Introduction
The Zen architecture has been a key driver in AMD’s resurgence and thanks to the success of the Ryzen 7 launch, AMD is looking to follow through with its mainstream lineup including a mix of new 6-cores and quad-core offerings all forged from the same Zen silicon as the Ryzen 7. The new Ryzen 5 family of processors looks to displace the high-volume 190$ – 250$ which Intel currently dominates by its quad-core 7th-gen Core i5 and 8th-Gen Core i3 processors. With an immediate advantage of having more physical cores, the Ryzen 5 1600X is the flagship of the Ryzen 5 family and looks to be an intimidating presence in its target price range.
Today we’ll take a look at the CPU as well as gaming performance of the Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 3 processors and see how they fare in our most-demanding CPU-intense titles and benchmarks. We’ll also take a look at how they scale in multithreaded benchmarks.
In this review we’ll focus on the Ryzen 5, which is aimed to contend with Intel’s Core i5’s price point but with full 6-cores and SMT support.
The Ryzen 5 Family
AMD’s Ryzen 5 processors come in both 6-core and quad-core parts all of which are bolstered with AMD’s SMT multi-threading technology allowing these parts to compete with Intel’s Core i5 and even the 7700K. With the release of Intel’s Coffee Lake processors, that once again shifted the power towards Intel’s side but with a price of over $400 in retail, the 8th-gen processors pale in value compared to AMD’s $220 Ryzen 5 1600X.
All Ryzen processors have the same number of PCIe lanes but the chipset will dictate what kind of configuration you can run with especially with SLI. The X370 chipset and B350 chipset will both offer multiplier OC support but only the X370 will be capable of having guaranteed SLI and Crossfire although some B350 chipset may have pure Crossfire support.
AMD rolled into 2018 by announcing price cuts across the board on its entire product stack, something that Intel has rarely done despite its tumultuous 2017 marred with issues. Back to AMD, going forward they will be pricing their CPUs as listed above which sees massive 100$+ reducitons on the upper end of the stack while the Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 3 will see some considerable price cuts as well. This puts it in even more ideal positions to clamp down on the market by sheer value alone and attract more customers from a purely price advantage.
CPU Performance Benchmarks
System Setup
AMD
Processor: AMD R7 1800X/R5 1600X/R3 1300X/R3 1200
Motherboard: ASUS Crosshair VI Hero
Memory: Gskill Trident Z DDR4-3200 16GB
Graphics Card: ZOTAC GTX 1080 Ti AMP! Edition
Power Supply: Seasonic P1000
Storage: WD Blue SSD 1TB
Monitor: ViewSonic VX2475SMHL-4K
Cooler: DeepCool Captain 240EX
INTEL
Processor: Intel Core i7-7700K
Motherboard: ASUS MAXIMUM IX APEX
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z DDR4-3200 32GB Kit
Graphics Card: ZOTAC GTX 1080 Ti AMP! Edition
Power Supply: Seasonic P1000
Storage: WD Blue SSD 1TB
Monitor: ViewSonic VX2475SMHL-4K
Cooler: Thermaltake Water 3.0 Riings 360mm
Rendering Benchmarks
Arithmetic Benchmarks
System Benchmark
Memory Benchmarks
Gaming Benchmark – Test Setup
For this test we’ll focus on the gaming performance both our processors. Do note that we have specially selected benchmark runs for CPU testing vs. GPU testing so these vary from our GPU benchmark results. To see more details about the benchmark sequences, please see our game benchmark method guide.
Frame rates and frame times of a 60-second game play were recorded using FRAPS v3.5.99. The test results are the average of 3 benchmark runs. Since this is a GPU review, we benchmarked the area of the games that put heavy load on the GPU.
All our test runs are repeatable, click the links below for area and details. Read our benchmarking methodology.
- Crysis 3 – Post Human
- Grand Theft Auto V – Palomino Highlands
- The Witcher 3 – Woesong Bridge
- Rise of the Tomb Raider – Valley Farmstead
- DOTA2 – Shanghai Major Finals, Game 2, Team Secret vs Team Liquid (23:45 – 24:45)
See our Youtube playlist for benchmark sequences.
The games and corresponding image quality settings used are shown in their respective tabs.
Note: Some proprietary technologies of NVIDIA like PCSS, HBAO+, and HairWorks work on AMD GPU’s BUT to maintain uniformity amongst GPUs, these have been turned OFF.
