AMD Ryzen 5 7600X vs Ryzen 5 5600X
AMD Ryzen 5 7600X vs Ryzen 5 5600X. Which is the better CPU for gaming?
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Ryzen 5 7600X vs Ryzen 5 5600X, which is better? AMD released its Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 series CPUs in September 2022. One of those CPUs is the Ryzen 5 7600X, A CPU that promises to take the budget CPU category by storm.
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Ryzen 7000 series is available right now. Buy the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X now!
The upgrade to Zen 4 isn’t going to be cheap, as users are forced to dig deep into their pockets to purchase a new AM5 motherboard and compatible DDR5 memory to run the 7600X. However, this expense is alleviated somewhat by the 7600X’s budget nature.
The 5600X is a nice starting point for the 7000 series processors, but don’t let that fool you, it’s still an insanely powerful CPU compared to the 5000 series AMD released a couple of years ago.
AMD Ryzen 5 7600X
AMD Ryzen 5 7600X
Cores
6
Threads
12
Base speed
4.7GHz
Boost speed
5.3GHz
Cache
L3 32MB
Socket
AM5
So, is upgrading to the Ryzen 5 7600X worth it? Or are you best off sticking with the old but gold 5600X? Let’s find out.
We’re going to examine each CPU and compare them based on the information we already have about the Zen 4 CPUs.
The review embargo for Zen 4 CPUs is set as the 26th of September 2022, as confirmed by AMD, which suggests that we’ll be getting our review samples of the Ryzen 7000 series very soon.
AMD as a whole has fallen behind intel this generation. Not only does AMD have the more expensive CPUs, garnering worse value for money, but it also didn’t manage to hold its multi-core performance crown. The 13900K beat the 7950X in multi-core workloads, all thanks to its 8 extra cores. Here’s all the information you’ll need on the battle of AMD vs Intel.
Latest Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 series news
AMD recently announced some performance metrics and the confirmed price of all Zen 4 CPUs. AMD hosted an event on the 29th of August detailing the Ryzen 7000 series lineup.
With only rumors to go off the last eight months, it feels great to get some official confirmation from AMD and CEO Dr. Lisa Su herself.
Zen 4 performance:
Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 series CPUs were unveiled scoring huge points and ultra-fast frame rates, in both synthetic and real-world benchmarks. We have a whole article covering the performance of the new Ryzen 7000 series CPUs in detail here: AMD unveils Ryzen 7000 series specs, price, and more.
The event focused primarily on the Ryzen 9 7950X and its huge lead over the competition’s i9-12900K. But snippets of the other three processors were sprinkled into the mix.
Not only is the Ryzen 9 7950X up to 62% faster than the 12900K, but it also delivers all this performance at much better power efficiency. The 7950X has been rated as 47% more power efficient than the Core i9-12900K. packing some serious performance into a relatively lowe TDP for this level of performance.
Geekbench scores:
Performance: Geekbench 5.4 single-thread performance vs 12900k
- 12900K ~ 2040 points
- 7600X ~ 2175 points
- 7700X ~ 2225 points
- 7900X ~ 2250 points
- 7950X ~ 2275 points
Not only that but projected IPC improvements appear to be higher than even AMD predicted.
AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su explained during the event that, IPC increases are up to 13% over Zen 3 CPUs. The original prediction is that Zen 4 would have IPC increases of around 10%. This 3% jump is huge at core frequencies approaching 6GHz.
Ryzen 7000 series Price:
Price: The price of each Zen 4 CPU is as follows:
- Ryzen 9 7950X – $699
- Ryzen 9 7900X – $549
- Ryzen 7 7700X – $399
- Ryzen 5 7600X – $299
Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 release date confirmed
Release date: The release date for the Rzyen 7000 series stands on September 27th, 2022.
There are much more details to be had on the page we created covering the event.
Ryzen 5 7600X vs Ryzen 5 5600X: Specifications
When comparing any two PC components, it’s important to analyze the specifications of each and look at them comparatively. This will give us a great insight into how the two CPUs will perform in relation to one another.
