Review: The Ryzen 5 5500 and 5600 could breathe new life into older AMD PCs

Zoom / AMD’s Ryzen 5 5600.

Andrew Cunningham

After nearly a year and a half First Ryzen 5000 Processors LaunchedFinally, the Zen 3 CPU architecture comes to cheaper chips.

AMD’s Ryzen 5 5500 and 5600 CPUs (which will go on sale today for $159 And the $199, respectively) are both 12-thread hexa-core processors aimed squarely at price-conscious mid-range PCs and used for gaming, photo and video editing. New Ryzens slashed original asking price of $299 for Ryzen 5 5600X (The 5600X was, for several months, the cheapest way to get a Zen 3). CPUs finally offer a replacement for the last-generation Ryzen 5 3600 for $199.

But the new chips have stiff competition in Intel’s Core i5-12400 processor ($210 with integrated GPUAnd the $180 without one). Intel desktop CPUs have been burdened with aging Skylake architecture and/or the aging 14nm manufacturing process for years, but modern architecture and the Intel 7 process make the 12400 Intel mid-range CPU option the most attractive in a long time. The Ryzen 5 5600X has also seen price cuts lately, It drops to around $230 $300 worth of space for an eight-core Ryzen 7 5700X.

Let’s see how the Ryzen 5500 and 5600 chips work and whether they are a good buy to build a new PC (or if you’re upgrading an old one).

Performance: No surprises from Zen 3

Zen 3 is a known quantity at this point, and there’s nothing surprising about where the 5500 and 5600 end up in most of our benchmarks. In both single- and multi-threaded performance, the Ryzen 5500 and 5600 represent a solid step forward over 2-based Ryzen 3000 and 4000-series Zen chips, as well as any of Intel’s various 6-core Skylake derivatives. Intel chips are represented here by the Core i5-10400, but many 8th and 9th generation Core processors fall into this category as well.

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The Ryzen 5 5500 makes a particularly strong case, delivering between 90 and 95 percent of the performance of the Ryzen 5 5600 for 80 percent of the money in the majority of our tests. This makes sense, given that the 5500’s peak 4.2GHz clock speed is about 95 percent faster than the 5600’s 4.4GHz clock. The only anomaly was the Handbrake video codec test, where the Ryzen 5600 was about 13 percent faster. The 5500’s reduced L3 cache (plus reduced clock speeds) can slow it down a bit.

Andrew Cunningham

The Ryzen 5600 also looks a bit mediocre next to the Core i5-12400. The 12400 beats the Ryzen in everything except the Handbrake codec test and generally costs $20 less if you buy the version without integrated graphics. Ryzen 5 5600 multi-threaded performance isn’t everything who – which It differs from the Core i5-12400’s, but Intel managed to lead by 12 percent in the Geekbench test and 17 percent in the more intense Cinebench test. This makes the i5-12400 a more attractive option, especially if you’re playing 1080p games at high frame rates. (Lower resolutions at higher frame rates tend to be CPU related, while 1440p and 4K resolutions are usually more CPU related.)

The only thing we couldn’t test was how the 5500 and 5600 stack accessed the hexa-core Zen 3 chipsets found in AMD’s lineup, Ryzen 5 5600 g And the Ryzen 5 5600X. 5600X other sites (and similar specs) say the 5600 is so close to the performance of the 5600X that you can safely ignore the 5600X most of the time, saving you $30 in the process. But the 5600G still has a handy position as the only one of these chips with an integrated GPU. This feature makes it a convenient choice for a low-cost gaming PC without a GPU (whether you don’t intend to add a dedicated GPU at all, or if you’re just waiting for prices to drop to more reasonable levels).

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Energy Efficiency: Intel is playing catch-up

The Handbrake Coding Test is rather useful for doing some quick calculations of energy use using wipes and energy efficiency calculations. This is because it is a time bound test, and the power consumption is mostly consistent throughout the entire coding task.

AMD’s energy efficiency compares well with Intel’s 10th and 11th generation chips. Ryzen PCs draw more power on the wall, but they also take less time to complete the work. But the Core i5-12400 has caught up and then some thanks to the Intel 7 process. AMD may regain its power efficiency advantage with Ryzen 7000 CPUs over TSMC’s 5nm process, but for now, Intel has a small advantage (at least when you’re not running a unit Core i7 or i9 CPU with their own power limits).

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