AMD’s final Zen 3/Zen 2 processors were launched earlier today to counter Intel’s growing influence in the enter-level market. The lower-end Core i3/Core i5 parts offer excellent gaming performance on account of Golden Cove’s hefty IPC upgrade, eclipsing even higher-end Ryzen 5000 offerings at times. The newly released Ryzen 5 5600/5700X are essentially lower-clocked Ryzen 5 5600X/5800X chips with a TDP of 65W while the Ryzen 5 5500 is a recycled Cezanne die with the iGPU disabled. Like the mobile Ryzen 5000 SKUs, the 5500 also features only 16MB of L3 cache making it substantially slower than the 5600X in gaming workloads.
| Price | Die | Cores|Threads | Base/Boost | TDP | L3 Cache | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ryzen 7 5800X3D | $449 | Zen 3 – Vermeer | 8P | 16T | 3.4 / 4.5 | 105W | 96MB |
| Ryzen 7 5700X | $299 | Zen 3 – Vermeer | 8P | 16T | 3.4 / 4.6 | 65W | 32MB |
| Ryzen 5 5600 | $199 | Zen 3 – Vermeer | 6P|12T | 3.5 / 4.4 | 65W | 32MB |
| Ryzen 5 5500 | $159 | Zen 3 – Cezanne | 6P | 12T | 3.6 / 4.2 | 65W | 16MB |
| Ryzen 5 4600G | $154 | Zen 2 – Renoir | 6P | 12T | 3.7 / 4.2 | 65W | 8MB |
| Ryzen 5 4500 | $129 | Zen 2 – Renoir | 6P | 12T | 3.6 / 4.1 | 65W | 8MB |
| Ryzen 3 4100 | $99 | Zen 2 – Renoir | 4P | 8T | 3.8 / 4.0 | 65W | 4MB |
Benchmarks conducted by Tomshardware show the quad-core i3-12100 beating the Ryzen 5 5500 by over 5% in 1080p gaming workloads, much like the 5600G. Suffice to say, the 5500 is another 5600G with the iGPU disabled. The price tag of $159 makes it look less favorable as the Core i3-12100/F which is mostly faster in gaming is priced at just $99.
| SKU | Relative Performance |
|---|---|
| Core i5-12400 | 100% |
| Ryzen 5 5600X | 98.71% |
| Ryzen 5 5600 | 98.1% |
| Core i3-12100 | 88.4% |
| Ryzen 5 5600G | 84.5% |
| Ryzen 5 5500 | 83.2% |
The Ryzen 5 5600, on the other hand, is a much better gaming CPU. It performs identically to the 5600X in most games while costing $100 less. However, it’s worth noting that the latter has already fallen to $209-229 across most retailers which makes it highly likely that the 5600 will drop below $199 as well.
Heavily threaded workloads like rendering make the Ryzen 5 5500 look better than the Core i3-12100, albeit not by much. The former is roughly 20% faster and costs an additional $59.
