AMD Ryzen 9 7900X / 7950X Linux Gaming Performance

Across the variety of different Linux gaming benchmarks carried out, here is how the results pan out for the Ryzen 9 7900X and Ryzen 9 7950X in my initial benchmarks:

Going from the Ryzen 9 5900X to 7900X was around a 13% improvement overall while for the Ryzen 9 7950X was a 15% improvement generationally. This also puts the Ryzen 9 7950X around 17% faster than the current Core i9 12900K "Alder Lake" processor.

It will arguably be more interesting to see where the Ryzen 5 7600X / Ryzen 7 7700X performance is for Linux gaming and will have those additional benchmark results up as soon as receiving those additional review samples this week. Likewise, we are also only a short time out from the Intel Raptor lake launch and so it will be very interesting to see how Raptor Lake and Zen 4 compete for Linux gaming. In any event there is a sizable generational uplift from Zen 3 to Zen 4 and it does carry through for Linux gaming.

When looking at the CPU power consumption across the entire span of Linux gaming benchmarks carried out, it did come out slightly ahead of the Ryzen 9 5950X -- a 95 Watt average compared to 99 Watt average with the 5950X. But the 7950X did peak to 165 Watts during the gaming tests compared to the 5950X at 146 Watts -- not unexpected though given the TDP difference. In some games the Ryzen 9 7950X was drawing more power than the 5950X. The Ryzen 9 7900X meanwhile had an average power draw of 90 Watts compared to 84 Watts with the 5900X. The 7900X peak power consumption was 162 Watts to the 145 Watts with the 5900X. The Core i9 12900K with all these tests on Linux 6.0 was doing fairly well -- just a 66 Watt average and a 160 Watt peak. The Intel Alder Lake power efficiency / handling is in much better shape on recent versions of the Linux kernel compared to when the i9-12900K launched a year ago and was still undergoing Linux kernel changes for proper hybrid P / E core handling and other optimizations.

Now continue on to read today's complete AMD Ryzen 9 7900X + 7950X Linux review for all of the CPU benchmarks. Thanks to AMD for providing the review kit for launch-day Linux coverage of Zen 4.