Zen 3 to reach cheaper price ranges starting early next year with new Ryzen 5 5600 SKU
The Ryzen 5000 processors announced last week give AMD a shot at becoming the performance king fully overtaking Intel this generation, however they brought unwelcome news, too. Particularly the price: the cheapest Zen 3 based Ryzen 5 5600X with just six cores will cost $299, a long stretch from Zen 2 based Ryzen 5 3600. But it seems this might improve soonish as AMD is reportedly readying cheaper hexa-core Ryzen 5 5600.
This good news was reported by Twitter-based leaker Harukaze5719 (via VideoCardz). It’s important to note though that he reports he has found the news in an unidentified possibly Korean website, but has been unable to find the original source anymore. That means this information has to be taken with a grain of salt and the confidence we can have in it is limited. That being said, adding a cheaper Zen 3 processor would make a lot of sense for AMD, which adds to the likelihood.
Harukaze5719 reports that according to the source, AMD will add Ryzen 5 5600 to the stack below the 5600X. The new SKU should be a successor to the popular Zen 2 based Ryzen 5 3600, given the naming. Specifications of the processor were not revealed, but we can expect it to provide 6 cores and 12 threads, likely with 32 MB of L3 cache and 65W TDP. The only difference to the more expensive Ryzen 5 5600X might be simply its clock speed, Ryzen 5 5600 should run lower base clock and maximum boost than the 5600X with it’s 3.7GHz base and 4.6GHz max boost.
It can’t be ruled out AMD will add more differentiation this time around that was not used in 3000 series, like cut-down cache capacity or even disabled SMT. But let’s hope this doesn’t come to pass.
This Ryzen 5 5600 would significantly drop the entry price you have to pay to join the Zen 3 club: according to the source the price is planned to be $220 (possibly $219 to fit the overall scheme?), or about €225 if we include typical European VAT of 21 %. Although this might not be the final decision, it is a bit suspicious AMD would leave such a large gap in pricing, so we’d actually expect 5600 to cost $249.
The price of $219 would be still an increase compared to the $199 sticker Ryzen 5 3600 launched with and actually also retails for currently. But mere $20 (+10%) markup makes the 5600 much more palatable to price-conscious buyers than 5600X currently is, and having to pay $219 for a CPU to get Zen 3 architecture instead of $299 is a big improvement. After all, you can find the octa-core Ryzen 7 3700X selling for $299 today which makes it a steep price to ask for six cores.
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> From foreign source
1) R5 5600 will release early 2021, price $220
2) R5 5600X is similar or better than i7 10700 (1T, nT, Gaming) pic.twitter.com/gqy2N1hY5H
— 포시포시 (@harukaze5719) October 12, 2020
As for the availability date, it is not given exactly, but according to the source Ryzen 5 5600 should launch early next year, which could mean January or possibly February 2021. You won’t be able to buy Ryzen 5 5600 as the cheaper option when the first processors come to stores, sadly. A waiting time of three months would be better than how long we have waited for the availability of Ryzen 3 SKUs in the last-year’s generation, however.
Luckily there is one thing that might be pushing AMD to introduce lower-priced Zen 3 processors. Intel is rumoured to launch its own next-gen desktop CPUs codenamed Rocket Lake in the second week of March 2021. Those are also going to spot new architecture and might prove to be a strong competition for Zen 3 in gaming performance despite retaining the old 14nm manufacturing process for one last time. For this reason, AMD might want to push out Ryzen 5 3600 sooner than later to gain ground in the sub $300 market before Intel can make its move. Perhaps we could even see a launch of cheaper Ryzen 7 5700X (or perhaps non-X 5700) somewhere in the $349 to $399 range if we are lucky, but such a processor has not appeared so far in any leaks or rumours, so don’t hold your breath for it.
If this rumour is true, AMD would largely fix its mistake of not offering Zen 3 below $300 mark, despite this space being one where it makes a large part of its sales – Ryzen 5 1600, 2600 and 3600 were always amongst the most popular (if not the most popular) SKUs. We have to hope Harukaze5719’s rumour is true then, but as we warned before, this is still up in the air.
Ryzen 5 5600X equal to Core i7-10700?
There is one further bit of info from the same source regarding the Ryzen 5 5600X, too. Allegedly, this processor might actually be competitive with eight-core CPUs. The leak claims it to be equal or perhaps slightly better than Intel Core i7-10700 with 16 threads in both single-thread and multi-thread performance as well as in gaming. Note that this is a comparison with the locked 65W version, not with the unlocked 125W SKU which has higher performance than plain i7-10700. This might mean the high price of Ryzen 5 5600X might be a slightly more justified than generally assumed. However, this too should be taken with a grain of salt until independent reviews can confirm the performance of the Zen 3 processors.
