AMD Ryzen 5 1600 3.2 GHz

[W1zzard]

AMD's Ryzen 5 1600, a six-core processor with twelve logical cores, turns out to be a cost-effective alternative to the only marginally faster Ryzen 5 1600X. The Ryzen 5 1600 even offers good overclocking potential, going beyond the clock limits of AMD Precision Boost and XFR.

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[kruk]

Ouch, that missing 8 MB of L3 cache really seems to kill Ryzen 5 1400 performance .

 

[notb]

I got my i5-7500 yesterday and with almost every graph in this review I was getting happier and happier with that choice (I considered Ryzen 5 1600).

Yup, 6C/12T is fantastic in productivity / simulation / database stuff. If I wanted to keep the CPU in my main PC for more than 3 years, it would be a clear winner.
That said, I guess I can wait for my queries few more minutes, but the extra single-core potential of i5 should help in the future (not to mention the IGP).

Honestly, it's not going as people hoped. Ryzen 5 are not clocked higher than Ryzen 7 (and don't OC higher), so they don't have any low-thread / gaming advantage. Basically, you're buying the same cores in different quantity.
There's another side of this story, obviously: Ryzen 9 clocks are much higher that we though, so maybe Ryzen 9 will get some traction in workstations.

 

[meirb111]

the 1600 is tempting but still there is the compatibility issue with amd's Instruction set today its a weak avx2 yesterday it was sse4a ,for example i have phenom ii 955 that has the sse4a only (no sse4.1 )and so in x265 encoding it sucks because it only uses sse2 it doesn't use sse4a i have half the speed of an i5 750 that i could have bought at the time. some how programmers use intel Instruction set often than amd's.

 

[Fluffmeister]

Seems like a great CPU, sure it suffers in some areas, but then it also shines in others. Paired with a nice B350 mobo and you can't go too far wrong.

And credit to Wiz for the review, very thorough and no doubt very time consuming.

 

[etayorius]

Good review. Power Consumption seems to be just a tad bit higher than the 7700k, but this is a 6 Core 12 Threads. Very nice. OC is pretty much useless in these chips.

 

[NdMk2o1o]

I got my i5-7500 yesterday and with almost every graph in this review I was getting happier and happier with that choice (I considered Ryzen 5 1600).

Yup, 6C/12T is fantastic in productivity / simulation / database stuff. If I wanted to keep the CPU in my main PC for more than 3 years, it would be a clear winner.
That said, I guess I can wait for my queries few more minutes, but the extra single-core potential of i5 should help in the future (not to mention the IGP).

Honestly, it's not going as people hoped. Ryzen 5 are not clocked higher than Ryzen 7 (and don't OC higher), so they don't have any low-thread / gaming advantage. Basically, you're buying the same cores in different quantity.
There's another side of this story, obviously: Ryzen 9 clocks are much higher that we though, so maybe Ryzen 9 will get some traction in workstations.

You just troll ryzen threads repeating yourself, what's disappointing about a 3% drop in fps compared to i5 (5% if you rock 720p in which case you have no right to bitch about anything really) when its also heaps better in productivity, but hey whatever helps you justify your own purchases and keep hating on amd

 

[Mathragh]

Excellent review regarding abundance of competing chips, amount of benchmarks and no-nonsense use of language.
Especially the inclusion of multiple programs for the measurement of power consumption is appreciated and something other reviewers should seriously consider doing as well.

 

[xkm1948]

I wonder how it stacks up to 5820K/6800K though

 

[Dethroy]

Great review @W1zzard

Small errors I noticed... No offense.

Introduction:

This is where the Ryzen 5 1600 is different. You get all the features of the 1600X, including unlocked base-clock multiplier, but only lose out on lower clock speeds and lack of XFR (extended frequency range), a feature that automatically overclocks the processor beyond the max turbo frequency depending on the efficiency of the cooling.

All Ryzen SKUs offer XFR. It's just that non-X SKUs extend their precision boosts by another 50 MHz, whereas SKUs denoted with an X offer another 100 MHz beyond their precision boosts.


Conclusion:

XFR adds another 200 MHz to the Precision Boost clock on the 1600X. On the 1600 non-X, this is usually a bonus 50 MHz over Precision Boost frequency, if your cooling is up to it, which it usually is.

100, not 200. And it kinda contradicts what was said in the introduction.

 

[bug]

I'm not convinced this is compelling enough to consider over a 7600k for example, but at the same time I wouldn't consider the lack of an IGP a con. To me, it's a plus, I always disable it.

 

[qubit]

Ok, so the gaming performance deficit is pretty much like its bigger brothers and there are still those memory compatibility problems. However, given the pricing, ongoing memory improvements, Intel's reaction to Ryzen and the potential performance of Ryzen v2 at equalling or besting Intel, I'm confident that AMD is once again providing decent competition to Intel after 12 long years and I'm looking forward to Ryzen v2 now.

