The Ryzen 5 Review: 1600X and 1500X Take on Core i5

Memory Speed Scaling and Windows 10 Power Modes
AMD has been pushing the use of higher speed memory with the Ryzen 5 reviews in order to compensate for some of the performance impact and deltas seen in the Ryzen 7 reviews. I have already noted the potential conflict in regard to cost, but how does increased memory speed improve an array of our testing applications?
Memory speed improvements are negligible from 2400 MHz to 3200 MHz in Cinebench single thread and multi-thread iterations, Handbrake H.264 encoding, Blender rendering, and one game, Ghost Recon: Wildlands. Geekbench shows reasonable performance increases in both single threaded and multi-threaded results, indicating that some workloads (compression, speech recognition) can still improve with faster fabric/memory.
The gaming results show 12-14% jumps when running at 3200 MHz compared to 2133 MHz. That is clearly a big enough gap to warrant the purchase of 3200 MHz memory and to push the adoption of those higher speeds for general usage. Intel’s architecture doesn’t require higher speed memory and sees very little uptick from the higher speed, higher cost memory.
Windows 10 Power Mode Testing
I did a considerable amount of testing to compare the Balanced and High Performance modes in Windows 10 with Ryzen 5, in this case we are showing results from the 1500X. There were only three data points of interest – WebXPRT (+14%), Cinebench ST (+4.7%) and Rise of the Tomb Raider (+3.6%). In all other instances the difference between the two settings was well within the margin of error and I would view the positive results as the outliers. The WebXPRT result is the MOST interesting to me as it is indicative of an inherent advantage in responsiveness without the core parking concerns of the Windows 10 Balanced profile.
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As excited I was about this the tanking Canadian dollar still makes the slightly older Intel i5's a more affordable option.
AMD just killed all locked Intel chips.
You should be able to get a great deal now in the used market.
Disappointed that the $169 R5 1400 isn't on display here. That is likely the real bargain chip - like the R7 1700.
Yeah - the only useful "new and cheap" Intel chip at this point is the Pentium G4560 at $60.. Intel's $80-110 don't really offer much for the money, and as you approach $150 the Ryzen 5 is a real bargain..
I think the AdoredTV video put it into focus best. You would have to be bat guano crazy to buy a quad core 4 thread CPU. Games are getting pegged at 100% on all 4 cores with nothing left already. While AMD has 8 threads and 12 threads and room for optimization to further improve.
People dont swap CPU's anywhere near as fast as say a GPU card. So if you buy 4 threads with Intel now you're stuck for years with that.
Did you do any CCX testing with the 1500x part?
Is it 2x2c/4t or just 1 module of 4c/8t?
1500X is reportedly 2 CCX with 2c/4t disabled per module.
That is what I heard but if you look at the L3 Cache you see that it is cut in half vs the 6 & 8 core.
This makes me think that there is only 1 chip.
FYI you have the 1500x listed twice in power consumption with 2 different results.
Fixed. Thanks!
no reason to buy these at this price point ... I was waiting to see Ryzen 5 results before I upgraded my existing skylake i3 to i5.
Why would you have done anything other than that given you already have a system set up around Intel? I'm skeptical that was ever seriously on the cards, unless you had unrealistically high expectations.
there's a shitload of missing data on the graphs, pathetic.
also, no mention of the R5 beating the R7 on at least one benchmark by a significant margin.
Please wait. Intel and Nvidia are reviewing his documents and "fixing" any typographical errors.
All AMD with no monopolies!
All AMD with no monopolies!
All AMD with no monopolies!
Some Vulkan/Linux testing also, so no to M$ also!
Dual RX 480s, and RX 580s and Ryzen/AM4 and Linux/Vulkan and no vendor lock-in!
tomb raider DX11 doesn't have the DX12 issues.
since there is no graphical difference, it makes no sense to run DX12 in its current state, i thought you guys were up to date on PC hardware or do you live in a vacuum?
That's a combination of the Blue Flu(I'm too sick to benchmark fully/call us before you review) and the Green Goblin(The Goblin Manual), but really it's the brown envelopes with the prize inside from the BlueGreen meanies.
Oh how it screams!
"NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 8GB" and there has to be some DX12 and RX 580 testing(Vulkan also) with even dual RX 580s/RX 580 testing for that "Ryzen of the tomb raider" sort of benchmarking testing with some ALL AMD syetem builds.
This can be done on RX 480s/RX 480 als, but some all AMD gaming benchmarking Please.
I want to see more dual GPU, AMD and Nvidia(where enabled) testing also.
