by Which processor is equivalent to the Ryzen 7 7700X? Let’s find out
Updated: February 1, 2023 3:10 p.m.
The 7700X, like the Ryzen 7 processors before it, is among AMD’s high-end processor offerings. It was released in Q4 2022 at an MSRP of $399. It’s time to find out which processor is equivalent to the Ryzen 7 7700X.
Now read: Best CPU cooler for Ryzen 7 7700X.
Its performance didn’t quite justify its price, however, and that became particularly evident when Intel released its much more competitively priced 13th-gen processors a few weeks later.
The price of the 7700X has since dropped; you can now find it closer to $330. While the CPU now offers a much nicer price/performance ratio, it still requires an upgrade to the AM5 platform and DDR5 memory. In other words, the total upgrade cost is still quite high.
If you’re interested in the 7700X but would rather not upgrade to AMD’s latest platform just yet, you might be looking for an alternative. That’s what we’re here to find out today.
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X – processor specs
Here’s what the Ryzen 7 7700X has to offer:
- Hearts: 8
- Sons: 16
- Base clock frequency: 4.5 GHz
- Boost clock frequency: 5.4 GHz
- L3 cache: 32 MB
- TDP: 105W / 170W boost
- iGPU: RDNA 2
These are solid specs overall. It’s worth pointing out that the thread count for the Ryzen 7 line remains unchanged. Intel has made major upgrades to its Core i5 and i7 series over the past few years, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to expect AMD to do the same to stay competitive.
Yet what this processor lacks in its thread count, it provides with its boost clock. A boost clock of 5.4 GHz is very impressive and will give you high-end gaming performance not far behind current flagships.
Which processor is equivalent to the Ryzen 7 7700X?
Going by intuition, you might have expected to see the Intel Core i7-13700K processor here, which is technically the direct competitor to the 7700X.
Unfortunately, the 7700X fails to compete with its Core i7 counterpart, especially in terms of multi-core performance, due to its lack of threads. It also loses in single-core performance by a noticeable margin.
Intel Core i5-13600K
With that in mind, we think the processor that offers more comparable performance to the 7700X is the Intel Core i5-13600K.
As I mentioned earlier, Intel recently upgraded its Core i5 processors. To give you a little more perspective, the 11th Gen i5s were 6-core, 12-thread processors, and the 12th-gen i5 was a 10-core, 16-thread processor.
The 13th-gen i5-13600K, by comparison, has 14 cores and 20 threads. It has more cores and threads than even the 7700X. However, 8 of these cores are efficiency cores. In the end, the 13600K ends up delivering slightly better multi-core and productivity performance.
The i5-13600K has a boost clock of 5.1 GHz, which is significantly lower than the 5.4 GHz boost clock of the 7700X. This equates to a slight difference in gaming performance in CPU bound scenarios.
In practice, you will see that both CPUs offer similar FPS if you pair them with suitable GPUs.
Overall, both CPUs offer very similar performance across the board and are available at similar price points. The 7700X is slightly better for gaming and the 13600K for productivity.
