Ryzen 5 5600X Reviews Released – Possibly Best Choice for Mainstream Gaming Systems
Today, many countries have launched official sales of AMD Ryzen 5000 processors built on the new Zen 3 architecture. Recall that the Vermeer generation series starter kit includes four models: 16-core Ryzen 9 5950X flagship, 12-core Ryzen 9 5900X, 8-core Ryzen 7 5800x, and six-core Ryzen 5 5600X. The capabilities of the first two can be found in our full review. And in this article, we will collect information from foreign resources about the Ryzen 5 5600X.
Let’s start with some basic information. The Ryzen 5 5600X offers 6 cores and 12 virtual threads. The declared frequency range of the processor is 3.7-4.6 GHz. The total amount of cache memory of the novelty is 35 MB (32 MB are in L3). The chip operates in the voltage range from 0.9 to 1.2 V (depending on the load) with a nominal TDP level of 65 W. The recommended processor price is $ 299.
According to the Polish edition of ITHardware, which did not wait for the end of the embargo and published a review of this chip earlier than others, in single-threaded tasks, the junior representative of the Zen 3 family really demonstrates a very high level of performance not only against the background of its predecessor Ryzen 5 3600X of the Zen 2 generation but also in comparison with Intel solutions, including more expensive ones. For example, in the single-threaded Cinebench R20 benchmark, the Ryzen 5 5600X scored 600 points, which is 17% more than the Ryzen 5 3600X. The novelty also overtook the more expensive 10-core Intel Core i9-10850K, which runs at a higher declared maximum frequency of 5.2 GHz. The result of the latter in a single-stream according to the Polish observer was 538 points.
In a multi-threaded test of the same benchmark, the Zen 3 processor scored 4521 points, which is 21% higher than the Ryzen 5 3600X (Zen 2). At the same time, it is quite obvious that the six-core AMD processor of the Zen 3 generation was inferior to the 10-core “almost flagship” Intel Core i9-10850K, which bypassed it by 1457 points. But the six-core Intel Core i5-10400F was left far behind by AMD’s novelty.
In the task of compressing a 1.5 GB file in WinRar, the junior representative of the Vermeer series based on Zen 3 coped faster than its predecessors and literally showed parity with the Intel Core i5-10600K. Using 7-Zip, the new chip is more efficient than its predecessor Ryzen 5 3600X, as well as its direct competitor.
Below are the video encoding rates for H.265 / HEVC and H.264 / AVC at 1080p using the Ryzen 5 5600X (lower is better)
Resource TechPowerUP notes that Ryzen 5 5600X shows tremendous growth IPC and more than 15 percent performance increase in games compared to its predecessor. This makes the six-core Zen 3 chip outperform the eight-core Ryzen 7 3800XT in gaming and workloads. Examples of gaming performance can be found below.
As for overclocking, the Polish reviewer notes that the Ryzen 5 5600X was able to take the 4.8 GHz frequency across all cores at a voltage of 1.275 V without any problems. However, further overclocking turned out to be unstable. Even at 1.4V, the processor could not break the 4.9GHz mark with a conventional cooling system.
The TechPowerUp reviewer was less fortunate. Using air CO, he was only able to overclock the processor to 4.6 GHz across all six cores. When the frequency was bumped up to 4.7 GHz when passing the tests with AVX instructions, the system refused to work. Stability at this frequency was not achieved, even by increasing the voltage to 1.45 V. When the voltage was reduced to 1.35 V, and the frequency of six cores to 4.6 GHz, the system passed all stability tests. This proves once again that the processor is not the same, and someone can be more fortunate, and someone less.
In the conditions of the manufacturer’s declared frequency range, as well as the voltage, the Ryzen 5 5600X processor turned out to be colder than the chips that participated in this comparison. A Noctua NH-D14 cooler with Noctua NT-H1 thermal paste was used as a cooling system for the chips. The Polish reviewer notes that in comparison with the same Ryzen 5 3600X, the new Ryzen 5 5600X turned out to be up to 14 degrees colder. A very impressive result. The overclocking result turned out to be no less interesting. Operating at a frequency of 4.8 GHz across all cores, the chip turned out to be only 2 degrees hotter than the Ryzen 5 3600X overclocked to 4.2 GHz – 85 against 83 degrees Celsius. TechPowerUp test results, which used LSS, a bit better. With the standard frequency range of 3.7–4.6 GHz, the maximum processor temperature was 59 degrees Celsius, while overclocked to 4.6 GHz across all cores – 77 degrees.
With the declared frequency and voltage range, the maximum power consumption of the Ryzen 5 5600X from the Polish observer was 157 W, which is 13 W less than the Ryzen 5 3600X in the same conditions. In turn, when overclocked to 4.8 GHz in the Linx 0.6.5 test, the new chip consumed 203 watts, which is 21 watts higher than the overclocked Ryzen 5 3600X. Even with such indicators, the power consumption of the Ryzen 5 5600X was lower than that of the Core i9-10850K operating at base frequencies and voltage, not to mention the overclocking of the latter.
According to TechPowerUp, the entire Ryzen 5 5600X system with 16GB DDR4 and EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FTW3 Ultra consumed about 366W in games. When the processor was overclocked, the power consumption level increased to 380 W.
