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AMD Ryzen 5 5600X reviewAMD sets a new benchmark for mid-range gaming CPUs
AMD sets a new benchmark for mid-range gaming CPUs
When AMD first unveiled theirRyzen 5000 CPUsat the beginning of October, their new Zen 3 architecture hinted at several tantalising performance boosts, both in terms of power efficiency and overall gaming speeds. Alas, they’re also coming at much higher than expected prices, with their mid-range Ryzen 5 5600X starting at a decidedly not-mid-range £280 / $299. It had me worried. Luckily, my fear was misplaced.
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While AMD’s outgoing Ryzen 3000 CPUs weren’t as quick as their Intel counterparts when it came to gaming performance, their lower prices (and bundled coolers) often made up for it, making them great value options in the face of their Intel competition. The Ryzen 5 5600X, however, isn’t just more expensive than its immediate predecessor, theRyzen 5 3600X. It also costs more than Intel’s monstrously powerfulCore i5-10600K, which rather takes a sledgehammer to their previous value proposition.
Fortunately, the Ryzen 5 5600X isn’t just faster than the Core i5-10600K, both in terms of its gaming prowess and its multitasking chops, but you also don’t need ludicrously fast (and expensive) RAM or an equally beefy cooler and power supply to get the best out of it.
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X review in a nutshellThe Ryzen 5 5600X is a stonkingly fast gaming CPU, offering clear gains over its Intel Core i5 rival. It might cost slightly more overall, but its faster gaming speeds, excellent power efficiency and bundled cooler make it my new CPU of choice for new PC builders.The good…Huge gaming performance gains at 1080p over the competitionVery power efficientBundled coolerThe bad…More expensive than the 3600X and Intel Core i5-10600K at launch
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X review in a nutshell
The Ryzen 5 5600X is a stonkingly fast gaming CPU, offering clear gains over its Intel Core i5 rival. It might cost slightly more overall, but its faster gaming speeds, excellent power efficiency and bundled cooler make it my new CPU of choice for new PC builders.
The good…Huge gaming performance gains at 1080p over the competitionVery power efficientBundled cooler
The good…
The bad…More expensive than the 3600X and Intel Core i5-10600K at launch
The bad…
Like Intel’s Core i5-10600K and the Ryzen 5 3600X before it, AMD’s new Ryzen 5 5600X is a 6-core, 12-thread CPU. It has a base clock speed of 3.7GHz and a max boost clock of 4.6GHz, putting its top speed 200MHz ahead of the 3600X, but 200MHz behind the Core i5-10600K. Not that you’ll notice once it’s inside your PC, though, as the Ryzen 5 5600X beasted the Core i5-10600K in pretty much every test going.
As I’ve mentioned in previous CPU reviews, assessing a processor’s gaming performance is still quite a challenging task compared to other components inside your PC, as most built-in gaming benchmarks don’t accurately reflect what your CPU’s doing. Benchmarks are getting better in this respect, with the likes of Shadow Of The Tomb Raider,Forza Horizon 4,Assassin’s Creed Odysseyand the Total War series all providing a proper, in-depth look at your CPU’s performance as well as your graphics card.
However, there are lots of other factors that can affect your CPU’s gaming performance, too. These include your graphics card, the type of RAM you’ve got installed, and even the kind of storage you use to install your games on. As a result, getting a truly accurate picture of your CPU’s performance is tricky, but I’ve done the best with the equipment available to me.
As you can see from the graphs below, even with my RAM clocked at just 2133MHz, the Ryzen 5 5600X is miles out in front of the Core i5-10600K in three of my test games at 1920x1080, and pretty much level in the other. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey has always been the great leveller in my CPU gaming benchmarks, but the other results speak for themselves, offering a 10% improvement in Shadow Of The Tomb Raider andTotal War: WarhammerII and 15% in Forza Horizon 4. That’s faster than evenAMD’s Ryzen 9 3900X, and it even beatsIntel’s Core i9-10900K.
That gap does level out when you put faster RAM into play, admittedly, but the Ryzen 5 5600X still comes out on top with a 5% lead over the Core i5-10600K in Shadow Of The Tomb Raider, as well as more or less equal scores to both the Core i5 and Core i9-10900K in Forza Horizon 4 and Total War - all with a much smaller power outlay to boot.
At 4K, meanwhile, you’re looking at identical scores across the board, as you’re still very much GPU-bound at this resolution, making your choice of CPU far less important overall - which only really works to the Ryzen 5 5600X’s favour, really, as spending any more won’t get you any real benefit.
Moreover, while I’m less interested in a CPU’s daily desktop chops (I’m more interested in finding out which one’s better for gaming), the Ryzen 5 5600X puts in a pretty stonking performance here, too. In Cinebench R20, for example, it finished with a whopping single-core score of 595, soaring past the Core i5-10600K’s score of 485 (that’s a lead of 23%), and an impressive multi-core score of 4289. The latter once again trounces the Core i5-10600K’s multicore result of 3520 with its improvement of 22%, and even comes within sight of the 8-core / 16-thread Ryzen 7 3700X’s result of 4592 - that’s just under 7% behind.
That’s impressive stuff for a $300 CPU, and in my eyes absolutely justifies the extra $30-odd you’ll need to spend over the Core i5-10600K. Not only does it offer faster gaming performance, but it’s a much better fit for general productivity tasks, too. Besides, once you add in the cost of a decent cooler to the Core i5-10600K, the Ryzen 5 5600X instantly becomes the better value option.
What’s more, the Ryzen 5 5600X is also compatible with all of AMD’s X570 and B550 chipset AM4 socket motherboards, and most X470 and B450 motherboards will support it as well after a BIOS update. This once again gives existing Ryzen owners a lot more flexibility than those thinking about sticking with Intel, as opting for a 10th Gen Comet Lake also requires shelling out for a new (and expensive) Z490 board due to its new LGA 1200 socket type. Plus, you don’t get the benefit of the increasingly important PCIe 4.0 standard with Comet Lake, as Intel have confirmed this will only arrive on their 11th Gen Rocket Lake CPUs, along with a whole new motherboard chipset to boot. With the Ryzen 5 5600X, it has PCIe 4.0 support out of the box, as do AMD’s existing X570 and B550 motherboard chipsets.
The Ryzen 5 5600X comes with AMD’s Wraith Stealth cooler in the box.
I’ll also be testing the Ryzen 7 5800X very shortly to see if it’s worth shelling out any more cash (early review samples were limited to the 5600X and 5900X), but once again, I don’t think anyone is going to be sore about the Ryzen 5 5600X’s day-to-day performance if you only use your PC for playing games (and not more demanding tasks like streaming and editing videos and the like). It offers an excellent balance of top notch gaming performance and day-to-day desktop speed, and if I was building a new PC today, there would definitely be a Ryzen 5 5600X sitting at the heart of it.
