Ryzen 9 5900XT vs Ryzen 7 5800XT

Compare the Ryzen 9 5900XT and Ryzen 7 5800XT on real gaming and productivity benchmarks, full specifications, live retailer prices and performance-per-dollar, then jump straight to the cheapest in-stock option.

From$305.00
Buy
From$225.00
Buy

The short answer

The Ryzen 7 5800XT is the better value, though the Ryzen 9 5900XT is the faster gaming chip.

  • Gaming performance is effectively a wash at 1080p (index 57.0 vs 56.4); at 1440p and 4K the GPU sets the frame rate, so the gap shrinks further.
  • Ryzen 9 5900XT is roughly 56% faster in multi-core work, an edge in rendering, encoding and compiling.
  • Ryzen 7 5800XT is the cheaper chip right now, by roughly 36%.
  • Ryzen 7 5800XT delivers about 34% more gaming performance per dollar.
  • Ryzen 9 5900XT has more cores (16C/32T vs 8C/16T), which helps in heavily threaded workloads.

Gaming performance

CPU-bound gaming score: a geometric mean of in-game frame rates at 1080p, normalized so the fastest gaming CPU we track = 100.

Ryzen 9 5900XT57.0
Ryzen 7 5800XT56.4

Does the CPU matter at 1440p or 4K? Much less. At higher resolutions the graphics card sets the frame rate, so the gap between two CPUs shrinks — often to nothing. The 1080p figure above is the demanding case, where the CPU is stressed and the difference actually shows.

Performance per dollar

Gaming index divided by the current lowest price — higher is better value. This moves with the market as prices change day to day.

Ryzen 9 5900XT18.7 / $100
Ryzen 7 5800XT25.1 / $100

The Ryzen 7 5800XT gives about 34% more gaming performance per dollar at today’s prices.

Full platform cost

A complete-platform price needs a live CPU price and an in-stock compatible motherboard on both sides. We can’t build one for Ryzen 9 5900XT and Ryzen 7 5800XT right now, which is common for older sockets like AM4 where we don’t track current boards. The gaming, value and specs comparisons still apply.

Specs head-to-head

Ryzen 9 5900XT
Ryzen 7 5800XT
Price (from)
$305.00
$225.00
Gaming (1080p index)
57.0
56.4
Cores / threads
16 / 32
8 / 16
Boost clock
4.8 GHz
4.8 GHz
Base clock
3.3 GHz
3.8 GHz
L3 cache
64 MB
32 MB
L2 cache
8 MB
4 MB
TDP
105W
105W
Max power
142W
142W
Socket
AM4
AM4
Memory support
DDR4, 3200
DDR4, 3200
Integrated graphics
None
None
Architecture
Zen 3
Zen 3
Process node
TSMC N7
TSMC N7
MSRP
$349.00
$249.00

Productivity & compute

Ryzen 9 5900XT
Ryzen 7 5800XT
PassMark (multi-core)
43,818
28,056
PassMark (single-thread)
3,475
3,535
Cinebench R23 (multi-core)
27,966
15,036

Efficiency

Gaming performance per watt (gaming index per 100W of TDP) — higher means more frames for the heat and power.

Ryzen 9 5900XT54.3
Ryzen 7 5800XT53.7

Where to buy

Ryzen 7 5800XTfrom $225.00
RetailerAvailabilityPriceBuy
AmazonIn stock$225.00
Buy
B&HIn stock$225.00
Buy
Ryzen 9 5900XTfrom $305.00
RetailerAvailabilityPriceBuy
AmazonIn stock$305.00
Buy
B&HIn stock$311.00
Buy
NeweggIn stock$311.00
Buy

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