AMD Ryzen 5 3600: Older bestseller head-to-head with new CPUs

Test setup

One of the most popular CPUs in recent history. That is the Ryzen 5 3600. In stores It’s almost totally unavailable, yet it’s performance numbers are very valuable. Many of you own this processor thanks to its popularity so I presume you will appreciate a little head-to-head with more recent and more available models. From these tests, you will get an idea how the 6 Zen 2 cores stack up against Zen 3 (5600X) or Intel (be it Rocket Lake or Comet Lake).

Test setup

*Following motherboard BIOS versions are used: v1.14 on MSI MEG Z590 Ace, v1E on MSI MEG X570 and v17 on MSI MEG Z490.

Note: Graphics drivers used at the time of testing: Nvidia GeForce 466.77 and OS Windows 10 build 19043.

• Contents
• AMD Ryzen 5 3600 in detail
• Methodology: performance tests
• Methodology: how we measure power draw
• Methodology: temperature and clock speed tests
• Test setup
• 3DMark
• Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla
• Borderlands 3
• Counter-Strike: GO
• Cyberpunk 2077
• DOOM Eternal
• F1 2020
• Metro Exodus
• Microsoft Flight Simulator
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• Total War Saga: Troy
• Overall gaming performance
• Gaming performance per euro
• PCMark and Geekbench
• Web performance
• 3D rendering: Cinebench, Blender, ...
• Video 1/2: Adobe Premiere Pro
• Video 2/2: DaVinci Resolve Studio
• Graphic effects: Adobe After Effects
• Video encoding
• Audio encoding
• Broadcasting (OBS and Xsplit)
• Photos 1/2: Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom
• Photos 2/2: Affinity Photo, Topaz Labs AI apps, ZPS X, ...
• (De)compression
• (De)cryption
• Numerical computing
• Simulations
• Memory and cache tests
• Processor power draw curve
• Average processor power draw
• Performance per watt
• Achieved CPU clock speed
• CPU temperature
• Conclusion