AMD Ryzen 9 7900X: Penultimate Zen 4 behemoth outperforms the Intel Core i7-13700KF on Geekbench ^↺

At this point, just about every high-end Intel Raptor Lake and AMD Zen 4 processors has been benchmarked to some degree. The flagship Core i9-13900K and Ryzen 9 7950X have traded blows with each other on more than one occasion. Even the mid-range Core i5-13600K and Ryzen 5 7600X promise to be formidable mid-rangers, although Team Blue seems to have AMD's number this time. There is, however, one SKU that has eluded Geekbench, the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X. The penultimate Zen 4 SKU is poised to take on the Intel Core i7-13700K, and it does just that with flying colours.

The 12-core, 24-thread AMD Ryzen 9 7900X maintains Zen 4's single-threaded supremacy with a single-thread score of 2,167 in both runs (which is a bit suspicious). On the multi-core front, it scores 18,446 and 18,622. This is a smidgen higher than the Intel Core i7-13700KF, which scored 2,065 and 18,402 on the benchmark. Generation-over-generation gains are pretty much consistent, with the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X outperforming the Ryzen 9 5900X by 30% in both single and multi-core performance.

AMD has confirmed that the Ryzen 9 7900X will cost US$549 at launch (September 27). The Core i7-13700K could retail at a similar price if a recent leak is accurate. Thermals could be a problem for both contenders, though. Leaked benchmarks showed the Intel Core i7-13700K guzzling up to 243 Watts under load. Even the seemingly mid-range Ryzen 5 7600X was plagued with sky-high temperatures, and the situation is unlikely to change for the Ryzen 9 7900X. In the end, the bench with a better cooling solution will likely determine who wins this generation.

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