Amd Ryzen 5 1600x 6-core 36 Ghz Review

Six cores and 12 available computing threads for not much more than $200: That's what AMD's Ryzen five 1600 processor is all about. And on paper at least, it'southward a very appealing proposition when you consider Intel's similarly outfitted 6-core Cadre i7-6800K costs about twice that much ($440 or so, when we wrote this in late May 2017). In curt, video editors or digital media creators on a tight upkeep who desire to cutting rendering times should put this fleck on their short list for their next build. That's particularly true if you're non the blazon who wants to fuss with overclocking and aftermarket coolers.

Running at stock clock speeds of 3.2GHz (base) and 3.6GHz (boost), the Ryzen 5 1600 is no slouch at less core-intensive tasks, equally well. And like all Ryzen CPUs, it'south unlocked for overclocking. So the skilled and the patient volition likely be able to push it closer to the 4GHz or iv.1GHz that seems to be the general limit (without exotic cooling methods similar liquid nitrogen) that nosotros've seen when testing other Ryzen CPUs.

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The issue with overclocking is, if that's your aim, you'll probably want to pay extra for an aftermarket cooler, rather than the Wraith Spire cooler that AMD ships in the box with this chip. You may take an existing cooler you'd like to utilise. But unless you bought information technology very recently, you'll demand to bank check with the manufacturer about getting adapter brackets to work with AMD's new AM4 platform. Older coolers won't work out of the box, even if yous've been extra-scrupulous near keeping all those metal bits that came in the box.

And if y'all're going to spend any actress money in a higher place the $219 MSRP of this part, shortly you lot'll be hitting upward against the $249 price betoken of the AMD Ryzen 5 1600X. That chip has a significantly college out-of-the box clock speed of iii.6GHz to 4GHz, with the ability to clock as loftier equally 4.1GHz with a substantial cooler, thanks to AMD's Extended Frequency Range (XFR) feature, which we'll bear upon in detail later in this review. That stepped-up chip is enticing for those who require even more than performance without having to bargain with the hassles of overclocking.

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Merely, complicating the effect, is the fact that the Ryzen v 1600X doesn't ship with a cooler at all, meaning you'll probably have to add $30 or more to its request price. That makes it a substantially pricier function than the Ryzen 5 1600 nosotros're looking at hither, which ships with a solid (if not particularly overclocking-friendly) cooler in the box.

Where does that go out those considering a Ryzen 5 1600 versus the higher-clocked Ryzen 5 1600X? We'll have to look and see in our criterion results, to say for sure. But with an in-the-box libation and lots of calculating threads for non a whole lot of coin (at least compared to Intel's Core i chip pricing), information technology'due south rubber to classify this chip as a very good choice for those who want high-thread-count performance on a upkeep, and who desire to just plug the chip into a motherboard (along with a kick drive, RAM, and and so on) and become to work, without having to get to the trouble of as well choosing an aftermarket libation.

Earlier we go to this chip's performance, though, we'll delve into the details of AMD'southward "Zen" platform and Ryzen five, Ryzen seven, and (upcoming) Ryzen 3 fries. (In instance you weren't paying attending when we were testing and reviewing the five previous Ryzen chips to hitting our test demote earlier the 1600X.)

We'll also point out why, if y'all're especially interested in gaming at 1080p and getting the highest possible frame rates out of your high-finish graphics carte, AMD's Ryzen chips might not be the best pick—at to the lowest degree for now.

Chip-Lineup Details: Ryzen 7, five, and three

From a calculating-performance perspective, AMD's Ryzen vii processors are quite impressive for CPUs priced between $329 and $499. Merely of class, not everyone can afford to spend that much on a processor—even if it'due south arguably a steal compared to Intel'southward pricing. And coin aside, unless y'all are a digital-media content creator, transcode video constantly, or run CPU-intensive research tasks, you won't frequently make apply of the eight cores and 16 threads baked into the Ryzen 7 parts, anyway. For ability users with lesser demands (and tighter budgets), AMD is offering up 4 Ryzen 5 processors, with fewer cores and lower prices.

The Ryzen 5 lineup consists of two six-core and two four-cadre Ryzen 5 chips. Lower-stop Ryzen 3 offerings are coming, says AMD, in the second half of 2017. And while details are scarce as of this writing, AMD has promised an ultra-high-end "Threadripper" lineup later in 2017, as well, with chips packing up to 16 cores and 32 threads.

