Gaming Continued
We are going to include 1080p, 1440p, and 4K performance to see the overall big picture of performance. That said, you’ll want to focus on the 1080p results primarily to gain a sense of the level of framerate each CPU is able to provide to the GPU, it is the best predictor of potential performance. In addition, we think you’ll see some interesting scaling starting to happen in the 1440p area as well in some games between the CPUs, so look for that.
For testing, we are using an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition video card with driver version 560.70. All games are being run in their “Ultra” game settings, at native resolution, and with no ray tracing. Each graph is first sorted by 1080p performance, and then second by 1440p performance. In this way, you’ll see which is the fastest CPU with a 1080p resolution. For games with a built-in benchmark, the benchmark is used, in games that do not have a benchmark we do a manual run-through.
Cyberpunk 2077
In Cyberpunk 2077 the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D leads the pack at 227 FPS at 10800p, and also very high 1440p performance. The AMD Ryzen 5 9600X is performing 3% faster than the Ryzen 7 7600X. It is 3% behind the Ryzen 7 9700X and 8% behind the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. It matches the 14600K performance, except at 1440p where the 14600K takes a slight lead.
Dying Light 2
Dying Light 2 experiences some CPU bottlenecking at 1080p on several CPUs, even the new Zen 5 CPUs like the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X. The AMD Ryzen 5 9600X is actually 8% faster than the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X, so this shows that this game is very sensitive to CPU performance, it does want a lot more than these CPUs can give. The AMD Ryzen 5 9600X therefore has a good showing at 8% faster than the 7600X, it’s just that at 1080p we are still bottlenecked, but this is also still true for the 9700X as well, and even the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, which again is still overall faster. The Ryzen 5 9600X is 7% behind the 9700X, and 13% behind the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, and 25% behind the Intel Core i5-14600K in this game at 1080p.
Starfield
We also experiencing some CPU bottlenecking at 1080p in Starfield on the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X and all the way up to the 9700X as well, just to a lesser degree. Due to this game just wanting so much more CPU performance, the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X ends up having the same performance as the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X, it is either core/thread related, or frequency or cache related. The Ryzen 7 7800X3D, for example, does much better in this game with its 3D VCache. The AMD Ryzen 5 9600X is 14% behind the Ryzen 7 9700X and 24% behind the Ryzen 7 7800X3D and 20% behind the 14600K.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage
In Assassin’s Creed Mirage, the Ryzen 5 7600X was definitely CPU bottlenecked between 1440p and 1080p, and the Ryzen 5 9600X improves this situation with a 9% performance uplift, which is pretty impressive. In fact, this puts the Ryzen 5 9600X only 3% behind the Ryzen 7 7700X in performance here in this game. The Ryzen 5 9600X is 6% behind the Ryzen 9 9700X and 17% behind the Ryzen 7 7800X3D and 8% behind the 14600K.