Third-party reviews of the Ryzen 9 9900X have begun to crop up, giving us our first authentic look at the actual performance of AMD's new Zen 5 architecture. A Ryzen 9 9900X review by SaddyTech on YouTube has revealed that the 12-core Ryzen 9 9900X beast doesn't have the chops to outperform AMD's current Ryzen 7 7800X3D, one of the best CPUs around. The Zen 4 chip with 3D V-Cache outperformed the Ryzen 9 9900X in gaming at 1080p and 1440p resolutions by up to 23%.
SaddyTech tested Alan Wake 2, Total War Warhammer, City Skylines 2, Call of Duty: Warzone 2, CS: GO 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Fortnite, Hogwarts Legacy, Starfield, and The Last of Us: Part 1.
Virtually all titles showed favor toward the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. At 1080p, City Skylines 2 demonstrated the highest performance lead, boasting a 23% lead in favor of the older 7800X3D. Cyberpunk 2077, The Last of Us: Part 1, Fortnite, and Hogwarts Legacy showed very similar behavior as well, with Ryzen 7 7800X3D boasting anywhere between a 13% and 18% higher performance.
The only games that favored the Ryzen 9 9900X were Starfield, Alan Wake 2, Total War: Warhammer 3, and Call of Duty: Warzone 2. Alan Wake 2 was the only game where the Ryzen 9 9900X gained a tiny advantage over the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, outperforming the Zen 4 chip by just 1%. Call of Duty: Warzone 2 showed identical performance between the two chips, each featuring frame rates of 249 FPS. Meanwhile, CS: GO 2 and Total War: Warhammer 3 were between 1% and 8% faster on the Ryzen 7 7800X3D.
At 1440p, the same behavior from all the games was present but at lower margins, which is inevitable given the higher resolution. 4K squeezed margins down even further to the point where both chips were performing virtually identically in most titles, except for City Skylines 2, which is known to be a very CPU-intensive game. The higher resolutions put more work on the GPU and less strain on the CPU.
SaddyTech's gaming benchmarks confirm AMD's previous statements about Ryzen 9000 not beating the Ryzen 7000 X3D processors in gaming. This is not a surprise and a trend that started with the Ryzen 7 5800X3D. For instance, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, despite being a generation old, was still able to outperform the Ryzen 9 7950X flagship by 8% in our testing.
3D V-Cache continues to be AMD's magic pill for incredibly efficient gaming performance, providing a generational improvement in performance for chips that take advantage of it. We must wait until the Ryzen 9000 X3D launches before Zen 5 officially dethrones Zen 4 with 3D V-Cache in gaming.