Look like the 1600x and the 1500x might be worth upgrading to from my 4690K for video editing.
Just wait for that AMD Generic Encapsulated Software Architecture (AGESA) update coming in May and targeting memory overclocking. And really with the 1700 non X version overclocking to around the same level as an 1800X, maybe that Ryzen 5 1600 NON X is the sleeper hit for the Ryzen 5 series Price/Performance leader-board. I'd go for the 1700 and maybe get that golden sample for video encoding and those AMD tweaks and gaming/other software optimizations are incoming! More Benchmarking across all of AMD's Ryzen offerings are in order as the OS, games, gaming engine, video encoding, other optimizations arrive.
AMD and the OS/entire Software market will be tweaking for Ryzen and Zen/Naples, and the lower cost Zen server variants, over the following months.
Be sure to keep score of all the online websites and focus on the tests that any website fails to perform. Because what any website fails to test says much more about that website than any other "Objective" testing claims. Keep Score and let them Know that you are keeping score.
Your benchmark results are not in line with what others get. Also you are benching software that no one else is using on other review sites. Seems you guys are shilling for Intel....I was wise to remove you guys from my list of review sites.
I took time to write a lengthy comment but it was deleted. don't make mention that the DX12 ROTR has performance deltas that don't exist in the DX11 version. this site is funded by dozens of Intel/Nvidia "Patreons"
That "Ryzen of the Tomb Raider" reviewer, I hope he does some Ryzen 5 testing also, with Dual RX 480s, abd the Dual RX 580s for the Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 series SKU.
Ryzen and Radeon or bust, to the websites that we can no longer trust! All this Nvidia ONLY testing needs stop.
Test and retest every month for AMD Zen/Radeon SKUs with each of the new month's optimizations and AGESA update. Full CPU/AM4 UEFI/BIOS version numbers listed along with driver version numbers. FULL data disclosure and No Sloppy Joes. Keep score and let them know that you are keeping score.
Thanks Ryan and Crew for the excellent review, and all of the excellent content every day.
Go Big Blue!
Big Blue is IBM, but there appears to be a Blue Flu in regards to some Full Ryzen testing on many websites and scores need to be tallied. Intel(Nefarious Blue-Blob) has deep pockets, deep pockets! Too sick to test fully(None are buying that) Keep score folks, this is the real time to keep score of every online review website, AMD is competative again but in the past the fix was in, so keep score now more than ever.
"Nicknamed Big Blue, IBM is one of 30 companies included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and one of the world's largest employers, with (as of 2016) nearly 380,000 employees. Known as "IBMers", IBM employees have been awarded five Nobel Prizes, six Turing Awards, ten National Medals of Technology and five National Medals of Science" (1)
(1)
"IBM"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM
Is the civ 5 ai graph correct? You mention "the 1500X outperforms the Core i5-7500 by a noticeable gap." but the 7500 is shown as nearly 10 fps faster then the 7700k which doesn't sound right.
he's probably talking about the graphics test.
Correct, I was. I'll add a reference to the other graph shortly. Thanks for the heads up!
Would love to see how ryzen work with dx12 with amd cards. Seen another video showing nvidia dx12 stuff breaks with ryzen.
i wrote a lengthy comment about this, but it was promptly deleted. please don't ask too hard, it makes them look bad.
#Ryzen-of-the-Tomb-Raider says it all.
Dual RX 480s and maybe dual RX 580s for some Ryzen/Radeon testing please.
DX12/Vulkan and Gaming on Radeon needs more tseting for games/gaming engines.
Are the R5 1400 and 7600k quad channel?
this ryzen platform doesn't support quad channel afaik, however they're probably running quad on Intel, adding that better RAM for ryzen helps... and then using the 2400mhz sticks. this is a joke, thank you for pointing out another flaw.
They should fix their table.
Why didn't use the latest version of handbrake v1.0.7?
Who made these graphs? They're incredibly hard to read and make no sense. Why the random positions for the CPUs and why are both AMD and Intel the same color?
I agree. It is difficult to tell what is going on. Looks like quick review with limited time.
Will ddr5 and ryzen finally compete with consoles. If amd is recommending using higher speed memory to unlock performance shouldn't we just wait for the performance to be revealed.
I dont always laugh but when I do I read PCPER reviews.
Be sure to always keep score of each and every online review, what was omitted says a lot more about things in the end!
Keep Score, Keep Score, and Keep Score of the reviews.
Keep score of what sites re-review and how often the re-reviews correspond with the arrival of essetial AGESA updates and OS/Game/gaming engine optimizations.
Some Ryzen/Radeon testing is needed also.
