[…] Late last year, we were ready for some meaningful gaming performance gains. But when Zen 5 arrived, we were left stumped. The 9700X was only about 1 – 2% faster than the 7700X, while the 9600X was just a few percent faster than the 7600X. Although performance margins varied between review outlets due to different testing methods, the recurring theme was clear: for gaming and most general productivity applications, Zen 5 offered little to nothing over Zen 4.

So, has anything changed? We continue to see comments suggesting that Zen 5 has received further optimizations and is now comfortably ahead of Zen 4 for gaming.

Today, we are putting that claim to the test by comparing the 7600X and 9600X across a dozen games. For additional context, we’re including the 9800X3D to help determine whether we are CPU or GPU limited in our testing. We’re using the latest version of Windows 11, along with the most up-to-date BIOS for our AM5 motherboard.

Video version: YouTube