Onboard Video Performance

For most people, CPU performance is the most important aspect when picking out a processor. But some people do still run without a dedicated GPU so I still take a look at the performance of the integrated GPUs as well. The 9600X and 9700X aren’t targeted at the iGPU market like the 8700G and 8600G were. But how do they compare overall? To start things off I tested with 3Dmark. I ran tests using the older Fire Strik benchmark, the DX12-based Time Spy, the newer Speedway test, and the latest test Steel Nomad which for that last one I tested using the light version. The 9600X and 9700X have the same RDNA 2 based iGPU so it's no surprise they performed similarly. In Fire Strike, the 9600X scored 2257 and the 9700X was at 2294. For comparison, this was lower than the 14660K and a touch lower than the Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs as well surprisingly. In Time Spy the 9600X scored a 714 and the 9700X scored 722. This was again below the 783 of the 14600K and slightly lower than the 7000 Series Ryzen CPUs. For the Speed Way test Intel’s iGPU didn’t support it at all but the 106 score for the 9600X and 112 for the 9700X are still well below AMDs flagship G APUs. The Steel Nomad test on the other hand had both of the 9000 Series CPUs out in front of the current generation Intel CPUs.

I did also slip in FSR testing as well and while the performance was just barely enough to run the test this did give us a peek at how FSR can improve performance. It is more noticeable on the 8700G and 8600G but going from 1.96 to 3.79 FPS is still a huge jump.

In Unigine Superposition I ran the 1080p medium detail and 720p low detail tests and once again both the 9600X and 9700X performed the same. They did outperform all of the 7000 Series Ryzen CPUs in both tests but they were still behind Intel’s current generation of CPUs with the 14600K sitting slightly ahead at 5291 to the mid 4900 scores on the 720p test and 1765 to 1437 on the 1080p test.

Then from there on, I jumped into game tests. Some of our tests are older games but I did also add in a few newer games as well to get an idea of newer games when tested at 1080p and low or medium settings. My goal with these tests was to see if base-level gaming at low or medium settings was possible at all. In F1 22 for example they came in just under 30 FPS which is just barely playable. But running FSR 1.0 improved on that up to 41 FPS on the 9600X. Both the 9600X and 9700X were in line with the 14600K in that test. In Ghost Recon Wildlands performance was low, both CPUs were in the mid 17 FPS range which isn’t playable and this was noticeably lower than the 7000 Series Ryzen CPUs which were all around 21 FPS and well under the 14600K which was at 26 FPS. In Tomb Raider, the 9600X came in at 43.2 and the 9700X at 42.8. This is 2 FPS below all of the 7000 Series and almost 20 FPS below this generation's Intel CPUs. For Hitman the 9600X was low at 19.5 but the 9700X was better at 22.7 FPS but sadly that was still lower than in the past and not close enough to playable at those settings. Borderlands was the same story as well, a few FPS below the last generation but nowhere close to a playable FPS which is a bummer because that was testing on the low setting. Far Cry 5, again the same story. The 9600X was 4 FPS below the 9700X here which is interesting. But other than the Ryzen 8700G and 8600G nothing was playable. Then last up in Shadow of the Tomb Raider the 9600X averaged 21FPS and the 9700X was at 20 FPS. This was in line with the 14600K but still 2 FPS lower than the whole lot of the 7000 Series Ryzen CPUs.