We wouldn’t blame you if you weren’t aware of new 65 W Ryzen 7000 processors hitting the shelves today given that most of the limelight was hogged by the Ryzen 7000X3D and Dragon Range-HX mobile processors during AMD’s CES 2023 keynote. The new 65 W Zen 4 range may seem superfluous at first glance – they offer the same levels of performance as their non-X counterparts with insignificant trade-offs. However, these new Raphael processors do fill an important gap in the lineup.
The 65 W Ryzen 7000 processors significantly lower the entry bar for Zen 4. The Ryzen 7 7700 in question retails for US$329, which is US$70 less than the MSRP of the Ryzen 7 7700X. In our testing, the AMD Ryzen 7 7700 offers excellent single-core performance that is comparable to the rest of the Zen 4 lineup, even outperforming the 241 W Core i9-12900K in many benchmarks.
In fact, all Zen 4 chips right from the entry-level Ryzen 5 7600X to the flagship Ryzen 9 7950X seem to compete with each other for single-core gains. That being said, Intel Raptor Lake does have the upper hand in multi-core and the Core i9-13900K can still give the Ryzen 9 7950X a tough time.
The Ryzen 7 7700’s main competitor is the Core i5-13600K. While the Ryzen 7 7700 can edge out the Core i5-13600K in single-core performance and gaming, the latter inherently bodes well for multi-core, single-core, and gaming put together Also, the Core i5-13600K is about US$10 cheaper than the Ryzen 7 7700 right now, so it makes for a good option if you already have a compatible Intel platform.
With a significantly lowered entry bar coupled with affordable B650E chipset motherboards and potential for overclocking, Zen 4 65 W, particularly the AMD Ryzen 7 7700, is a great choice for frugal performance enthusiasts looking to test AM5 waters.”
The Ryzen 7 7700 performs exactly the same as a TDP-limited 65 W Ryzen 7 7700X. The corollary is that you can leverage Precision Boost Overdrive and support for EXPO memory profiles to narrow the performance gap with a Ryzen 7 7700X while still saving US$70. Not everything is rosy, however.
AMD’s AM5 platform is still quite new and prices of DDR5 memory are still on the higher side, offsetting any savings benefit with the new 65 W Ryzens. One of the pitfalls of innovating on a new platform is ceding potential ground to your competitor.
At the moment, Intel has the upper hand when it comes to backwards compatibility — you can drop a Raptor Lake CPU in a last gen motherboard with DDR4 memory and still get comparable levels of performance for much less money.
That being said, AMD can be expected to support AM5 until 2025 at least. So, any investment you make now can be expected to last quite a while.
We’ve seen excellent power-efficiency with the TDP-limited Ryzen 7 7700X and the Ryzen 9 7950X, and the new Ryzen 7 7700 continues the trend with even better figures. We will have a better perspective once we get to test Intel’s new 65 W Rocket Lake parts that were announced at CES 2023, but for now 65 W Ryzen seems to be doing a great job.
The AMD Ryzen 7 7700, with the inclusion of a Wraith Prism cooler in the box, no doubt increases Zen 4’s value proposition, but we recommend keeping a tab on motherboard and DDR5 RAM prices before splurging the moolah.
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