AMD Ryzen 5 5600X & Ryzen 9 5900X Review

AMD has been on a long road to redemption. Back in the day, I remember sporting some of their classics, such as the 955 Black Edition. A beastly overclocking CPU that was a big slap in the face to many Intel rivals. Well, AMD has been fighting fit against Intel for a few years now and with every launch, they’ve been setting new records for multi-core performance, while being pretty competitive with single-core performance and gaming at a lower price… often a LOT lower price. Now AMD is ready to take it to the next level, improve gaming performance, and improve single-core performance, but have they done it?

AMD Ryzen 5000

For this launch, everything is updated. The new CPUs are promising a wider range of frequencies, full PCIe Gen4 support, and ready to deliver their best performance on the latest motherboards. AMD are confident they can beat Intel this time around in both gaming and single-core performance. I’m not even fussed if they beat them everywhere, as very close or as good is always welcome. Then again, even just a nice improvement on previous AMD chips is always welcome too. We’ve seen promising rumours about it all over the last few weeks, but now it’s time to fire up our own test bench.

AMD Ryzen 5 5600X

• 6 Cores
• 12 Threads
• 3.7 GHz Base Clock
• 4.6GHz Boost Clock
• Unlocked
• PCIe Gen 4.0
• TDP: 65W

For in-depth specifications, please visit the official AMD Ryzen 5 5600X product page here.

AMD Ryzen 9 5900X

• 12 Cores
• 24 Threads
• 3.7 GHz Base Clock
• 4.8GHz Boost Clock
• Unlocked
• PCIe Gen 4.0
• TDP: 105W

For in-depth specifications, please visit the official AMD Ryzen 9 5900X product page here.

What AMD Had to Say

“When you have the world’s most advanced processor architecture for gamers and content creators, the possibilities are endless. Whether you are playing the latest games, designing the next skyscraper, or crunching data, you need a powerful processor that can handle it all—and more. Hands down, the AMD Ryzen™ 5000 Series desktop processors set the bar for gamers and artists alike. AMD Ryzen™ 5000 Series processors power the next generation of demanding games, providing one of a kind immersive experiences and dominate any multithreaded task like 3D and video rendering2, and software compiling.“ – AMD

How We Test

Here at eTeknix, we endeavour to disclose vital information regarding the benchmarking process so that readers can quantify the results and attempt to replicate them using their hardware. When it comes to our benchmarks in our reviews, the benchmarks are pretty self-explanatory although there are a few exceptions. Remember that your choice of motherboard, the silicon lottery, and other factors can yield different numbers, and there’s always a margin for error when using any software. Therefore, your experience may vary.

Testing Your Own System

We typically focus on commonly available benchmarks so that you too can run the same benchmarks on your own system. We hope this makes it easy for our readers to gauge the performance improvement available to them when they upgrade their own systems.

Gaming Tests

All games are run at their specified resolutions using the “high” settings or equivalent. We avoid using the Ultra settings as these often offer diminishing returns for performance vs visuals.

Test Benches

Zen 2

Zen

Coffee Lake

Kaby Lake

LGA 2066

Synthetic Benchmarks

There’s no mucking about here, the new AMD CPUs are flying through these benchmarks. I’m pretty amazed with the Ryzen 5 5600X performance though, it set some of our highest scores to date, and really allowed the GPU on our test bench to stretch its legs in GPU bound tasks such as FireStrike. 24564 is enough to beat ANY Intel CPU we’ve tested to date.

However, the Ryzen 9 5900X set a new high score in FireStrike, TimeSpy, PCMark 10 Express, and in SuperPi Mod. That means it’s beaten out all the latest Intel CPUs we’ve tested, including the 10900K which was further down the list and didn’t even make it onto this chart with its score of FireStrike 22407 vs the 25942 of the 5900X.

Results in RED indicate a new #1 record score for that benchmark.

AMD Ryzen 5 5600X

• 3DMark FireStrike – 24564
• 3DMark TimeSpy – 10890
• PCMark 10 Express – 7504
• GeekBench – 1579/8202
• WPrime v2.10 – 2.493/60.042
• SuperPi Mod 1.9 WP – 06:43

AMD Ryzen 9 5900X

• 3DMark FireStrike – 25942
• 3DMark TimeSpy – 11633
• PCMark 10 Express – 7832
• GeekBench – 1600/12643
• WPrime v2.10 – 2.493/60.042
• SuperPi Mod 1.9 WP – 06:12

The same happened in Kraken, the 5600X setting our fastest time yet, then the 5900X came along and beat that again! Both of them miles ahead of the next Intel rival.

Amazingly though it was the 5600X beating the 5900X in WebXPRT, however at this point, it’s clear they’re both fantastic CPUs and it was the slightly faster single core of the 5600X that gave it the edge over the larger core count 5900X here.

Online Benchmarks

Results in RED indicate a new #1 record score for that benchmark.

AMD Ryzen 5 5600X

• Google Octane 2.0 – 67191
• Mozilla Kraken 1.1 – 610
• WebXPRT 3 v2.93 – 317

AMD Ryzen 9 5900X

• Google Octane 2.0 – 71361
• Mozilla Kraken 1.1 – 576.5
• WebXPRT 3 v2.93 – 317

Not quite so many new records here, but only because these tests are very heavily affected by core counts. The Ryzen 9 3950X still dominates here. That being said, these CPUs are not slacking off and still setting some of the best scores we’ve seen, and still giving Intel a bloody good thrashing.

