AMD Ryzen 5 5600X: Worth €120 more than the Core i5?

Extra tests, Processors | | Ľubomír Samák

AMD Ryzen 5 5600X in detail

We’ve already discussed the middle class Intel processors (Core i5) in tests, but so far without comparing it to the equivalent Ryzen 5. We will gradually add these, but before the R5 3600, do not miss the extensive comparison of R5 5600X to Ci5-11400F. It’s a bit of an unequal fight, as the AMD piece is significantly more expensive, but maybe in your eyes it will defend its price in tasks where it is clearly better than the Core i5 Rocket Lake.

Conclusion

We will start the verbal interpretation and evaluation of test results traditionally from the perspective of game performance. The Ryzen 5 5600X in Full HD resolution is on average 6% faster than the competing Core i5-11400F. At higher QHD and UHD resolutions, the difference is negligible (0–1%). This means that if you are hesitant about choosing a processor for your primary gaming computer, the 5600X will help you the most in FHD resolution. But that also depends. For example, in games such as Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Total War Saga: Troy, the AMD processor gets the short end of the straw, similarly so in Cyberpunk 2077, where the results are practically equal though.

The 5600X achieves negligibly higher performance in Borderlands 3 and in DOOM Eternal (but only in FHD, in higher resolutions the Rocket Lake already takes over). And then there are games where the R5 5600X in 1080p is significantly better—such as in CS:GO (+37%), but we have seen a decent difference as well in F1 2020 (+13%) or in Shadow of the Tomb Raider (+ 9%). In Metro Exodus it makes +4% in favor of the 5600X. A significant increase in performance could also be in Microsoft Flight Simulator, in which the July update dramatically increased performance. It’s just a pity we don’t have Ci5-11400F results with it. In any case, the R5 5600X practically does not lag behind the R9 5900X, but the Ci5-10400F (Comet Lake) and R5 3700X lose by over 20%.

Let me again remind that the comparisons with the Core i5-11400F above are based on a resolution of 1920 × 1080 px, which could be a target resolution in this class. Although it is difficult to estimate whether most users, who pay three hundred euros for a processor, won’t get a monitor with 2560 × 1440 px resolution. From this resolution onwards, the difference in game performance of the processors already fades. This naturally means that the higher the resolution of the monitor, the more the price-performance ratio is gets worse to the detriment of the Ryzen 5 5600X and the only advantage remains in the lower power draw.The AMD processor without power limits is about 24% more energy-efficient in games and the performance per watt coefficient is also significantly more attractive.

However, energy efficiency for most gamers will probably not have a high priority and especially not in the class, where relatively cheap coolers will always be able to cool both the Core i5 and Ryzen 5. The temperature of the R5 5600X is one of the lowest even at high loads of all cores. However, given the low power consumption of up to 76 W, this is not surprising.

The Ryzen 5 5600X has a bigger performance lead in computational tasks rather than in games. In 3D rendering and video encoding, compared to the Core i5-11400F, it has a performance lead of about 10%, with the x265 up to 17%. In most tasks with an overwhelming 22:4 ratio, the Ryzen is also faster in Adobe Premiere Pro. In the alternative video editor, DaVinci Resolve, it is more equal (also in terms of smaller mutual differences), but the dominance is still on the AMD processor side. That is also faster in Adobe Affter Effects, in some tasks even by up to 26%. When working with Motion Blur, it is between 17–19%. With some notable exceptions, the 5600X also dominatesin Photoshop and in Lightroom photo exporting is much faster than the 11400F. One of the few situations where the Core i5-11400F has the upper hand is Topaz Labs AI apps for improving the technical quality of images.

(De)compression and (de)cryption tests, show the dominance of the R5 5600X, like various physical and numerical computations. The only exception is perhaps in Y-cruncher, which uses the AVX-512 instruction set relatively effectively—the Ryzen 5 does not support it and is therefore significantly slower in this discipline. The 5600X is therefore doing quite well in computing tasks, but it is almost never enough to match the older Ryzen 7 3700X. It is usually 10% or more slower. It is therefore a relatively complicated situation for the evaluation, as the Core i5-11400F is much more advantageous for gaming and the Ryzen 7 3700X for non-gaming tasks, which is available practically for the same money.

TL;DR: The 5600X will be like a fish in water in a gaming setup, and at the same time for casual video editing or photo editing. It performs similar to the Ci5-11400F in terms of gaming, but in single-threaded tasks, the R5 5600X usually has the upper hand and sometimes quite significant. For example, we are talking about various filters (in Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Photoshop, After Effects or also in XnView, which will probably be a more common tool for occasional editing) or audio encoding and there would be many more of those situations. In any case, it is perhaps appropriate to conclude that the big sales of the R5 5600X are probably more due to AMD processors as a whole than to the fact that it would really be as advantageous a purchase as it looks from market statistics.

We’ve got the games for our tests from Jama levova

Special thanks to Blackmagic Design (for a licence to DaVinci Resolve Studio), Topaz Labs (for licences to apps DeNoise AI, Gigapixel AI and Sharpen AI) and Zoner (for a licence to Photo Studio X)


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