Was The Ryzen 5 5600 A Mistake To Recommend Gamers? 6 vs. 16-cores in 2024

[Music] the most popular CPU series of the past 5 years or so has been amd's ryzen 5 range with parts like the 3600 selling in incredible volumes then following on from that we had the 5600x that was also very popular and despite a delayed release the nonex version proved to be another amazingly popular part the 5600x didn't exactly thrill us with its $300 us MSRP it was about $100 over what we were hoping for but I suppose compared to competing Parts at the time it still represented pretty great value and as is often the case AMD were pretty quick to apply some Hefty discounts and then eventually almost a year and a half later they did release the standard 5600 so the nonex model at $200 us and we're much more pleased with that and again it was quickly discounted despite already entering a relatively competitive price it dropped down as low as $120 us and it could often be found pretty well around $130 us so a great buy there so needless to say the ryzen 5 5600 and 5600x were always competitively priced and for Gamers on a tight budget they did represent excellent value but how well have they aged and should you have bought an 8 core or even a 16 core model instead well before we find out today's sponsor spot is brought to you by antech and the new constellation series of ATX cases the C8 comprises both argb and and non argb models with both black and white variants available the C8 argb features a seamless 45° beveled glass edge giving it that popular minimalist design while also providing a dual chamber for independent cooling it also comes with a pair of 160 mm tranquil reverse argb pwm fans and a single 140 mm fan with a built-in fan control Hub that can be synced directly with your motherboard the top bottom and right sides can accommodate a trio of 360 mm radiators simultaneously for those who want to ensure ample cooling or just go nuts with their argb or for those of you who aren't particular fans of RGB effects there is a non argb version available as well so for more information and to check out the rest of anex range please check the link in the video description okay so despite the 5600 series offering Gamers excellent value at least in our opinion not everyone was convinced some claiming that the 5600 series was a poor investment and therefore Gamers should look to the ryzen 7 5800 X or the 5700x which was released alongside the 5600 some went as far as say the ryzen 9 550x or bust which we thought was borderline crazy but hey maybe they were right it's been 3 and 1 half years since the zen3 processor were first released so today I want to see how they compare in modern games obviously the 5600x is going to be slow lower than the 5800 X and therefore the 5950 X but the question is how much slower and how usable is it today it's also well worth looking back at the pricing because it's not like the 550x was ever affordable though a strong case could certainly be made for the 5700 X as a gaming CPU and we certainly made that case back in the day really as we saw it the smart options for gamers were the ryzen 5 5600 and ryzen 7 5700x both offered IAL value at their release prices and as I said continue to drop in price by early 2023 the 5600 was a much better deal than the 5600x while the 5700x was also a much better deal than the 5800 X both offering a 24% discount for basically the same level of performance meanwhile the 550x that cost a little over 160% more than the 5700x and a little bit over 280% % more than the 5600 so I guess you could say at $500 US it was quite a bit more expensive now with the 5600 and 5700x being virtually identical in terms of performance and of course they're both unlocked CPUs and then the same applies to the 5700x and 5800 X I'm not going to test all of these CPUs and clutter the data so instead we're comparing the 5600x 5800 X 5950 X and for those of you 3D vcash lovers the 5800 X 3D will also be thrown in so I hope you're happy with that all have been tested using 32 GB of ddr4 3600 cl14 memory with an RTX 4090 so let's get into it first up we have Assassin's Creed Mirage and at 1080p the 5600 x is very close to the 5800 X which is what we typically found 3 years ago the 5800 X was just 2 and 1 12% faster for the average frame rate and 7% faster for the 1% lows then we have the 595x which was faster again boosting the average frame rate over the 5600x by 10% with a 16% uplift those 1% lows so that's a pretty nice gain but not exactly worth paying well over three times more for really the hero here is of course the 5800 X 3D which was 40% faster than the 5600x now I've also included some 4K data as this is always heavily requested despite my best efforts to explain that it can be very misleading what we're looking at here is mostly the limits of the RTX 490 using the ultra high preset at 4K but if you enable upscaling or of course lower the quality settings the margins will start to become more in line with what we see at 1080p so keep that in mind as we move forward moving on to Hell divers 2 we see even less of a difference between the 5600x 5800 X and 950x basically all three parts delivered comparable performance at 10p the 5800 x3d was much faster boosting the average frame rate by at least 