What more is the single core performance in Cinebench, with both CPUs setting a score far above what we’ve ever seen from AMD or Intel. Intel topped out at 225 on the 10900K, not even close to the 252 of the 5600X and 263 of the 5900X.

Compression & Rendering

Results in RED indicate a new #1 record score for that benchmark.

AMD Ryzen 5 5600X

• .7zip 19.00 Resulting – 63679/84346
• Corona 1.3 – 1:57/4137830
• Blender 2.82 – 03:30
• Unigine Superposition 1080p Extreme – 7141
• Cinebench R15 – 252/1911
• Cinebench R20 – 601/4387
• Handbrake 4K Transcode – 45.5
• V-Ray 3.10.03 – 11622

AMD Ryzen 9 5900X

• .7zip 19.00 Resulting – 86191/161388
• Corona 1.3 – 01:01/7965620
• Blender 2.82 – 01:49
• Unigine Superposition 1080p Extreme – 7146
• Cinebench R15 – 263/3660
• Cinebench R20 – 632/8469
• Handbrake 4K Transcode – 57
• V-Ray 3.10.03 – 23972

Memory

Amazingly, even the memory performance has seen a big uplift, giving us our fastest performance for dual-channel setups, with only the quad-channel showing higher performance from Intel, but I mean… obviously?!

Intel still seems to have better latency, but with the 5900X setting a new record for AMD CPU latency, things are very different from the poor memory performance we saw on first-gen Ryzen.

Gaming Performance

Intel has dominated gaming performance for years, that’s no big secret. It’s purely because they had better single core performance and clock speeds. However, AMD has been closing that gap and always remained very competitive regardless. Today, they’re neck and neck.

The 5900X set a new score for Tomb Raider, and the 5600X was still in 3rd place for that too. The 5900X was just 3FPS below the 10900K for Far Cry, giving it 2nd place. The others are all very close and AMD holds steady throughout. It even set a new score in Borderlands 3, hitting 117.99 FPS.

Results in RED indicate a new #1 record score for that benchmark.

AMD Ryzen 5 5600X

• Shadow of the Tomb Raider – 150
• Far Cry: New Dawn – 93/125
• Metro Exodus – 46.84/105.83
• World of Tanks – 44621/34947
• Borderlands 3 – 115.87

AMD Ryzen 9 5900X

• Shadow of the Tomb Raider – 160
• Far Cry: New Dawn – 100/133
• Metro Exodus – 47.29/105.26
• World of Tanks – 44621/34947
• Borderlands 3 – 117.99

Overclocking

We’ve long argued that overclocking a big waste of time on modern CPUs and even GPUs. The automatic gains you get by simply applying a better cooler is often all you need to do. However, if you have a reason to lock in that speed, you’ll be happy to see we hit 4.8 GHz 1.3375v all cores on the 5600X. However, the larger core count of the 5900X kept that to 4.6 GHz 1.2825v all cores, although that’s still impressive.

5600X Stock

5600X @ 4.8 GHz 1.3375v

5900X

5900X @ 4.6 GHz 1.2825v

How Much Does it Cost?

The new AMD Ryzen 5, Ryzen 7 and the Ryzen 9 CPUs all launch today. There are four versions available and as you can see, the Ryzen 5 5600X is the base model, albeit a base model that delivered some pretty killer performance. The 5900X we’ve tested may be setting new records, but it’s not actually the top model, with the more expensive 5950X leading the pack Looking at the i-10900K, which is still about £45 more than the 5900X, I think AMD has Intel well and truly whipped this time around.

• AMD Ryzen 9 5950X – £749.99
• AMD Ryzen 9 5900X – £509.99
• AMD Ryzen 7 5800X – £419.99
• AMD Ryzen 5 5600X – £279.99

Overview

There’s no shortage of truly amazing CPUs right now, and both Intel and AMD have some very competitive options. However, they’ve never been so closely matched than they are right now. If you’re after a solid all-round gaming CPU that still has enough grunt for a bit of rendering and editing, then you’re going to love the Ryzen 5 5600X.

At just £279.99, it’s very competitively priced, offering similar multi-core performance to the more expensive 3700X and 3800X, while offering a massive uplift in single-core performance!

More Cores!

The 5600X is impressive, no doubt about it. However, it’s safe to say the one we really want to talk about is the 5900X. This thing set a lot of new high scores on our benchmarks today and proved that AMD are firmly back into the land of the enthusiast gamer. Massive performance improvements to the single core performance put it quite a lot ahead of anything else we’ve tested from AMD or Intel. That translated to multi-core too, which big performance improvements in rendering times, memory performance, and gaming.

What’s more, AMD is taking on the more expensive solutions from Intel with ease here. Intel got away with their premium price because they were faster in gaming, and that’s just not true anymore. Of course, we expect Intel will counter with new CPUs and the battle will rage on, but right now, AMD has fully closed that advantage.

Should I Buy One?

AMD really is on a winning streak right now and there’s never been a better time to get onboard. There’s a fantastic range of motherboards out there, PCIe Gen4 has really developed well, and AM4 ultra-fast memory support has matured too. If you’re looking to build a Ryzen based gaming PC, the 5600X or the 5900X would be smart choices.