The newest AMD budget eight-core CPU just hit the market, and it's kind of like an airship made of really heavy metal – not in a good way though. It turns out, the gaming performance of the AMD Ryzen 7 5700 is a bit disappointing, and the blame falls on its cache, or rather, the lack of it. This is not only in comparison to its beefed-up sibling, the Ryzen 7 5700X3D, but also when you put it side by side with the old-timer, Ryzen 7 5700X.
This CPU was initially revealed at CES this year when AMD surprised everyone by announcing plans to keep the old Socket AM4 platform alive with a new lineup of CPUs. However, the latest benchmarks suggest that if you're gearing up to build a gaming PC, this might not be the chip you're looking for.
Usually, AMD launches X-branded CPUs first, followed by non-X CPUs a few months later. If there's no X in the model number, it usually means the core specs are the same, but it runs at a lower clock speed. For instance, the Ryzen 5 5600 has the same cores and cache setup as the Ryzen 5 5600X but with a slightly lower boost clock.
This pattern has been consistent across the Ryzen lineup, even with the Ryzen 7 5700 – until now. The Ryzen 7 5700 has the same eight Zen 3 cores and threads as the 5700X, with a 4.6GHz boost clock. But, and it's a big but, the 5700 only has 16MB of L3 cache compared to the 32MB on the 5700X. This means the new Ryzen 7 5700 spends more time accessing slower main system memory, and it seriously affects gaming frame rates.
Hardware Unboxed, a PC tech YouTube channel, tested the new CPU, and the results are quite eye-opening. In Hitman 3, the Ryzen 7 5700 averages 146fps, while the 5700X hits 178fps. In Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty, the 5700 averages 99fps, and the 5700X averages 112fps. On average across all test games, the 5700 lags behind at 95fps compared to the 5700X's 110fps.
This shows that it's not just about clock speed and core counts – if you don't have enough cache, you won't get the desired frame rates. Essentially, the Ryzen 7 5700 is like a Ryzen 7 5700G without the integrated Radeon Vega 8 GPU and a slightly slower base clock.
Now, the big question is, why did AMD do this? It's purely speculative, but it seems like AMD might have wanted to repurpose the Cezanne dies from its Zen 3 APU lineup, like the Ryzen 7 5700G. Maybe some dies didn't meet the standards for the integrated GPU, so issuing a new CPU based on these dies, minus the GPU, allows AMD to still sell them.
Regardless of the reason, if you're a gamer, the AMD Ryzen 7 5700 might not be the CPU for you. If you're in the market for a new gaming CPU that won't break the bank, you might want to check out our Ryzen 5 7600X review, or explore Intel's current lineup with the Core i5-14600K.