AMD launched its non-X Ryzen 5000 processors quite late in the cycle. Many will say this was a late response to Alder Lake's budget offerings, and it probably was. Regardless, the Ryzen 5 5600, with its $199 (now $150) price, is a solid option for gamers with 60Hz displays. It's essentially a 5600X with clocks of slightly diminished boost and a TDP of 65W, and as such, gaming performance is largely identical. Let's go.
Test bench
- Motherboard: ASUS B550-F Gaming
- GPU: NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti OC
- Memory: DDR4-3600 CL16
- Games were tested at 1080p High/Very High.
AMD Ryzen 5 5600 1080p gaming benchmarks
Starting testing with Far Cry 6, we can see that the Ryzen 5 5600 and 5600X are within a few percent of each other. Intel's Core i5-12400 is 5-6% faster than both, while costing about the same, although a costly platform upgrade may work against that.
Hitman 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 produce identical results, with the Core i5-12400 narrowly leading, but at around the same price.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider favors the Core i5-12400 more than usual, since its lead over the Ryzen 5 5600 increases to 10%. This is offset by their performance in F1 2022, where all three SKUs are almost identical. Interestingly, the 5600X has the best lows, followed by the 12400 and 5600.
Overall, the Ryzen 5 5600 is a solid upgrade for someone using an older AM4 CPU and a limited budget. Of course, we recommend going with the 5800X3D as it is significantly faster and does not require fast memory. Regardless, the 5600 is a decent option for Ryzen 3000 users in the sub-$200 market.