A couple of features on the Ryzen chips set up them apart from Intel's competing offerings. For one: AMD says all the Ryzen chips volition be unlocked for overclocking. And, at least from the details nosotros have about the Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5 fries announced so far, all of those chips will feature thread-doubling simultaneous multi-threading (SMT). SMT is similar to the Hyper-Threading engineering featured in many of Intel's midrange to high-end Core processors. Notably, the unlocked Intel Cadre i5-7600K and previous-generation Cadre i5-6600K lack Hyper-Threading, leaving them stuck at four processing threads, while AMD'southward Ryzen 5 1600X and the Ryzen 5 1600 chip nosotros're looking at here have 12 available processing threads, and the Ryzen v 1400 and 1500X have eight.

We have already reviewed the four-cadre Ryzen 5 1500X, which sits one footstep below the Ryzen 5 1600, as well as the Ryzen five 1600X that sits one silicon footstep above it. And nosotros tested the entry-level Ryzen 5 1400 alongside the flake we're looking at here. Then nosotros'll have all the Ryzen 5 fries to compare the Ryzen 5 1600 against in our charts, along with some similarly priced Intel-based alternatives.

AMD says the Ryzen 5 1600 has an impressively low 65-watt thermal-pattern-power rating (TDP, a measurement of oestrus-dissipation requirements), which is a off-white bit less than the 95-watt TDP of the Ryzen v 1600X and the college-end eight-core Ryzen 7 chips. Unless you're a super-stickler almost power consumption, the departure won't be all that important. Simply if you lot're edifice a pocket-sized organisation without much room for a libation, you may want to opt for one of the 65-watt parts.

We did our testing of the Ryzen 5 1600 with the cooler that AMD sent along. That libation (AMD calls it the "Wraith Spire") is also the cooler that ships with this fleck. So you'll get a sense in our testing of just how it performs with what'south in the box, non with some massive liquid cooler, or something similarly exotic.

The New AMD Chipsets: X370, B350, and More

If you lot're specifically looking at core and thread count, the AMD Ryzen 5 1600 already has an impressive price reward over electric current six-core Intel chips. And that but gets better when you consider the platform as a whole. The motherboards that AMD's partners rolled out around Ryzen and presently later on sweeten the bargain.

Want a Ryzen-based lath that lets you overclock and install a single loftier-stop graphics bill of fare like the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, or ane of AMD'southward upcoming "Vega" cards? That will set you lot dorsum as little every bit $69, say, for the ASRock AB350M-HDV. The higher-end X370 boards are better-equipped to handle high-terminate builds, and they back up dual-card Nvidia configurations in SLI. Simply some B350 boards have two graphics-card slots and support dual AMD-card setups via CrossFire.

That's the case with the Gigabyte AB350-Gaming 3 that we used for testing. It sells for about $110, and it is no low-end, feature-barren lath. It sports RGB lighting, metallic-wrapped graphics-card slots, and an M.ii slot for super-fast solid-land drives similar the Samsung SSD 960 EVO. You can certainly spend more than; some initial AM4 boards are priced as high equally $300. But we've seen several solid-looking options in the $100 range. At least for the time being, if yous're subsequently a six-cadre Intel part, you lot'll about certainly have to spend more than, because Intel'due south competing six-core (or eight-core) fries run on the company's enthusiast-focused X99 platform. At this writing, X99-based boards start at nigh $180 on Newegg.com. And while you tin choice upwards an X99 motherboard at or around that price, if you lot care about features like RGB lighting and metallic-wrapped slots (and we're certainly not implying that everyone does), you lot'll generally have to pay a fair fleck more more for an Intel-based board with comparable features. Intel's forthcoming X299 platform may change all that, but we've not seen a wide survey of lath prices yet.

Technically, five new chipsets are on offer with AMD's new motherboards. Here'south a wait at their main features and how they differ, in a summary straight from AMD.

As noted earlier, if y'all want to install multiple Nvidia graphics cards, you'll need to opt for the acme-end X370 chipset, but even those boards start just at around $110. The A320 chipset and the A300 don't back up overclocking, and the latter lacks native support for USB 3.1 Gen 2. But those boards should exist even more price-aggressive, because they're a stride down from the B350 boards, which commencement as low as $69.

