Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X gaming performance don’t benefit from a higher TDP — 105W TDP mode tested in three modern games

AMD’s new Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X CPUs have been tested with the 105W TDP option in MSI’s latest BIOS updates. Japanese news outlet ASCII tested the 105W mode but discovered underwhelming performance in gaming scenarios, with the higher power target doing virtually nothing to increase FPS.

ASCII tested three games: Black Myth: Wukong, Counter-Strike 2, and F1 24 with the Ryzen 7 9700X, Ryzen 5 9600X, and the previous generation Ryzen 7 7700X and Ryzen 5 7600X. ASCII tested the Ryzen 9000 parts at three power levels: the default TDP of 65W, the new 105W option, and a custom 120W option (probably configured via PBO2). The Ryzen 7000 chips were tested only at their default 105W TDP.

Black Myth: Wukong showed virtually zero performance improvements with the higher power envelope at 1080p with the lowest quality settings — FSR was used only for upscaling. The Ryzen 7 9700X, at its default 65W TDP, outperformed the whole pack with an average of 195.84 FPS. The 105W and 120W power configurations on the same chip were slightly behind in the 194 FPS range. The same goes for the Ryzen 5 9600X, where the chip’s default TDP configuration slightly outperformed the higher power ratings. However, these margins were all within the margin of error, making the effective performance practically equal between all three power configurations (including the 9700X results).

Counter-Strike 2 saw very similar results. The 9700X saw virtually zero gains from 65W to 120W. However, this time, the 105W TDP option technically outperformed the other two configurations, but all three results were virtually within the margin of error regardless. The 9600X saw more beneficial improvements from the higher power configurations. The 65W TDP saw the lowest performance uplift, the 120W was the fastest, and the 105W option was in the middle of the pack. However, the performance uplift between 65W and 120W was only 2%.

F1 24 was a Black Myth: Wukong repeat, showing no performance bias toward one specific power target.

ASCII’s testing is not surprising. Gaming applications are traditionally single-threaded, biased workloads that don’t benefit significantly from very high multi-threaded performance. AMD’s 65W Ryzen 9000 parts already have enough power limit to push a few cores to their maximum clock speed without running into power constraints.

MSI is currently the only board vendor offering new firmware with the 105W TDP option for the Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X. However, AMD’s upcoming AGESA microcode update 1.2.0.2 will purportedly officially add the 105W TDP option to AMD’s existing 65W Zen 5 parts, making it available on all AM5 motherboards.