27% so L3 cach is quite clearly the key here not core count and we found this to be the case more often than not when it comes to gaming performance now this is an interesting one Ratchet and Clank Rift apart the performance uplift from the 5600x to the 5800 X was quite dramatic as the8 core processor was a massive 27% faster at 7p and that's not far from perfectly linear core scaling the 1% lows were 133% greater but still a huge performance increase there for the 8 core model though of course the 5600x still delivered a solid experience overall then at 4K the 5600 x was the only CPU That Couldn't max out the RTX 490 but for what was an almost $200 Us Part upon release I think 110 FPS on average is okay here and having played through the game for 20 minutes with the 5600x to get a bit of a feel for it I can report back that frame Time Performance was excellent Spider-Man remastered also sees performance scale up with core count though as we often see L3 cache is far more important for boosting frame rates in this example the 5800 X was 11% faster than the 5600x while the 5950 X was 25% faster that that said the 5800 X 3D that thing was 15% faster than the 550x and a whopping 44% faster than the 5600x so the 5950 X was a good bit faster than the 5600x in this example but with 140 FPS on average and 117 FPS for those 1% lows the six core zen3 processor was hardly slow cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty is a very CPU intensive title and yet the 5600 X 5800 X and 5950 X were all very competitive in terms of FPS performance certainly nothing like what we saw in Ratchet and Clank for example still this is another game where amd's 3D V cache helps a lot boosting the performance of the 5800 x3d to the point where it was 32% faster than the 550x then at 4K we are heavily GPU limited to Just sh 80 FPS so not amazing performance there and you'll probably go and enable up scaling and effort to get around maybe 100 FPS Hogwarts Legacy has another CPU demanding game and while the 8 and6 core models are faster they're not really that much faster the 5800 X for example was just 9% fast than the 5600x while the 5950 X offered mixed performance there's possibly a scheduling issue here so you are definitely getting better performance with the eight core Parts but it's hard to say if that makes them better value compared to the six core models Horizon forbidden West appears to play as well with the 5600x as it does the 5800 X and 5950 X we're talking about a mere 3% increase from the 5600x to the 5800 X meanwhile the 5800 X 3D was up to 25% faster than the 5950 X Dragon's Dogma 2 is known to be a very CPU intensive game or at least a very CPU bound game and yet the 5800 X was just 4% faster than the 5600x while the 5950 X was just 9% faster and this suggests to me that while this is a CPU bound game it's not that CPU intensive in the sense that it doesn't seem to be utilizing these CPUs to their full potential the 5800 x3d on the other hand that was 36% faster so again L3 cach is King and while adding more CES certainly does help even in this example it wasn't exactly a significant Improvement and the 5600x was still very usable with just six cores another game where the 5600x performs well is bold as Gate 3 as here we see the 5800 X is offering just a 6% performance Improvement while the 5950 X is 133% faster and this means we have another example where those extra cores they do lead to a performance Improvement but it's not that significant what does Boost performance significantly though is 3D vcash as we see the 5800 X 3D offering 51% more performance than the 5600x and 42% more than the 5800 X The Last of Us Part One is a CPU demanding title that does lean on the 5600x very heavily and as a result the 5800 X was 14% faster meanwhile the 5800 X and 5950 X that were comparable and again the 5800 X 3D delivered the best performance overall finally we have Starfield and here we have another example where the six core processor struggles to keep Pace with the 5800 X though performance overall is still quite good and the experience was certainly very playable the 1% lows were in excess of 60 FPS throughout our testing the 5800 X was 15% faster than the 5600x and then we said the 5950 X was 23% faster so quite a significant margin there finally here's a look at the average performance seen across the 11 games tested calculated using the geom mean here we see that on average the 5800 X was 9% faster than the 5600x while the 5950 X was 14 % faster then for a serious performance bump the 5800 X 3D was 39% faster and 27% faster than the 5800 X now out of Interest here's the 11 game average data from our 5600x day one review which was published back in November of 2020 here the 550x was just 4% faster than the 5600x on average and we only saw two examples where it was 12% faster so games have certainly become more CPU demanding over the last 3 and 1 half years but of course that was to be expected and it'll shock exactly nobody so there you have it in many of today's most demanding AAA games the ryzen 5 5600 x was on average just 8% slower than the 5800 X and then 12% slower than the 5950 X so not bad given how much cheaper it was upon release then throughout the life of that product and not only that but performance