These lower-end boards were just trickling out when we wrote this, so we'll have wait to come across where they land in terms of features and pricing. But we would not exist surprised to see some of these boards priced as low as $l in the coming months (particularly as Ryzen 3 CPUs gyre out). Now, we're not suggesting you opt for the everyman-toll lath you tin can detect, simply the idea of dropping a $219 12-thread CPU into a sub-$100 motherboard and getting roughly similar performance to what you lot'd get with a roughly $620 Intel CPU/motherboard combination (with the Core i7-6800K) is quite highly-seasoned.

How is AMD able to become its board partners to produce such comparatively inexpensive motherboards? Primarily, information technology's because AMD'south Ryzen chips (and its upcoming "Raven Ridge" CPU/GPU fries, or APUs, which will use the aforementioned AM4 socket) integrate much of the electronics required for interfaces such as USB, SATA, and PCI Express into the chips themselves. As a consequence, fewer electronics need to be built onto the boards.

Not everything hither works in AMD's favor. These chipsets tend to take fewer PCI Limited lanes and SATA ports than many enthusiast motherboard/CPU combos from Intel. The tiptop-end AMD X370 chipset natively supports half dozen SATA 3 ports and 16 lanes of PCI Express Gen 2 for speedy SSDs (on superlative of the 24 lanes of PCI Express on the Ryzen chips themselves). Intel's X99 platform, in contrast, supports 10 SATA Iii ports and up to 40 PCI Express lanes hanging off the CPU. (The junior Broadwell-Due east chip, the Core i7-6800K, has "just" 28 lanes.) And so, for those planning on shoving piles of drives and other hardware inside their systems, Intel'southward pricier platform will even so hold plenty of appeal. Simply for the vast majority of users looking to drop in a CPU, i or two graphics cards, and a bulldoze (or vi), AMD'southward offerings should more than than suffice—usually at a lower price point than comparable Intel-based boards.

Another surface area of business concern in the weeks after the initial Ryzen launch was motherboard availability. For some days, very few AM4 motherboards were in stock on Newegg and other online outlets, sometimes dwindling down to simply a few in-stock options. That situation was much improved as we wrote this in belatedly May 2017. And then, Newegg showed 25 motherboards in stock, although many others were out of stock, and still others were listed every bit "Motorcar-Notify," indicating Newegg wasn't sure when those models would once more be available. We saw far more than in-stock options available on the Intel side of the silicon argue.

The Architecture Basics

Equally noted earlier, the Ryzen chips are a new architecture for AMD. Gone are the paired modules of cores sharing an L2 cache that was a hallmark of the FX processor line. Ryzen's cores are more than independent, and they also innovate the thread-doubling SMT we mentioned before. SMT is similar to Intel'due south Hyper-Threading, which allows demanding software that's written to take advantage of it to tackle 2 calculating threads on each core.

CPU-architecture details tin can get extremely technical as before long as you expect whatever deeper than the the surface. But to give yous a sense of how AMD has achieved its performance gains with its new Zen compages, the company says it has incorporated an teaching-scheduler window that's ane.75 times larger, with a 1.5 times greater outcome width, that enables AMD to send more work to the chip's execution units.

Also, a new co-operative-prediction unit, which the visitor calls "neural-network-based," helps the chips be smarter most preparing and optimizing instructions and paths for tasks that the chip will need to tackle in the immediate hereafter.

This all sounds good, to the extent that it can be parsed and appreciated without a computer-engineering science degree. Just power efficiency is another area in which AMD'southward FX fries have lagged backside Intel's for years. The company'south FX-8370 chip has a TDP of 125 watts, while Intel'due south (very roughly comparable) Cadre i7-6700K has a TDP of 91 watts. And Intel'due south bit includes integrated graphics, while the AMD FX chips (as well every bit the Ryzen vii and Ryzen 5 models) lack that feature, requiring an external graphics carte du jour to power your monitor.

On the surface, at least, it seems AMD has made upward that footing. The Ryzen 5 1600 (with six cores and 12 threads) is rated at 65 watts, while the higher-clocked Ryzen 5 1600X is rated at 95 watts. Intel'south competing Core i7-6800K (with half-dozen cores and 12 threads), meanwhile, is rated at 140 watts, while the Core i3-7350K (two cores and four threads) has a TDP of 60 watts. At the very to the lowest degree, AMD is closer to Intel in terms of power efficiency than information technology has been in years. In some respects, it may even exist inching ahead, although we'd reserve judgement on that front until Intel rolls out its adjacent-generation architecture to see what kind of response information technology has to AMD'south shot across the bow.

