AMD Ryzen 5 5600X & Ryzen 9 5900X Review
Peter Donnell / 4 years ago
How Much Does it Cost?
The new AMD Ryzen 5, Ryzen 7 and the Ryzen 9 CPUs all launch today. There are four versions available and as you can see, the Ryzen 5 5600X is the base model, albeit a base model that delivered some pretty killer performance. The 5900X we’ve tested may be setting new records, but it’s not actually the top model, with the more expensive 5950X leading the pack Looking at the i-10900K, which is still about £45 more than the 5900X, I think AMD has Intel well and truly whipped this time around.
- AMD Ryzen 9 5950X – £749.99
- AMD Ryzen 9 5900X – £509.99
- AMD Ryzen 7 5800X – £419.99
- AMD Ryzen 5 5600X – £279.99
Overview
There’s no shortage of truly amazing CPUs right now, and both Intel and AMD have some very competitive options. However, they’ve never been so closely matched than they are right now. If you’re after a solid all-round gaming CPU that still has enough grunt for a bit of rendering and editing, then you’re going to love the Ryzen 5 5600X.
At just £279.99, it’s very competitively priced, offering similar multi-core performance to the more expensive 3700X and 3800X, while offering a massive uplift in single-core performance!
More Cores!
The 5600X is impressive, no doubt about it. However, it’s safe to say the one we really want to talk about is the 5900X. This thing set a lot of new high scores on our benchmarks today and proved that AMD are firmly back into the land of the enthusiast gamer. Massive performance improvements to the single core performance put it quite a lot ahead of anything else we’ve tested from AMD or Intel. That translated to multi-core too, which big performance improvements in rendering times, memory performance, and gaming.
What’s more, AMD is taking on the more expensive solutions from Intel with ease here. Intel got away with their premium price because they were faster in gaming, and that’s just not true anymore. Of course, we expect Intel will counter with new CPUs and the battle will rage on, but right now, AMD has fully closed that advantage.
Should I Buy One?
AMD really is on a winning streak right now and there’s never been a better time to get onboard. There’s a fantastic range of motherboards out there, PCIe Gen4 has really developed well, and AM4 ultra-fast memory support has matured too. If you’re looking to build a Ryzen based gaming PC, the 5600X or the 5900X would be smart choices.