On popular demand from comments over the past several AMD Ryzen reviews, we are introducing game-tests at 720p (1280 x 720 pixels) resolution. All games from our CPU test suite are put through 720p, a low resolution that, in theory, highlights CPU performance because games are extremely CPU-limited at this resolution. Of course, nobody buys a PC with a $200+ processor to game at 720p (something a cheap $60 Celeron will do just fine), but the results are of academic value because a CPU that can't do 144 frames per second at 720p will likely never reach that mark at higher resolutions either. So these numbers could interest high refresh-rate gaming PC builders with fast 120 Hz and 144 Hz monitors. Our 720p tests hence serve as synthetic tests in that they are not real-world (720p isn't a real-world PC-gaming resolution anymore) even though the game tests themselves are not synthetic (they're real games, not 3D benchmarks).

Really appreciate this W1z and thanks for listening to your members on this important point. Together with your real-world resolution tests, this now gives a complete picture of processor gaming performance.

Oh btw, I do sometimes game at really low resolutions for a short while for that retro arcade game feel on my monitor. Push the signal through to an old CRT TV through the aerial socket via a lo-res modulator complete with crappy mono sound through the TV's single speaker and the feel is complete, but with a cool modern take on it.

 

[_Flare]

This should be the correct clocks ... explains a lot

 

[50eurouser]

Intel <K> models are being tested with MCT (Multi-Core Turbo) on or off ? It bins turbo on max on all cores all time if enabled.

 

[Dethroy]

This should be the correct clocks ... explains a lot

AFAIK the 1700's All-Core Boost is 3,15 GHz.

 

[Dave65]

Hey guys, would this be a good replacement for a z170/6700k?
I do a lot of video rendering and editing, would it be worth the upgrade?

 

[Dethroy]

Hey guys, would this be a good replacement for a z170/6700k?
I do a lot of video rendering and editing, would it be worth the upgrade?

Depends on what software you use. And if the software makes proper use of multiple cores, I'd suggest you to look at the R7 1700/1700X instead, since the 1600 is not that big of an upgrade even under favorable conditions.

 

[notb]

You just troll ryzen threads repeating yourself, what's disappointing about a 3% drop in fps compared to i5 (5% if you rock 720p in which case you have no right to bitch about anything really)

Could you point the part of my comment which mentions gaming?

And what's wrong with 720p anyway? I used to play at 1600x900 and I still use that LCD.
In many demanding games a modern entry-level gaming GPUs (1050Ti, RX560 etc) hover around ~40 fps in 1080p. It means that 2-3 years from now 720p could become a challenge (without sacrificing other settings). Quite a lot of people game and will keep gaming at 720p for years to come.

As this is a review of $250 CPU, people will most likely pair it with similarly priced GPUs (rarely something faster than a 1060 / RX580).

when its also heaps better in productivity, but hey whatever helps you justify your own purchases and keep hating on amd

That depends on the task, but as I've said: in multi-thread problems Ryzen is a clear choice. But CPUs have properties other than performance and for me the whole package is not that great.

 

[bug]

Hey guys, would this be a good replacement for a z170/6700k?
I do a lot of video rendering and editing, would it be worth the upgrade?

If the review didn't answer that, nothing will.

 

[notb]

Hey guys, would this be a good replacement for a z170/6700k?
I do a lot of video rendering and editing, would it be worth the upgrade?

That depends on your workflow. In ideal conditions you could see a 20-30% improvement.
If you feel limited by 6700K in live editing (it can't keep up), then 30% could not be enough. I'd go for Ryzen 7 for more headroom. 6K is around the corner.
But moving to general rendering/encoding - does it really matter to you if a job completes in e.g. 40 minutes instead of an hour?
I'm not talking about "awesomeness" factor - just sensible evaluation of needs.
Also, if your video editing software utilizes the GPU (e.g. Adobe Premiere Pro), the actual gain from replacing the CPU could be really small.

I'm doing a lot of signal processing and simulations. Signal processing is done live (e.g. financial series analysis / automatic trading), but the tasks are mainly single-threaded anyway.
Simulations benefit greatly from extra cores, but I only have around 30-40 hours of them a week. Earning ~10 hours of idle time (as the PC runs almost 24/7) is not that tempting, honestly.

 

[Jism]

Is it me or is that 3.8GHz OC relatively low? Since most Ryzen hit 4.0 up to 4.1GHz.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Is it me or is that 3.8GHz OC relatively low? Since most Ryzen hit 4.0 up to 4.1GHz.

A lot of ryzens cant hit 4.0 without super high voltage. At 1.35V, 3.8-3.9 seems to be the most common with good cooling.

 

[W1zzard]

Is it me or is that 3.8GHz OC relatively low? Since most Ryzen hit 4.0 up to 4.1GHz.

On the tested CPU, even reaching 3850 stable isn't even happening with 1.45 V, I tried.

 

[Mussels]

seeing <2% loss for 4K gaming, with 50% more cores.... i might just go ryzen for my next build.

Probably wait for mITX boards to hit the market and do some silly ITX build with an 8C/16T setup with my GTX1080 for the tiny lulz

 

[dick_cheney]

seeing <2% loss for 4K gaming, with 50% more cores.... i might just go ryzen for my next build.

Probably wait for mITX boards to hit the market and do some silly ITX build with an 8C/16T setup with my GTX1080 for the tiny lulz

^^This, so far only the biostar board is out and def waiting just a bit longer for the platform to mature so I can build a tiny workstation!