How does AMD achieve its efficiency gains with Ryzen? For starters, these chips are built on a 14nm manufacturing procedure, the aforementioned as fries similar the Cadre i7-6900K, and a big, big leap over the 32nm process used for AMD's previous-generation FX fries. And AMD says this 14nm procedure has already been "density optimized" by the company'due south manufacturing partner, Global Foundries.

Other efficiency-focused features include a "micro-op" cache that keeps of import instructions and data shut to the cores, rather than having to achieve out to comparatively furthermost L2 or L3 caches; and ambitious clock gating, so there'south less wasted power in areas of the cores that aren't existence used.

Improve Clocks With Amend Coolers: XFR

You may accept noticed that the entry-level Ryzen 5 chip, the Ryzen 5 1400, as well equally the Ryzen 5 1600 we're looking at here, lack an "X" at the end of their names, dissimilar the Ryzen v 1500X and 1600X. This X indicates the inclusion of a characteristic AMD is calling Extended Frequency Range (XFR).

XFR makes use of what the company is calling "SenseMI," sensors and algorithms that, among other things, measure out voltage, power, and temperature in fine item, a thousand times per second. The sensors monitor where the chip is situated within its power and heat envelopes, too as where it expects to be in the near term.

When it comes to clock speeds, SenseMI allows the chip to "sense" when information technology has sufficient cooling and, assuming you have an XFR-enabled model (once more: i of those CPUs that ends in "X"), to clock even college than the maximum heave-clock speed. The idea, in part, is to reward buyers or PC builders who invest in big air coolers or liquid cooling to enjoy some performance gains.

Now, that sure sounds good. But, at least with the first round of Ryzen 7 chips, equally well every bit the Ryzen five 1600X, the XFR boost is locked at only an extra 100MHz. That gets a bit amend with the Ryzen 5 1500X; that chip is able to jump upwards an actress 200MHz with XFR, taking it from a elevation 3.7GHz to 3.9GHz if there'south lots of cooling potential bachelor.

Nosotros said when nosotros reviewed the AMD Ryzen 7 1800X that we hoped that future Ryzen chips would let for a bigger XFR boost, because the above seems like a long way to go, both in terms of underlying technology and the extra cost of a better cooler, to proceeds just an extra 100MHz. That's certainly improved with the 1500X. Simply so far, the characteristic isn't one we specially miss in the Ryzen 5 1600 that we're looking at hither. If you desire more performance, you should just spend a scrap more money on a higher-end chip, rather than laying out extra greenbacks for a higher-finish cooler just to gain a pocket-sized megahertz crash-land.

Ii things to note about the Ryzen five and 7 chips as a whole: These are CPUs just, with no onboard graphics, in the same mold equally Intel's CPU-only East-Series chips. You lot'll demand to use them with a detached video card. And the underside will look familiar to the AMD faithful; the Ryzen fries nevertheless use pins on the CPU itself, not the socket-side pins and on-chip contacts that Intel has long since moved to.

Functioning Testing

For our exam setup, nosotros dropped the Ryzen five 1600 into the Gigabyte AB350-Gaming 3 motherboard we mentioned earlier on, forth with 16GB of Geil EVO 10 DDR4 retention running at 3,200MHz. An AMD Radeon RX 480 video card handled brandish output for our CPU-specific tests, and a OCZ Vector 150 was the SATA-interface boot drive. We could take used a faster PCI Express/NVMe drive, but every bit we tested previous fries from Intel and AMD using SATA SSDs, nosotros didn't desire to drop in a speed demon and give the Ryzen 5 1600X an unfair advantage. SATA SSDs like this one are still very respectable.

Cinebench R15

First upward in our testing regimen: Maxon's CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is fully threaded to make use of all bachelor processor cores and threads, using the CPU rather than the GPU to render a circuitous paradigm. The upshot is a proprietary score indicating a PC'due south suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Forth with the usual test that makes use of all available cores, nosotros've added the single-cadre results hither to get a sense of how AMD'south new bit fares in lightly threaded workloads.

Single-core functioning was a sticking point of AMD's previous-generation fries. Simply AMD's new Ryzen 5 1600 flake, while it couldn't lucifer the Cadre i7-7700K or the dual-core Core i3-7350K, was at to the lowest degree competitive with the Core i5-6600K.

