7600X and RTX 4090 – An AMAZING PAIR?!

A mid-tier CPU and a literal halo tier GPU? I must be mad! Well actually, not as mad as you might think. AMD’s Ryzen 7600X is a decent hex core chip that you’d find in a number of mid-range systems. A normal GPU to pair with this would be something from the 60 or 70 class cards, like a 3060 or 3070 – maybe even a Ti, or a 700 series AMD card like a 6700 XT, but what if I told you even a 4090 works perfectly fine? Well, let me prove my point. AMD sent over both a 7600X and a 7900X, and NVIDIA sent over a brand new founders edition RTX 4090, so let’s test both CPUs with the 4090 and see how much performance you lose by using literally half the cores.

Now I’m testing at both 1440p and 4K here, with ray tracing disabled and at generally high settings. It’s a 4090, come on. The exception to the high settings rule is of course CSGO, which is on everything low, and at 1440p the 7900X has a convincing lead. It’s running at nearly 750 FPS, compared to 686 FPS for the 7600X. Obviously both of these figures are more than enough – hell even Asus’ new 540Hz 1080p panel would be fine with either CPU here so it’s not exactly a “win” for the 12 core. At 4K the difference is similar, if a little closer with the 7900X only being 6.5% faster on average instead of 8.6% at 1440p.

In Cyberpunk at 1440p you’ll find the 7600X actually about 5% ahead of the 7900X on average, with just over 200 FPS, or about 10 FPS faster. While that doesn’t seem to make sense, if you look at the 1% and 0.1% low figures, you’ll see the 7900X is considerably better there. It’s 22% faster in the 0.1% lows, meaning while the overall average ended up being lower, the consistency was much better. That pattern is the same at 4K, although both stats are functionally identical as 4K ends up being more GPU bound anyway.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider has a slim victory for the 7900X, but not a noticeable one. The 12 core nets 277 FPS average, whereas the 6 core nets 261 FPS instead. That’s hardly a big difference – only 6%, and more importantly at 1440p it’s not a difference you’ll be feeling in games. For £220 I would say that’s a negligible gap. The 1% and 0.1% low figures are a little bigger of a margin at 20% and 17% respectively, but at 130 FPS for the 0.1% lows, it’s hard to argue that isn’t a smooth gaming experience. At 4K once again the differences get quashed. There’s just a 3.7% gap on average here, although very similar 1% and 0.1% to the 1440p results.

Microsoft Flight is again remarkably close. At 1440p on high settings there’s only a 6%, or 8 FPS gap between the two chips, and the 1% lows are similarly close. As you might expect at 4K it’s even tighter, with just 3 FPS between them on average, although the 7900X does still hold better 1% low figures. Surprisingly at both 1440p and 4K the 7600X is actually the one with the higher 0.1% low results. It’s not by much at 2 FPS each time, but still interesting.

And finally in Fortnite the gap between the two chips is just 3%, or 5 FPS on average. It’s 7 FPS in the 1% lows, and around 5 FPS in the 0.1% lows. I’d call that close enough to identical, especially once you start playing a full game as your performance will vary depending on where you are and what you’re doing. The same can be said at 4K. A 3% gap, or just 4 FPS.

So what’s the conclusion here? Well in short, if you happen to own a ridiculous card like this RTX 4090, you’ll be happy to know that pairing it with a CPU that costs about as much as a rounding error on this card isn’t the worst idea. In fact, it’s perfectly capable. Sure if you’ve got the money to splash out on a 4090 you probably have the cash for a 7900X, or Intel’s new 13900KS if you want your house to go up in flames, but if your priorities are such that a 7600X is all you’ve got, you can rest easy knowing it’s giving you 95% or more of the performance from your utterly insane GPU.

For the rest of us that can’t afford a 4090, the takeaway is that your CPU matters a whole lot less for your gaming performance than you might expect. A mid tier 6 core is more than enough for even a 4090, so you really don’t need a 16 core chip just to get the most out of your mid tier graphics card. If all you’re doing is gaming, it’s fine to get a cheaper CPU to spend a little extra on a faster GPU.