AMD is not taking the opportunity to raise prices and the launch price is even lower than that of the Ryzen 9 5950X! Finally, it is impossible not to say a word about the progress of the AM5 platform: more modern, more complete, it suffers on the other hand from a price positioning, partly linked to DDR5, which is a little more questionable.