The newer Intel Kaby Lake Core i7-7700K excelled on the single-core test, thanks to its loftier clock speed (4.2GHz to 4.5GHz) and newer compages. But when taking all cores and threads into business relationship, the Ryzen five 1600 nearly doubled the score of the Core i5, and it even outpaced the $340 Core i7 fleck by more than x percent. Merely the college-clocked Ryzen v 1600X did improve here amongst the Ryzen five chips. But remember that that chip doesn't ship with an in-box CPU cooler, which makes its $249 price seem lower than information technology really is.

iTunes 10.half dozen Conversion Exam

Nosotros then switched over to our venerable iTunes Conversion Test, using version 10.half-dozen of iTunes. This test taxes only a single CPU core, as much legacy software still does.

Music encoding doesn't exactly push a modern CPU to its limits, and certainly not ones like these. But this test still illustrates that, for programs that are older or haven't been written to take reward of multiple cores, the Cadre i7-7700K is withal male monarch, thanks to its higher clock speed and Intel'due south newest architecture. And the Core i3-7350K isn't all that far behind, either.

That said, the AMD chips here weren't that far off the showing of the Core i5-6600K, and the Ryzen 5 1600 (ii:04) stuck shut to the costlier Ryzen 5 1600X (1:58). We'd nonetheless like to see the AMD fries practise better hither, especially given that the Core i3-7350K is speedier at a lower price of about $170. While single-threaded or lightly threaded tasks are withal a sticking betoken for AMD compared to Intel's latest Kaby Lake architecture, nosotros're notwithstanding marking down AMD's showing hither equally "practiced plenty." About demanding software that can take adept advantage of lots of cores and threads has been updated to use two or more than, at this bespeak.

Handbrake 0.9.ix

These days, our traditional Handbrake test (run under version 0.9.8) takes less than a minute to consummate with loftier-end chips similar these. (It involves the rendering of a five-minute video, Pixar'due south Dug's Special Mission, to an iPhone-friendly format.) So, we've switched to a much more taxing (and time-consuming) video-crunching exam that uses a nice, big hunk of 4K video.

In this test, we switched to the newer Handbrake version 0.nine.9, and tasked the CPUs to convert a 12-minute-and-14-second 4K .MOV file (the 4K showcase short film Tears of Steel) into a 1080p MPEG-four video…

If the previous examination left us wishing for a scrap more than performance from AMD's new chips, this result left us stunned past what the company was able to deliver.

Not only did the Ryzen five 1600 shave more than 6.v minutes off the fourth dimension of the Cadre i5 chip on the same test, simply it was more than a minute faster than the Cadre i7-7700K scrap, which costs about $120 more. That said, the Ryzen 5 1600X is the leader here in this bunch by far, indicating that if you're a video editor, it may be worth investing in that flake and an aftermarket cooler (or stepping up to ane of the eight-cadre Ryzen 7 models that we didn't chart here).

POV-Ray 3.7

Next upwards, using the "All CPUs" setting, we ran the POV-Ray benchmark, which challenges all bachelor cores to return a circuitous photo-realistic image using ray tracing. After that, again to get a sense of how AMD'due south new chip handles single-core performance, we ran the same benchmark using the "One CPU" setting.

The Ryzen 5 1600 looked very impressive here again, outpacing the Cadre i7-7700K on the All CPUs test by 12 seconds, while landing far ahead of the similarly priced Core i5-6600K. Interestingly, fifty-fifty on the One CPU test, the Ryzen 5 1600 wasn't far behind the Core i5. The Core i7-7700K still reigns supreme when taxing a single cadre, though. Nothing else here gets close.

Blender 2.77a

Blender is an open up-source 3D content-creation program that can be used to design and create visual effects, animation, and 3D models for use in video games or 3D press. We open a standard examination file (it's of a flying squirrel) and time how long the test processor takes to finish the render.

While the Ryzen five 1600 couldn't quite take hold of the Core i7-7700K hither, information technology bested the Core i5-6600K. That said, outside the dual-core Core i3 chip and the Ryzen 5 1400, all the contestants here were clustered closely together.

7-Zip sixteen.04 Criterion

Terminal, nosotros fired up the popular vii-Zip file-compression software and ran its built-in compression/decompression benchmark, which is another useful test of a CPU's multi-core abilities.