Ryzen 5 7600X
The Ryzen 5 7600X is designed to be the best of the budget CPU category, proving once and for all that you can have plenty of computing power on a lower budget. The 7600X may very well turn out to be the best budget CPU of this generation.
The specifications of the Ryzen 5 7600X are as follows:
- Cores: 6
- Threads: 12
- Base clock frequency: 4.7 GHz
- Boost clock frequency: 5.3 GHz
- L3 cache: 38MB
- TDP: 105W
- iGPU: RDNA 2
Ryzen 5 5600X
The Ryzen 5 5600X has been a favorite among low-budget gamers for the last two years, it’s exceptional performance at a very low price point makes for an incredibly popular CPU. We can see why this CPU is a fan favorite.
The specifications of the Ryzen 5 5600X are as follows:
- Cores: 6
- Threads: 12
- Base clock frequency: 3.7 GHz
- Boost clock frequency: 4.6 GHz
- L3 cache: 32MB
- TDP: 65W
- iGPU: N/A
Ryzen 5 7600X real-world gaming benchmarks
Here, we tested the 7600X in five popular games and pitted it against the 5600X.
The settings of each game were all 1080p LOW settings, apart from CS:GO which we left on high because it doesn’t need any help running well.
The reason we test in lower resolutions, like 1080P, is to eliminate any potential GPU bottleneck, we’d eventually run into a wall of GPU limitation if we tested games at 4k.
Ryzen 5 7600X gaming benchmark results
As you can see, the Ryzen 5 7600X does exceptionally well and manages to squeeze more FPS out of the game in every scenario.
We can see that in Battlefield V the 7600X managed 190 FPS on average, whilst the 5600X only achieved 175 FPS. That’s a performance improvement of 8% for the Ryzen 5 7600X.
The 7600X stayed ahead in Cyberpunk 2077, amassing 170 FPS, and the 5600X only managed 147 FPS on average, that’s a performance improvement of 14% for the Ryzen 5 7600X.
Elden Ring told us a similar story, the Ryzen 5 7600X scored 157 FPS on average whilst the 5600X gave us 143 FPS. These results show a performance improvement of around 9% for the 7600X.
CS:GO gave us the best FPS averages we’ve seen today, showing the Ryzen 5 7600X pulling a massive 378 FPS on average, and the 5600X falling just shy of the 7600X with an average FPS of 352. That’s a performance improvement of around 7%.
GTA V was a bit of an anomaly, as the 7600X brought in 187 FPS, however, the Ryzen 5 5600X managed an average FPS of 186 FPS. We must have seen our limit in GTA v. Either it’s limited graphically or it’s not as CPU intensive as we once thought.
Both CPUs managed to feed the RTX 3080 at 1080p low. This test was repeated several times, yielding the same results every single time.
7600X vs 5600X: Specification comparison
Here we will compare the specifications of both the Ryzen 5 7600X and the Ryzen 5 5600X, to see how they both stack against each other on paper. This should help you make an informed decision when comparing any two types of PC components in the future.
Core and thread count
Both the 7600X and the 5600X have the same number of cores and threads.
Core count
A CPUs core count is important, the more processing cores a CPU has, the better at multitasking it will natively be. There are a few factors that affect a CPUs ability to multitask, like core speed, boost speed, and cache. But the core count is the metric that has the most effect.
CPUs with higher core counts are able to handle more CPU instructions simultaneously and avoid a system-crippling build-up of pending CPU instructions.
Thread Count
Threads are similar to cores, but not exactly the same. Threads are the names given to the second simultaneous instruction processed by the CPU core. When a CPU is multi-threaded, each CPU is given the ability to process two instructions at the same time per CPU core as opposed to one. This is called “Hyperthreading” in Intel CPUs.
CPUs with more cores will have more threads as long as each core is multi-threaded, and be better at multitasking as a result. Cores and threads build towards better multi-core performance, where metrics like clock speeds attribute to single-core performance.
Clock speed
The Ryzen 5 7600X has a faster core and boosted speed.
A CPU’s clock speed is a measure of how many times a CPU can perform a “cycle” every second under standard operating conditions.
