AMD Ryzen 5 Review: Chips for Serious Work and Play
The Ryzen 5 is here, and Advanced Micro Devices' (AMD) midrange processor offering is once again disrupting the market just like the previous Ryzen 7 did. Overall, the chip has been met with great reviews especially when it comes to desktop applications. Find out more on how the Ryzen 5 is a great value for versatile PC work and gaming.
The introduction of the Ryzen 7 has been, in a word, spectacular. The hype leading to the launch, the raging debate on the benchmarks and whether it convincingly beats the Intel equivalent, plus the ongoing improvements as AMD rushes to stabilize the firmware and software support for the new chips all led to an exciting new era for PC system builders.
While the Ryzen 7 series is positioned to take on Intel's very expensive $1,000 Core i7-6900K and its ilk by offering similar performance for a third of the price, debate is still ongoing on how the series did with a spotty launch that saw the flagship central processing unit (CPU) hampered by firmware issues and unoptimized software, the usual roadblocks to a new chip architecture.
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The Ryzen 5 series, however, has a clearer comparison point with its Intel counterpart. With the Ryzen 5 1600X coming equipped with six cores and 12 threads, it handles multithreaded desktop much better than Intel's Core i5-7600, with four cores and four threads.
With the same $250 price tag, the Ryzen 5 chip demolishes Intel's Core i5 in multithreaded applications and multitasking. In the words of PC World, "AMD's processor absolutely burns the Core i5 to the ground in multithreaded applications. Seriously. It's a massacre."
Guru 3D gave the Ryzen 5 1600X and the Ryzen 5 1500 the "Great Value" award badge after putting the chips, and other AMD and Intel CPUs, through a very comprehensive gauntlet of tests after tests.
The Ryzen 5 may lag slightly compared with Intel's chips when it comes to gaming benchmarks, albeit it's a situation that's going to improve week after week with software updates. Its better overall system responsiveness and big advantage in multithreaded performance for desktop applications, especially those designed for work, tip the balance in favor of more cores.
As Guru 3D said, "anno 2017 we feel a six or eight-core part is the way to go," and AMD looks to be leading the midrange CPU market to the future of more cores with the Ryzen 5 series.