overall I think it's fair to say was was excellent as there wasn't a single example where frame rates weren't comfortably above 60 FPS when CPU bound now if you go back to when the 5600x and 5800 X were first released along with the 5950 X it is pretty hard to make a case for the higher core count parts for Gamers on a tight budget simply saying spend more because more cor is better and more future proof well I don't think that cuts it upon release the 5800 X it did cost 50% more than the 5600x so $150 US extra and that's far from nothing especially for those of you on a tight budget and although we did acknowledge back then that the extra cores would be nice to have if you could afford them they were hardly a requirement for gaming and 3 and 1 half years later that's as true as ever though it is now much easier to make a case for the upgrade to those higher core count Parts as there are multiple examples where the performance uplift was pretty reasonable it might not offset the core or the cost completely but there were some real performance upgrades to be had the ryz 9 550x though that was absurd for gaming and really still is to this day the 5800 X 3D for example completely annihilated it it offered 22% better performance on average and that's a much bigger margin than we see between the 5600x and 5950 X despite there being a 167% increase in cause in that particular example of course if you were also tax core heavy productivity workloads then the 550x certainly would have made sense but strictly for gaming it was never a good choice so it's fair to say anyone who upsold Gamers on a 550x just for gaming really did screw them out of quite a lot of money to be clear though I don't think all Gamers should have necessarily bought a ryzen 5 5600 series processor either just as I don't think all Gamers should buy a ryzen 5 or core i5 processor today what I thought 3 and a half years ago is what I still think today these products are viable options they're priced appropriately and they present as excellent solutions for Gamers on a more limited budget sadly though it's Now intel who generally offers much better value than AMD at the entry level end of the market and this is something AMD will need to address with am5 if they wish to capture the retail market end to end as they've done in the past all said and done it was really interesting to find a few examples where the 5600 x was starting to fall behind behind the higher core count Parts by a meaningful margin games such as Ratchet and Clank Spider-Man Starfield and The Last of Us Part one that said had I included 50 games or so so modern games and many popular titles that were released over the last few years the overall margins would be reduced as most games won't be demanding enough to put a lot of stress on the 5600x now circling back to some recently published content it's important to note that you shouldn't buy a CPU for gaming or anything really based on core count what matters is overall CPU performance for example the 5800 x3d was much faster than the 5950 X in this testing despite packing half as many cores and the new ryzen 57600 that's comparable to the 5800 x3d despite offering two fewer cores and a lot less L3 cach cor Count's really only semi- relevant When comparing CPUs of the same architecture while it's likely going to be next to useless When comparing CPUs of different architectures like what we find When comparing zen3 and zen4 parts and it becomes much more complicated with Intel's P cor and ecore enabled parts then moving on from that there's also the resolution angle and while I'm sure those of you who crave 4K CPU benchmarking will be tickled pink remember it's not about the resolution but rather your target frame rate for example if you desire 144 FPS in cyberpunk 2077 then the discovery that the RTX 490 will only deliver around 75 FPS at 4K using the ultra preset it's not super useful in that specific example all we're doing is testing the RTX 490 as all CPUs were capable of driving 70 to 80 FPS in that test what you need to know is can the CPU achieve your desired frame rate and if so what settings do you need to use in order for your GPU to render those frames so in short GPU Limited 4K testing using Ultra or high quality settings with an RTX 4090 tells you almost nothing useful about CPU performance and probably the performance of your own system and it's certainly nothing you can't learn from looking at the 1080p data and that's going to do it for this video that is everything so hopefully you guys enjoyed this sort of recap of the ryzen 5000 series zen3 I found it quite interesting to see how those CPUs all compare in modern games so if you like the video you know what to do subscribe for more content and if you'd like to become a float plane or patreon member one of those two you can get access to our exclusive Discord server for members only monthly live streams behind the scenes content and Q&A stuff so check that out if you're interested but if not that's perfectly fine and I would like to thank you for watching this video I'm your host Steve see you again next time [Music] [Music]

Channel: Hardware Unboxed

Views: 142,675

Keywords: hardware unboxed

Id: l3b7T5OohSQ

Length: 18min 9sec (1089 seconds)

Published: Tue May 14 2024