Steve's reviews are focused on gaming and he probably isn't wrong there. 9700X seems to bring very little for gaming, compared to 7700X. 7700X is almost the same performance, sometimes even better, and cheaper to buy. Most gamers do not care about 10% lower power consumption, especially when they have to pay more upfront for it.
Yes, the better energy efficiency allows 9700X to boost higher to get somewhat higher performance in multi-thread, but for some reason, gaming does not benefit noticeably. Zen 5 seems interesting for laptops and low-power client devices, but so does the new Intel Lunar Lake (for now, at least), so we have to wait for reviews and comparisons there.
> has not tested... floating-point computations, cryptography or ML/AI.
That is true, but small fraction of people care about these specialized workloads, it's overhyped in marketing. But if you care about those, I think you may be right that Zen 5 may be more interesting there.
Yes, the better energy efficiency allows 9700X to boost higher to get somewhat higher performance in multi-thread, but for some reason, gaming does not benefit noticeably. Zen 5 seems interesting for laptops and low-power client devices, but so does the new Intel Lunar Lake (for now, at least), so we have to wait for reviews and comparisons there.
> has not tested... floating-point computations, cryptography or ML/AI.
That is true, but small fraction of people care about these specialized workloads, it's overhyped in marketing. But if you care about those, I think you may be right that Zen 5 may be more interesting there.