Nvidia has issues with more than 4 cores under DX12 and that's why people game with DX11 in such cases.
Half of the reviewers know this but the other half doesn't...
If the point of testing games with a GTX 1080 is to prevent GPU bottle-necking and get at the "true" performance of the CPU, then why are you testing games in DX12 where Nvidia drivers are known to be an issue?
You should be testing Ryzen processors in DX11 with Nvidia graphics cards, or test DX12 games with crossfire RX 480s. These DX 12 benchmarks are effectively penalizing Ryzen for bad Nvidia drivers and not highlighting Ryzen's true performance (i.e. you're testing a bottleneck, the thing that you were trying to avoid).
to be fair PcPer isn't completely bad it has some smart people like Brian Moltavano (don't know how to spell it) and a couple of their other guys. it's just people like Ryan Shrout that have no business doing reviews or technical analysis. if you watch a few of their videos, you can see that he struggles with the more advanced subject matter and gets constantly corrected throughout most videos. you can see it in his "i haven't slept in a week" face, he's ashamed to be the face of PcPer.
"Brian" Moltavano? I assume you're talking about their resident Storage specialist.
His name is Allyn Malventano.
Somewhat unusual spelling I suppose, but that helps me remember it.
Yeah, that certainly made me chuckle. I'm used to the last name being butchered, but completely changing the first name is a new one on me :)
I thought it was Byron Malwaretano
OK - I'll go full defense of PCPer. I'm not sure why there's mega trolling here. This review is a very good technical review because:
- Only site with core ping times, giving detail to the architecture
- Memory scaling and Power mode in simple, useful format
- They listened - charts are now higher contrast, easier to see
- Good mix of useful benchmarks (audio, video, games)
- Sale links to all products used is always good
- A Video summary adds a lot to an article like this imo
Could use work:
- Please show 12/16 thread scaling in 7-Zip in future
- How does this compare to the Geekbench estimate from September? :)
- A bit too many synthetics (Cinebench, SiSoft, Geekbench) that i'm not sure actually mean anything
- Where's the $180 i3-7350K and $60 Pentium G4560? :)
I look forward to the commentary on the podcast.
Thanks for the feedback and positive input. :)
tom hardware also layed out the latency incase you didn't notice, just not a graph but a table chart. but imo tom is a bit biased towards intel hardware, testing benchmark at 5ghz but when comes to power consumption, they test it at default clock instead of 5ghz, biased and misleading.
Toms showed OC results but they also included base clock speed as well on their charts. They overclocked both sides as well. Seemed legit to me.
Looks pretty good overall. I'm looking forward to what tweaks they do on Zen+ to iron out some of the downsides. These chips would be unbelievable if they were a monolithic chip.
Good to know that, even with the knowledge that RotR DX12 is an anomaly in that Nvidia has shit DX12 drivers and it tanks the Ryzen CPU performance, PCPer is still trucking along only using Nvidia GPUs in their test bed and are using a benchmark that have been confirmed to be unreliable at best.
Sad really. I expected better.
The NV GPU used is still far faster than any available AMD part. When testing CPUs, ensure the GPU is not the bottleneck (or the least amount possible). Spinning up a different testbed config for a single game is not something we have enough hours in the day for.
It might be interesting to see how many people are running Nvidia cards with their Ryzen processors. You are, to some extent, testing Nvidia's drivers and they are not going to be optimized for AMD processors. I am not saying that it isn't a valid test, since there certainly will be people running Nvidia cards. I would like to see some numbers with lower end cards though, especially with the more mid-range to low end parts to see if those differences actually will be noticeable. With this high end card, the differences, even when extreme are often a difference between something like 80 and 100 fps. While this is noticeable, it isn't really much of an issue. I would expect the gaps to be smaller for lower performance video cards, but without testing, we don't know how much smaller.
Also, if anyone has time and a test setup it would be interesting to run the AotS benchmark before and after the patches with different memory speeds. I am wondering if the performance boost from higher memory clock disappears with code more optimized for Ryzen's cache set-up.
Could you change the your latency chart look something closer to a correlation matrix? I don't know if that's the correct term, but presenting the data in that format would better show how local pings are faster than cross-CCX pings.
I would expect the diagonal to be close to 0, the upper left and bottom right quarters to be fast, and the lower left and upper-right quarters to be slow
You could format it something like this but I expect the data to look like this
I like that style, let me look into it!
@Ryan I have spotted a small typo in the legend of graph 'Ryzen 5 Memory Speed Tesing' on page Memory-Speed-Scaling-and-Windows-10-P.