Gaming Benchmark – Rise of the Tomb Raider
The reboot of the gaming phenomenon Tomb Raider puts players in Lara Croft’s hiking boots as we pick-up from the last game. Featuring upgraded graphics, DX12 support and new image quality improvements, this game challenges new hardware with its graphical offering.
DirectX11
Anti-aliasing: FXAA
Very High settings
Ambient Occlusion: On
Pure Hair: On
Vignette Blur: Off
Motion Blur: Off
Bloom: On
Tessellation: On
Screen Space Reflections: On
Lens Flares: On
Film Grain: Off
Gaming Benchmark – The Witcher 3
CD Projekt Red’s latest installment in the Witcher saga features one of the most graphically intense offering the company has to date. As Geralt of Rivia, slay monsters, beasts and men as you unravel the mysteries of your past. Vast worlds and lush sceneries make this game a visual feast and promises to make any system crawl at its highest settings.
Frame Rate: Unlimited
Nvidia HairWorks: Off
Ultra Settings
Motion Blur: Off
Blur: Off
Anti-aliasing: On
Bloom: On
Sharpening: High
Ambient Occlusion: SSAO
Depth of Field: On
Chromatic Aberration: Off
Vignetting: On
Light Shafts: On
Gaming Benchmark – DOTA2
The most popular game on Steam and the biggest competition in eSports; DOTA 2 is powered by the Source 2 engine. The game is fairly light on low to medium settings but maxed out with heavy action on screen especially during clashes can really stress most systems especially with Reborn update. This is a game where frame times matter as responsiveness is very important in high-stakes competition.
DirectX9 (default)
Best-Looking slider setting (Ultra)
FPS_MAX 240
Vsync OFF
Temperature and Power
In this test we’ll measure how much manufacturer-set BIOS settings affect temperature and power draw.
We really don’t put too much stock on individual component temperatures as they will vary depending on usage and we do not benchmark using extreme loads anymore as they’re not reflective of real world applications. To stress the CPU, we use a 20-minute run of AIDA64 stress test. We recorded the peak CPU temps and cross-match HWINFO and AIDA64 readings. For power readings, we measure the peak system draw.
Conclusion
Compared to its launch competitor, the Ryzen 5 1600X easily competes with Intel’s 7th-gen quad-core Core i7 7700K and 7600K. With the newer Coffee Lake introducing greater IPC performance, Intel again gains the advantage here but at nearly 100$ more than what AMD is asking for its Ryzen 5 1600X. Do note that along with the Ryzen 5 1600X, there’s also the Ryzen 5 1600, 1500X and 1400 (quad-core) which fill in the prices below the $250 spot of the R5 1600X. With the exception of the 1600X, all R5 processors include the Wraith Spire cooler with the 1400 including the Wraith Stealth which does mean you will need to plunk down extra for an AM4 compatible cooler on the 1600X which does increase cost a bit for fresh builds.
Looking at it from a gaming perspective, we have mixed results with games that benefit from multiple cores offering level performance enough to compliment mainstream GPUs. Games that do love single-threaded performance still offer higher performance but ultimately become negligible if your GPU isn’t a 1080 or 1080 Ti.
Where the Ryzen 5 1600X shines the most is encoding and multi-threaded tasks. AMD targets streamers for the gaming side with their Ryzen products and the logic is clearly understandable wherein you can dedicated stream encoding whilst still leaving enough CPU horsepower for your games. Content creators also benefit thanks to the advantage of having more cores and at its price, there’s simply nothing to complain about with the Ryzen 5 1600X especially if you’re still not ready to commit to an 8-core. Mixed workload workstations also find a great price/performance option with the R5 1600X.
Ultimately, if you’re more on the enthusiast and hobbyist side of streaming, content creation and/or multimedia work then the Ryzen 5 1600X offers a great budget option if you’re still considering jumping into the 8-core Ryzen offerings. As an alternative to Intel, the Ryzen 5 1600X is convincingly the superior option value-wise with the 8th-gen i5 lacking Hyperthreading despite their IPC advantage and increased core count of 6 against the previous 4.
For purely gaming scenarios, Intel stills holds the upper hands but the performance advantage is negligible unless you’re counting FPS rather than playing, you won’t even bother with the difference. For multimedia professionals and content creators, the option of having more CPU power without touching HEDT price range is a godsend and will always be a welcome option.
With a new $220 price point, the Ryzen 5 1600X is a very compelling option for a mainstream 6-core processor. This leaves Intel’s sub-250$ option outclassed and outmatched by AMD.
1 Comment
Thanks