INTRODUCTION

   Regardless of whether you're an AMD or Intel fan competition between these two leading CPU manufacturers has always been a good thing, both in terms of pricing/costs and technological advancements. This has been particularly true for the past decade or so with AMD and Intel frequently exchanging spots as the one with the fastest gaming CPU (primarily based on single core performance). Two years ago, AMD unveiled their 5000 Series of Ryzen Zen 3 architecture CPUs which Intel successfully countered with their 12th generation of Core CPUs shortly after. As expected, AMD had already started working on a new series of desktop CPUs and so it was just a matter of time before they also countered back. Well, that day is now and so I'll be starting my coverage of the brand new 7000 Series Zen 4 CPUs by AMD with the Ryzen 7 7700X.

   For more than 50 years AMD has driven innovation in high-performance computing, graphics and visualization technologies. Billions of people, leading Fortune 500 businesses and cutting-edge scientific research institutions around the world rely on AMD technology daily to improve how they live, work and play. AMD employees are focused on building leadership high-performance and adaptive products that push the boundaries of what is possible.

   Alongside the Ryzen 7 7700X which this review is all about today we also see the launch of the Ryzen 7 7600X, Ryzen 9 7900X and Ryzen 7 7950X (review here) AM5 (Codename Raphael) models with which AMD aims to win over gamers and professionals alike. According to AMD the new Ryzen 7000 Series (Zen 4) which is based on the LGA1718 socket boasts an +13% increase in instructions per cycle/clock (IPC) together with an increase of up to 800MHz in core clocks both of which translate to a single core performance boost of up to +29% compared to the previous 5000 Series (Zen 3) generation. Performance is not the only thing AMD has moved forward at however, power consumption has also been dramatically improved/reduced since Zen 4 CCDs (Core Complex Dies - 70mm2 size - 6.5 billion transistors) have moved to an 5nm process (6nm for the I/O Die - 122mm2 size - 3.4 billion transistors) resulting in a very appealing 40% average gain in performance-per-watt (AMD Eco Mode also allows you to manually reduce the TDP of the CPU via the BIOS or their Master software). The entire Ryzen 7000 line (Zen 4) also sports integrated RDNA2 graphics which sport 2 compute units, 4 Asynchronous Compute Engines (ACE) and 1 Hardware Scheduler (HWS) with support for both HDMI v2.1 (HFR/48Gbps FRL/DSC/HDR10+/VRR) and DisplayPort v2.0 (Adaptive Sync/DSC/UHBR10/HDR) outputs. AMD has also further tweaked their infinity fabric technology and so now instead of the 1:1:1 approach (FCLK/UCLK/MCLK) of the previous 5000 Series (Zen 3) the new 7000 Series (Zen 4) uses an auto:1:1 approach meaning that it keeps the memory controller with the RAM at an 1:1 ratio whereas Infinity Fabric is set between 1600-2000MHz. This ensures optimal cooperation between the new Zen 4 CPUs and DDR5 RAM, especially low-latency modules following the EXPO memory certification by AMD. The EXPO technology by AMD is similar to XMP but aside being licence and royalty free it's also optimized for the new Zen 4 CPU line (up to 11% gains in gaming). As for the Ryzen 7 7700X CPU this is an 8 core, 16 thread model with a maximum TDP of 105W (142W max socket power), 4.5GHz base clock, 5.4GHz max boost clock and a TjMax of 95 degrees Celsius (L2 cache is set at 8x1MB whereas L3 cache is set at 32MB). Time to see what AMD has been working on with their latest Zen 4 desktop CPUs.