A Cycle consists of three main actions, fetch, decode, and execute. These are the actions that make up fundamental computing within a CPU as we know it.
The faster the clock speed the more instructions per second can be executed, making for a faster CPU. Core speed lends its hand to better single-core performance.
Cache
The Ryen 5 7600X has a larger cache capacity than the 5600X. Also, the 7600X has double the L2 cache per core, up to 1MB from 512KB.
A CPU cache is storage hardware built into a CPU, located magnitudes closer to the processing cores than standard system memory for speed and accessibility. The closer a cache is constructed to a CPU core the faster it can process and store the data on it.
The most important CPU instructions are stored in the higher levels of cache (L1, L2). The cache is comprised of three levels and is structured as such.
- L1
- L2
- L3
Level one cache is built physically closest to the CPU cores, and has the fastest access speeds but also the smallest cache capacity.
This is reserved for vital data like important operating system instructions.
Level two cache is a middle ground between L1 and L3, with median capacity and speed.
Level three cache is where most of your frequently accessed data is stored. L3 cache has a very large capacity in comparison to the other levels but is also much slower.
Usually, processors with higher core counts have much larger cache capacities to support the bigger number of processing cores.
For Example, AMD has upped the cache per core to 1MB in the Ryzen 7000 series. Meaning instruction buffers are much larger this time around.
TDP
The Ryzen 5 5600X has a lower TDP than the 7600X.
TDP stands for Thermal Design Power and is the maximum amount of thermal energy an electrical component can output under normal operating conditions. All electrical components have a TDP of some sort.
Generally, A CPU with a lower TDP is better as it’s more power efficient, right? Well, not exactly, sometimes the CPU with a higher TDP is just more powerful.
That’s the case here, the 7600X is clearly more powerful than the 5600X as evident by the much higher clock speeds and cache capacity. We can justify the hike in TDP when the 7600X is packing this much performance under the IHS.
Socket
The CPUs on the list today belong to different CPU sockets, the Ryzen 5 7600X belongs to socket AM5, and the Ryzen 5 5600X belongs to socket AM4.
CPU and motherboard socket compatibility is not unlike puzzle pieces, only CPUs with corresponding motherboard sockets are compatible with each other. That means Ryzen 7000 CPUs are not compatible with the AM4 socket motherboards. But why is this?
This incompatibility is thanks to AMD moving to the LGA socket architecture from the PGA configuration it’s used for the last few years.
It’s important to consider the upgrades you’ll need to make to ensure compatibility with the Zen 4 CPU line-up. As you’ll have to replace your motherboard and memory to install the 7600X.
Upgrading to Zen 4 is definitely not for those on a tight budget.
And remember, Zen 4 is NOT compatible with AM4. only AM5.
iGPU
The Ryzen 5 7600X comes equipped with an iGPU, whereas, the 5600X does not. (unless it’s the 5600G model)
All of the Ryzen 7000 series CPUs come equipped with an RDNA 2-based iGPU. This mainly helps keep the cost of building a whole new system down by removing the need to buy a GPU for the system to give a display output. Or you could just forget the GPU altogether.
We don’t know exactly how well the RDNA 2-based iGPUs will run just yet, but if the 5000 series APUs are anything to go off, we’re going to be impressed.
Where to buy the Ryzen 5 7600X
So, where exactly do you buy a Ryzen 5 7600X? We’ve outlined a few retailers that will stock the 7600X upon its release.
Ryzen 5 7600X Pre order
Here are the places you can buy a 7600X.
US links
UK links
Canada links
Conclusion
We have to give the 7600X a win over the 5600X. Its superior cache, faster base frequencies, and massive boost speeds place it miles ahead of the 5600X. This is a budget CPU but sadly the cost of upgrading your system negates the benefits the 7600X brings with its lower price.
The fact that it’s an APU at heart does help the cost situation, but if we’re talking in terms of raw power to performance, then the 7600X is certainly a winner over the 5600X.
Is the Ryzen 7 7600X worth the projected 35% performance improvement?