Nonetheless again, the Ryzen 5 1600 blew abroad the Core i5 chip, and it surpassed the Core i7-7700K also. At this point, it's articulate that in use cases where you're using all available cores and threads, no Intel chip we've tested (or know of) that's anywhere close to the $220 price range of the Ryzen v 1600 can approach the functioning that AMD delivers. The six-core, 12-thread Core i7-6800K would likely be a meliorate friction match, only information technology sells for $400 and upwards, and it requires a pricey X99-chipset motherboard.

Overclocking

If you have a big air cooler or a self-contained liquid cooler to strap onto the Ryzen v 1600, you may be able to push the bit up to or near a stable 4GHz. We were able to push button the eight-core Ryzen vii 1800X flagship to 4GHz with a massive (and expensive, at $250) 240mm self-contained cooler from EK Waterblocks (EKWB). Only the Ryzen five 1600 ships with a capable (though small) Wraith Spire cooler, which is what we used in testing the bit.

The cooler handled the CPU only fine at stock settings, and it was technically capable of keeping our exam fleck stable as high equally iii.8GHz. Just while nearly of our benchmarks ran just fine at that overclock setting, our intense 4K video Handbrake transcoding examination refused to finish at that clock speed. We had to jump back down to stock settings to get that examination to complete.

So, if you lot desire a stable, substantive overclock you can rely on, y'all'll have to invest in an aftermarket cooler. And if you're going to practice that anyway, you probably should footstep up to the Ryzen 5 1600X, which runs at much higher clock speeds out of the box. Just remember that y'all'll have to purchase your own libation for that chip, as AMD doesn't include one in the box. So jumping upward to that chip will cost you almost $sixty extra (or more) when you factor in the $249 price of the CPU, plus a cooler.

Gaming Functioning

Nosotros don't ordinarily run graphics tests when testing processors without integrated graphics. That'south mostly because graphics operation typically has much more to do with what graphics bill of fare you have installed than what processor you're using—especially when y'all're using a fairly powerful chip similar the AMD Ryzen five 1600 or Intel'southward competing Core i7-7700K.

Merely, we knew after testing the Ryzen seven chips that AMD'southward new CPUs accept problems keeping upwards with Intel's contempo Core i5s and Core i7s at 1080p in games. Given this, and the fact that AMD seems to accept been hard at work over the last couple of months to ameliorate the problem, we wanted to run across if the Ryzen v 1600 could evangelize acceptable frame rates with a loftier-stop video carte du jour. And then nosotros swapped out the AMD Radeon RX 480 video bill of fare that we used for the bulk of our benchmark testing, dropped in an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition menu, and ran a few of the tests that nosotros also utilize for graphics-carte testing.

For comparing numbers, we did the same affair with our Intel Kaby Lake testbed running on an Intel Core i7-7700K. Both systems were tested using a Serial ATA-based boot drive and 16GB of RAM. The RAM in our Ryzen five testbed was specifically running at 3,200MHz using the motherboard's congenital-in XMP profile. While we haven't washed a ton of game testing with AMD's new fries, indications both from other review sites and AMD itself is that faster RAM speeds have more of an impact on gaming performance than has typically been the case with Intel'due south processors for the concluding few generations. And so go on that in listen if you're buying RAM for a Ryzen-based gaming build.

Kickoff, nosotros fired upwards belatedly 2015's Rising of the Tomb Raider in DirectX eleven way at the Very Loftier preset and ran the built-in criterion. In brusque, we found that Intel is all the same well ahead at 1080p. Our Ryzen five 1600-based rig averaged 105 frames per 2d (fps), 7fps lower than nosotros saw when testing the Ryzen 5 1600X. Merely the Cadre i7-7700K averaged 128fps with the same GTX 1080 card. Plain, knocking 23fps off your gaming performance is never a good thing—specially considering how expensive high-end graphics cards are these days. But the AMD scrap was at to the lowest degree able to keep frame rates quite high.

Simply as with the Ryzen vii chips, when nosotros stepped upwards to 4K resolution (3,840x2,160), performance roughly evened out. At that higher setting, the Ryzen 5 1600 system delivered an boilerplate frame charge per unit of 48.2fps, which is actually slightly college than the 46.6fps average delivered past our Core i7-equipped test bed.

