Meglio I5 O Ryzen 5

The $359 hexa-core AMD Ryzen v 1600X (AU$228 on Amazon) processor is hither to challenge Intel'due south quad-core, $350 Core i5-7600K (Amazon) for the honor of being "The People's CPU." Everyone likes to read about expensive, gilded-plated, $chiliad parts, simply in the real world, most people can't or won't spend that much and are looking for the all-time price-to-performance ratio.

While Ryzen 5 1600X may not have clock speeds as high as the Core i5-7600K'south, it does offering additional cores and virtual cores. We've run a bombardment of benchmarks to meet if those cores volition make up the departure.

ryzen 5 9 — AMD'south Ryzen v 1600X volition compete head-on with Intel's Core v-7600K in the all-important $350(ish) CPU category.

Meet Ryzen 5

AMD actually announced 4 Ryzen 5 CPUs last month. Two of them are quad-cores with SMT (simultaneous multithreading): The $199 Ryzen v 1400 (Amazon) and the $215 Ryzen 5 1500X (Amazon). The last ii are six-core chips with SMT: The $204 Ryzen five 1600 (Amazon) and the $359 Ryzen 5 1600X (Amazon).

[Related: Which CPU is all-time: Intel or AMD Ryzen? ]
[Related: Gigabyte Aorus GA-AX370-Gaming 5 AMD Ryzen AM4 motherboard review]

All are based on the same die used in the upscale Ryzen 7 lineup we've already reviewed, just they take cores switched off.

The one of most interest to u.s. is the Ryzen 5 1600X. With its list price of $359, it maps nearly perfectly to the Core i5-7600K, which has a current list toll of $350 simply tin can be had for nearer $320 if you shop around.

The 6-cadre and quad-cadre Ryzen CPUs are essentially built using the same viii-cadre dies from Ryzen seven. Each features two Core Complex (CCX) units with CPU cores switched off. One core on each is switched off for the six-cadre Ryzen 5s, and two cores on each are turned off for the quad-core CPUs. They also accept different clock speeds.

ryzen core complex — Each Zen cadre complex is made upwardly of iv individual processors. AMD turns off some cores for the six-core and quad-cadre Ryzen 5 parts.

How we tested

For the Core i5-7600K, testing was conducted using the same system nosotros used for the Core i7-7700K in our Ryzen 7 review, but with a few central changes. We updated the Asus ROG Maximus Four Code to the latest available BIOS, which basically adds Optane support. We as well pulled ii of four memory modules nosotros had installed. This reduced the RAM from 32GB to 16GB of DDR4, but it as well allowed united states of america to increase the memory clock of our Corsair modules from DDR4/2133 to DDR4/2933 speeds.

Ryzen 5 vs Core i5 — Ryzen five vs Core i5

Note that running Kaby Lake at college speeds with all memory slots full isn't an issue. Non all of the CPUs we tested (*cough* Ryzen), however, will hands back up high clock speeds with all DIMM slots loaded.

For the Ryzen 5 1600X, rather than re-utilise the previous AMD X370 build from the Ryzen 7 review, I used an MSI B350 Tomahawk (Amazon) motherboard. AMD provided the board, saying it had a newer BIOS that offered the all-time operation. A clean install of Windows x was loaded onto a Kingston 256GB HyperX SSD (Amazon) - the same model and chapters used in other test machines. For RAM, I used a pair of Geil EVO 8GB modules (Amazon) with the timing set to AMD'south specifications for testing on the Tomahawk lath.

As with all of our builds, we used Founders Edition GeForce GTX 1080 (Amazon) cards. I verified clock and RAM timings on each card before I began testing.

Read on for productivity benchmarks on Ryzen v.