AMD Ryzen 5 7600X Linux Performance

At the end of September when the review embargo lifted I looked at the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X and 7950X for our launch-day Linux testing and that was then followed by the Ryzen 7 7700X Linux review. Since then I received the fourth and final Ryzen 7000 series desktop processor currently available: the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X. The Ryzen 5 7600X is currently AMD's most affordable Zen 4 processor at $299 USD and provides six cores / 12 threads and a boost clock up to 5.3GHz.

The AMD Ryzen 5 7600X Zen 4 processor provides 6 cores / 12 threads, a 4.7GHz base clock, a maximum boost clock of 5.3GHz, 32MB L3 cache, and has a 105 Watt TDP. Like the rest of the Ryzen 7000 series line-up, DDR5-5200 memory is natively supported and there is the integrated Radeon RDNA2 graphics with two cores. Uniform to the entire Zen 4 line-up is the exciting AVX-512 support.

The AMD Ryzen 5 7600X retails for just $299 USD but putting pressure on the affordability of Zen 4 systems right now is the current crop of AM5 motherboards retailing for $250+ and the DDR5 system memory prices are still higher than DDR4. But with time there will be more motherboards on the lower-end chipsets and DDR5 memory prices continue to deflate.

As with the previously tested AMD Ryzen 7700X / 7900X / 7950X processors, the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X works well on Linux if you are on a modern distribution with a recent kernel. The main caveats come down to the RDNA2 integrated graphics needing Linux 5.18+ and linux-firmware.git as of last month along with a recent Mesa if planning to use the integrated graphics. There may also be quirks with AM5 motherboards depending upon the model around networking or audio support in particular. But thankfully there is at-launch support already for the Ryzen 7000 series processors with power consumption monitoring, temperature monitoring with k10temp, and all of the other core pieces being in place.

For those wondering about the performance of the Ryzen 5 7600X and its siblings, today's Linux benchmarking comparison featured tests of the following processors:

- Core i9 11900K
- Core i5 12600K
- Core i9 12900K
- Ryzen 9 3900X
- Ryzen 9 3950X
- Ryzen 5 5600X
- Ryzen 7 5700G
- Ryzen 7 5800X
- Ryzen 7 5800X3D
- Ryzen 9 5900X
- Ryzen 9 5950X
- Ryzen 5 7600X
- Ryzen 7 7700X
- Ryzen 9 7900X
- Ryzen 9 7950X

The Intel Alder Lake and Zen 4 processors were all tested with 2 x 16GB DDR5-6000 memory, the Zen 3 and Rocket Lake CPUs on standard 2 x 16GB DDR4-3600 memory. All of the systems were tested with an AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, Samsung 980 PRO 2TB NVMe SSD, and running Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with Linux 6.0 + Mesa 22.3-devel.

Thanks to AMD and Intel for providing the processor samples for my Linux reviews and performance testing.