Adjacent, we switched to the game Far Cry Key, on the title'due south High preset, and saw more issues with our AMD Ryzen 5 1600, at least at first. At 1080p in this title, the Ryzen v 1600 system managed an boilerplate of 83fps (downwards from 90fps with the Ryzen five 1600X), compared to the Core i7-7700K'southward showing of 130fps on the same examination. That's more than a fifty percent performance edge for Intel. Jumping upward to 4K resolution on Far Cry Primal, nonetheless, all the Ryzen five and Ryzen 7 fries we've tested thus far delivered the same 49fps, a single frame ahead of the Intel Core i7-7700K car's 48fps at the same 4K setting with the same Nvidia graphics carte.

Because we had a bit more time with this chip, nosotros also dropped in a lower-end (though still quite capable) Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 Founders Edition carte du jour into our Ryzen five and Cadre i7-7700K testbeds and repeated the same gaming tests. With this lesser card, the ii fries delivered substantially the same performance, within 2fps or 3fps, 1 way or the other.

What do we glean from this? If you're running a midrange graphics card, the performance deltas at 1080p betwixt an AMD Ryzen v or Ryzen 7 chip and a comparable Intel-based alternative won't likely be all that corking. But for those who use high-end graphics cards to game at very loftier refresh rates (above, say, 100Hz) at 1080p, Intel-based builds are the improve option, at to the lowest degree for now. We demand to run into more gaming improvements from AMD on that front.

As nosotros mentioned earlier, AMD has been out of the high-end CPU realm for years, simply it seems that the visitor is making strides to at least lessen the gaming gap between its fries and Intel's at 1080p. Just as games aren't always optimized for brand-new graphics cards every bit soon equally they launch (particularly if you happen to have a multi-card SLI or CrossFire setup), but are patched in the weeks that follow to evangelize better functioning, the same will likely happen on the CPU side of things—at to the lowest degree to a sure extent.

Plus, let'due south not forget: Fifty-fifty if you are gaming on a 1080p screen, the at-or-most-triple-digit performance we saw in testing is nonetheless very shine, and shut enough to what Intel delivers that you'd need both a very fast monitor and extremely good eyesight to see the divergence. Down in the real earth where most of us still game, in the 60fps range, what AMD delivers here is more than good enough for serious gaming.

Conclusion

We wrote in the decision of our review of the $189 Ryzen v 1500X that our sole reservation with that four-cadre scrap was that the six-core Ryzen 5 1600 was available for an actress $40. That made the vi-core CPU a proposition worth stepping up to if you practice fourth dimension-consuming CPU-focused tasks like video editing and transcoding with any regularity. Ryzen'southward master strength against its Intel-based competition is more cores and threads for your money. Then if that appeals to you, spending a little more to get six of them (and 12 computing threads) is worth paying a little more than for.

But that equation doesn't work and so well with the Ryzen 5 1600. Y'all could step up to the Ryzen seven 1700 and go eight cores instead of "just" vi. Only the cost gap between the $219 Ryzen 5 1600 and the $319 Ryzen 7 1700 is a substantial $100, and the Ryzen 7 1700 has a lower 3GHz base of operations clock compared to the iii.2GHz base of the Ryzen 5 1600. Unless y'all actually need those extra cores and threads for professional purposes, or money really isn't an issue, the Ryzen v 1600 comes off equally much more than sensible chip, peculiarly if you don't want to deal with the hassle and extra cost of an aftermarket cooler, as you'll need to with the Ryzen v 1600X.

We still think the Ryzen 1600X, which is one pace up the Ryzen five ladder, is a slightly better value overall. That'southward cheers to its higher stock clock speeds, which aid it do better in lightly threaded tests and games, pushing it closer to Intel-based alternatives in those areas. But its lack of a CPU libation (and $249 cost) makes it more of a chip for enthusiasts. With an adequate in-box cooler and six cores of compute muscle for about $220, the Ryzen 5 1600 carves out a nice spot for itself. If you're a budget-minded media creator, or you otherwise often tackle tasks that tin take advantage of all cores, and you just want to buy a chip that you tin can drop into an AM4-based system and get to working, the Ryzen 5 1600 is tough to crush in this price range.

[Editors' Annotation: Parts of this review appeared previously in our review of the AMD Ryzen 5 1600X.]

AMD Ryzen five 1600

The Bottom Line

At just $219 with six cores and 12 threads, AMD'due south Ryzen 5 1600 could exist a greenbacks-strapped content creator's dream bit. Just don't expect to exercise serious overclocking without investing in a better libation.

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Source: https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-5-1600

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