Early Ryzen 5 7500F Benchmarks Show it Outgaming Intel's i5-13400

AMD's China-exclusive (for now) Ryzen 5 7500F was tested by three Chinese outlets to see how the new mid-range CPU would perform against its more-powerful Ryzen 5 7600/7600X brethren and Intel's Best CPUs. Overall, the chip performed on par with the 7600 series and was able to outperform the i5 13400/13490F in gaming.

The Ryzen 5 7500F is a new mid-range part that features slightly reduced clock speeds compared to the 7600 and lacks integrated graphics. The chip comes with 6 cores, 12 threads, 32MB of L3 cache, a base clock of 3.7GHz, and a turbo frequency of 5 GHz — a 100MHz reduction compared to the Ryzen 5 7600. With a price of $180, the chip is the least expensive AM5 CPU to date, which will make it a good choice for budget builders and gamers alike.

The new CPU has been tested by three review outlets, EXPreview, myDrivers, and Quasar Zone, in a number of benchmarking applications including games and synthetic benchmarks. 

In Cinebench R23, QuarterZone reported that the Ryzen 5 7500F was just 0.7% slower than the Ryzen 5 7600 in the app's multi-core test and 1.08% slower in the single-core test. CPU-Z showed similar results, with the 7500F outputting a score just 0.4% slower than the 7600 in the muti-threaded test and 2.6% slower in the single-threaded test.

Compared to the higher-clocked Ryzen 5 7600X however, the results are slightly more spread out. For instance, in the multi-core Cinebench R23 result, the 7500F was 6.5% slower than the 7600X and 9% slower in the single-core result. 

Surprisingly Intel's closest competitor, the i5-13400, showed virtually identical results to the Ryzen 5 7500F in Cinebench R23, and was just .5% faster and .8% faster in the multi and single-core results respectively, even though the 13400 has four more (E) cores. However, in CPU-Z, the 13400 starts to show its multi-core muscle and pulls a 12% lead ahead of the 7500F in the app's multi-threaded test.

In gaming, all three outlets report noticeably better gaming performance, with the 7500F beating the i5-13400 and 13490F in nearly all games tested. Across a test suite comprised of several popular titles including CS:GO, DOTA 2, GTA V, Horizon Zero: Dawn and Far Cry 6 (to name a few), the 7500F was on average 10-15% faster than the i5-13400 series chips, with performance similar to the i5-13600K.

Compared to the Ryzen 5 7600/7600X specifically, Qusarzone reports that the 7500F was unsurprisingly close to both chips, being within 7% of the 7600X and within 3% of the 7600 in its testing specifically.

Ryzen 5 7500F Is A Killer Deal at $180

Based on these initial reviews of the Ryzen 5 7500F, the chip's performance is impressive for the price, handily beating out Intel's more expensive i5-13400/13400F/13490F CPUs (at MSRP) and featuring virtually identical performance to the Ryzen 5 7600 in gaming situations.

If AMD starts selling the 7500F in the United States and other countries, it could become the dominant choice for budget AM5 buyers but we'll have to wait and see if that pans out.