RedBrown is labeled DDR4-200 (but should probably be DDR4-2400)
Shit...you're correct!
Great processor.
Also, I think that it will be a new word in the performance speed run. Now this build show great possibilities, but it is only a start. Ryzen architecture was developed to prove that you can get high performance for the considerable price. I ordered a research paper help about next microsoft configurations. Results were pretty impressive, but as we can see now, AMD is getting higher and higher in performance, but lowering price of components. In today's market it is the only smart way to make business.
We can't comment anymore without logging in. That really really sucks.
Really, I think it's great so far. :)
Yay no more anonymous AMD-heads
Yes. You're right. It was *only* AMD fans causing problems in the comments. Anonymous Nvidia fans *never ever ever* randomly abused people here.
*sigh*
I was talking about this thread but yeah sigh away
Seriously, truly, from the bottom of my heart, thank you guys for finally making this happen. :)
I love it. It's like we can actually have discussions in the comments now, instead of having to plod through 250 post of abusive fanboy nonsense in the hopes of finding a comment of substance.
It took way too long, but I'm so glad they finally did it that I might start coming back to the site again. (Today is my first visit in months.)
You and the trolls are the only people on that side of the argument :D
What a sh*t show the comments turned into.
Not sure why all the AMD fans feel the need to nitpick every last little bit to find something that invalidates the results. The conspiracy theories run so deep its hilarious. Tests take time, money and effort. The reviewers aren't perfect, they might not be able to do every last test between receiving a sample and embargo lifting... thats a fact of life, not some deep-seated bias.
Bottom line, when I look at PcPer's results for the Ryzen 5 I see the same thing I've seen at every other review site: a compelling product for AMD that doesn't win every test. Finally, you can buy an AMD chip instead of the i5 and not feel like you were "taking one for the team". The fact that it has weaknesses is objective fact, its up to the reader to decide whether or not those weaknesses are an issue for them.
Thank you sir.
For someone with AMD in their username, I appreciate the input.
Ah, don't read too much into that ;) Been a forum member under that nick since 2003 when this place was AMDMB and figured I'd keep it on this side of the fence for the sake of continuity
Well then all we can say there is thank you for sticking around for so long! :)
It's not just "AMD-Heads"...PC v Console, FPS v RPG, Pinky v The World, and so on. Removing the anonymity on technical sites removes zealots w/o perspective...which is smart. The most interesting thing to watch for here isn't how much tweaking AMD does over the next few months...it's how much does Intel respond to and how they respond. Lowering prices will not get them back to a dominating lead they grew complacent with.
I would agree and I would not expect them to lower prices.
To differentiate your review you could do this.
Graph the CPU / GPU usage during your gaming test, along side frame time.
Because nobody test CPU/GPU scaling anymore buyer need to guess if the CPU is good enough for the GPU, (or vice versa) and have no clue how well the CPU will hold up in the future.
For example if you see "i5 get 85FPS, r5 gets 80fps"
You would choose the i5, right ?
But what if the i5 was 100% pegged to get 85fps, but the r5 only 40% ?
What makes me angry is no one is testing the differences with a Radeon card compared to the Nvidia drivers.
It's a known issue, they ran the same benchmarks and game test's on other sites with a Radeon card and showed better improvements on ryzen.
The issue is all your test's are with nvidia cards who have drivers that react shitty with Ryzen.
http://i.imgur.com/OjSIcgM.jpg
https://youtu.be/QBf2lvfKkxA
https://youtu.be/0tfTZjugDeg
Ryan: Thank you for a fair review of the 1600x and 1500x. I have a 5960x with a GTX 1080 and a 6700K with a GTX980TI and just recently built a 1800x with RX480s in CF. I'm using an Asus Crosshair VI mb and Gskill FlareX DDR4-3200 ram so I'm able to get great performance out of the Ryzen. Tomorrow I will begin a 1600x build coupled with a GTX 1050ti.
Where AMD has finally shown it mettle and relevance is producing cpus that legitimately can stand toe to toe with Intel and have a chance. Quite an accomplishment.
You should probably mention that the Ryzens have lower idle power consumption than the Intels in your last graph. That's awesome. And it probably matters more (in probably most cases) than load consumption, thinking solely electricity bill, due to how much time is spent in either state.
Is it just me or did you list out the test bed components?
I have a friend looking to build a Ryzen 7 1700x with a B350 board and it would beneficial to know what DIMM's were used to obtain the 2400 MHz - 3200 MHz speeds. As some DIMM cannot go above 2400 with the current BIOS out there from some vendors.
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