A fantastic alternative to Intel's Core i5-7600K
Priced at $250, the six-core 1600X is an exceptional buy and a fantastic alternative to Intel's
Core i5-7600K, which offers only four cores for the same price. Granted, they're exceptionally good cores that can be pushed quite far and may even look to be the better choice right now in most games.
That said, the 1600X offered more consistent performance in Battlefield 1 and of course still pushed well over 120fps. It also made out better in Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation and provided similar performance in Hitman. Even in games such as Mafia III and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided where the 1600X trailed the 7600K, the margins weren't that great.
So, out of the box gaming performance is currently similar between AMD and Intel, but Ryzen holds a clear lead in productivity performance regardless of the application (hundreds will mimic what was seen in
7-Zip and Excel). The 1600X is a beast for content creation at this price point, roughly matching the 7700K for
$100 less.
Even when overclocked, the 7600K can't hang with the 1600X when it comes to productivity and we expect this to be the case with games once they start better utilizing Ryzen.
Ryzen 5 feels more like an enthusiast-grade product than Intel's thanks to its quality heatsink and unlocked multiplier as well as overclocking support on not just the flagship chipset but also the
affordable B350.
On the contrary, the 7600K requires a
pricier Z-series chipset if you plan to overclock and don't forget there's no stock cooler at all. That's right, you pay more for the unlocked K-models and Intel does you a favor by keeping the metal, so you can immediately add $20-$30 to the total expense for a basic air-cooler plus the aforementioned ~$20 premium on motherboard.
After accounting for the cooler and comparing the price of these processors with an entry-level motherboard that supports overclocking, we find that the 1600X actually ends up costing 8% less, not the 4% more it seems for just the CPU. If you opt for the vanilla 1600 like I suggest, then you're saving over 15% on the core components. That's pretty insane for a 12-thread setup versus a quad-core.