This is where I think AMD really messed up on the current releases... If they'd called the 9600X a 9400 and the 9700X a 9600X, and charged like $100 less, I think the reception would have been much stronger. As it stands, it's more about wait and see. You can use PBO and get like 10-15% more performance at double the energy, but even then compared to the rest of the market, it just comes up short.

The 9800X3D and 9950X(3D) options will really carry this cycle if they're good and the pricing adapts appropriately. I'm not holding my breath. I've been holding on with my 5950X since it's release and likely going to continue unless the 9950X(3D) is compelling enough. Not to mention the DDR5 memory issues with larger sizes or more sticks. 96gb is probably enough, but at what cost.

The 9600X and 9700X are not a useful upgrade for gamers, but they are excellent for anyone else.

Their energy efficiency is much better that for any previous x86 CPUs and for those who use applications that benefit from AVX-512 the desktop Zen 5 brings an increase in throughput higher than for any new CPU of the last five years (the last time when a desktop CPU had a double throughput over its predecessors was in 2019, with Zen 2 over Coffee Lake Refresh). Also in the applications like Web browsers or MS Office, which prefer single-thread performance, they beat even the top Raptor Lake Refresh of 6.0 GHz, which is much more expensive and it consumes a power several times greater.

Moreover, as shown by TechPowerUp, the performance of Zen 5 under Windows is suboptimal in comparison with Intel in the programs that use a small number of active threads, like the games, because the Windows scheduler uses a policy that favors power savings over performance, even if that is a bad choice for a desktop CPU. That means that the scheduler prefers to make both threads of a core active, while keeping idle the other cores, even if the right policy (which is used on Intel) is to begin to use the second threads of the cores only after all the cores have one active thread.

This should be easy to correct in the Windows scheduler, which does the right thing for Intel, where first one thread is made active on each P-core, the all the E-cores are made active, and only if more active threads are required the second threads of the P-cores are made active too.

I think it would depend on the cost of electricity.. as the performance for most is similar to the prior gen, which costs significantly less.

Electricity costs is perhaps the last thing a pc gamer considers when choosing a new CPU. That's if they consider it at all...

That would be like asking how many MPG's a rebuilt 1969 Ford Mustang Boss 429 gets... it was not built for efficiency - it was built for performance.

FTR, I drive a 2016 Dodge Challenger RT 392 Hemi Scat Pack Shaker... No the MPG isn't my top concern... that said I don't actually drive it that much as I WFH.

Is a 1969 Ford Mustang Boss 429 really something to compare an x600 class CPU to all the same? Even then, a gamer is more likely to get 6000/6400 memory, properly balance the fclk and run with PBO. I still wouldn't suggest the 9600X, given the current pricing compared to other options... Just like I wouldn't recommend people pay $20k markup on a Ford Bronco.

I was more making the point that a person building/choosing a computer for gaming is highly unlikely to consider efficiency at all. People who tweak timings, voltages, etc are typically doing so to eek out marginal performance benefits - not to become more efficient.

So, much like a class muscle car, people buy them to go fast, not be efficient.