AMD’s Ryzen 9000 series of gaming CPUs might not have provided the hefty uplift in performance that we expected, after the revolution that the AM5 socket chips first brought, but they’ve nonetheless proven to be more efficient and slightly quicker options than the Ryzen 7000 chips they replaced. Slap bang in the middle of this range of options is the Ryzen 7 9700X, an eight-core and 16-thread processor that can be had for decent money. It’s currently $265 from Amazon US in the Spring Sale, working out to a genuine reduction on a decent option for most folks that makes for a much more compelling option if you want to change over to AM5 from an older system, or want to upgrade your existing rig to the latest generation.

If you don’t mind us leaning on our sister site Eurogamer colleagues for 9700X benchmark numbers – reviewer Will Judd used to write for RPS, so it’s totes legit – this chip provided a solid uptick in performance from its predecessor, the 7700X. The faster Zen 5 cores on offer helped it achieve an 18% increases in single-core scores for Cinebench 2024, although in the Handbrake video encoding test, performance is around level.

To delve into some gaming numbers from Will’s review, it achieved 65.78fps at 1080p in the notoriously CPU-intensive Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, providing an 11% lead over the 7700X. It’s a similar story in Hitman 3, with a 227.47fps average at 1080p against the 7700X’s 206.4fps. Far Cry 6 also takes advantage of the 9700X’s increase in single core oomph with a 14% performance boost over its predecessor – ironically the same average numbers AMD quoted for the gains in IPC (instructions per clock) for this new chip.

The big thing with the 9700X is that it’s able to pull ahead of the 7700X while being more power efficient, as all of these numbers come with the 65W base TDP, against the 7700X’s 105W. This is part and parcel of the last generation from both Intel and AMD – more modest gains in raw grunt that have been traded for larger ones in efficiency – which means you may be able to get away with a less powerful cooler as this chip doesn’t need to pull as many watts to generate better results.

If you want to grab a capable mid-range processor for games and content creation alike, this discounted AMD Ryzen 7 9700X from Amazon US is a great contender.