AMD Ryzen 5 7600X officially tops UserBenchmark CPU average bench chart leading to backhanded compliment from Team Blue bastion

It appears UserBenchmark has opted to award an engineering sample of the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X first position in its CPU average bench chart, shortly after making some extremely disparaging and considerably immature comments about both the SKU and its designer. There is no doubt the upcoming Zen 4 vs. Raptor Lake competition is going to be thrilling, with chips like the Intel Core i9-13900K burning up almost every synthetic benchmark it turns up on, but in this particular case it has been a Raphael Ryzen 7000 chip from Team Red that has done the front-running.

The Ryzen 5 7600X recently appeared on UserBenchmark, where it was rapidly demoted from top place to second position, slapped with a withering review, and branded part of the “Zen 4 Hype Train” coming out of “Advanced Marketing Devices”. While it seems obvious to many that it is highly unlikely the Zen 4 part will actually produce a +56% single-core performance uplift over the Ryzen 5 5600X, it should still produce some good enough numbers to make it a solid challenger against Team Blue's midrange Raptor Lake rivals.

Now, UserBenchmark has edited its review of the Ryzen 5 7600X after it hopped over the Intel Core i9-12900KS to sit at the top of the chart with a 117% average bench (116% for the Alder Lake chip). The section ends with a bitter-sounding admission as part of the summary:

More likely, AMD’s new architecture is, once again, optimized to shine in specific benchmarks. Realistically, even if Zen 4 only catches Alder Lake in a small handful of real-world workloads, it will be a huge step forward for AMD, and plenty for them to outsell Intel. A few weeks after Zen 4 (est. Sep 15), Intel’s 13th gen. Raptor Lake is also scheduled to launch. Smart shoppers will do well to wait until then, before considering a purchase. Despite AMD’s Neanderthal marketing, it’s hard not to admire the speed of their technical progress. AMD-Raptor-4 and Intel-Zen-13 would be better fitting product names.

It might be something of a turning point for UserBenchmark though, to actually admit admiration of the “speed of their technical progress” in regard to Team Red. It’s still a backhanded compliment (“AMD’s Neanderthal marketing” just sounds like more lashing out after being taken to task), but considering the additional backlash the synthetic benchmark has had to face recently on top of its already damaged reputation in regard to perceived Intel bias, then it might be a smart move to actually embrace Zen 4 and enjoy its performance capabilities. As pointed out, Raptor Lake will be launched shortly afterwards, creating a golden age of choice for CPU shoppers, and processors should be lauded on merit based on performance scores rather than production source.

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