AMD officially launched the Ryzen 5 3500X yesterday. Regrettably, the new six-core chip will not be available outside of the Chinese OEM market. Today, Chinese website Expreview posted its review of the Ryzen 5 3500X, which is probably as close as we'll ever get to it.
If it isn't clear by now, the Ryzen 5 3500X was conceived to go head to head with Intel's Core i5-9400F, which shares the same six-core, six-thread configuration. Logically, Expreview pitched the two processors against each other in its review. The publication also threw the Ryzen 5 3600 into the mix so we can see exactly how much of a performance difference there is between the two Ryzen siblings.
Model | Cores / Threads | Base Clock | Boost Clock | L3 Cache | TDP | PCIe Lanes | Memory Support | MSRP |
AMD Ryzen 5 3600 | 6 / 12 | 3.6 GHz | 4.2 GHz | 32MB | 65W | PCIe 4.0 x 24 | Dual DDR4-3200 | $199 |
AMD Ryzen 5 3500X | 6 / 6 | 3.6 GHz | 4.1 GHz | 32MB | 65W | PCIe 4.0 x 24 | Dual DDR4-3200 | N/A |
Intel Core i5-9400F | 6 / 6 | 2.9 GHz | 4.1 GHz | 9MB | 65W | PCIe 3.0 x 16 | Dual DDR4-2666 | $157 |
The Ryzen system employs MSI's B450M Mortar Titanium motherboard and G.Skill's FlareX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4-3200 memory kit with CL14-14-14-34 timings. The Intel system utilizes the B360M Mortar Titanium and an undisclosed DDR4-2666 memory kit, which is the maximum memory speed that B360 motherboards support. An XFX RX 5700 XT Black Wolf graphics card handles the graphical duties.
Expreview has a pretty detailed review of the Ryzen 5 3500X. We've summarized the benchmarks that we consider are the most representative of real-world performance.
Office, Web Browser, and Productivity
PCMark 10 | Ryzen 5 3600 | Ryzen 5 3500X | Core i5-9400F |
Score | 6,169 | 5,860 | 5,618 |
Essentials | 10,724 | 10,593 | 10,142 |
Productivity | 8,432 | 8,010 | 7,550 |
Digital Content Creation | 7,046 | 6,435 | 6,285 |
Word | 8,665 | 8,524 | 7,916 |
Excel | 16,213 | 14,727 | 13,832 |
PowerPoint | 12,295 | 11,584 | 11,460 |
Edge | 8,635 | 8,512 | 7,638 |
According to the overall PCMark 10 scores, the Ryzen 5 3500X delivers up to 4.3% higher performance than the Core i5-9400F. Despite not having SMT (Simultaneous Multi-Threading), the Ryzen 5 3500X is only 5.3% slower than the Ryzen 5 3600.
Rendering, Encoding, and Compression
Benchmark | Ryzen 5 3600 | Ryzen 5 3500X | Core i5-9400F |
WinRAR | 19,547 | 13,236 | 9,879 |
7-Zip Compression | 45,515 | 36,225 | 29,184 |
7-Zip Decompression | 787,969 | 477,672 | 453,480 |
X264 FHD Benchmark | 50 | 35.47 | 34.9 |
X265 HD Benchmark | 30 | 23.99 | 22.4 |
Corona 1.3 Benchmark | 3,376,990 | 2,148,210 | 2,072,480 |
POV-Ray 3.7.1 Beta 3 Single thread | 448.58 | 445.25 | 425.51 |
POV-Ray 3.7.1 Beta 3 Multi-thread | 3,249.26 | 2,338.25 | 2,391.34 |
Blender 2.80 Single Thread | 192.32 | 196.23 | 201.13 |
Blender 2.80 Multi-thread | 25.52 | 34.69 | 36.03 |
Cinebench R20 Single-core | 485 | 467 | 430 |
Cinebench R20 Multi-core | 3,696 | 2,650 | 2,380 |
In general, the Ryzen 5 3500X is faster than the Core i5-9400F. In certain benchmarks, such as WinRAR or 7-Zip, there's a 34% and 24.1% performance delta, respectively. However, the other benchmarks show that the normal difference is usually between 2% to 11%.
Gaming
Game | Ryzen 5 3600 | Ryzen 5 3500X | Core i5-9400F |
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds | 124.6 | 122.7 | 127.3 |
Overwatch | 187.4 | 188 | 190.2 |
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive | 249.3 | 238 | 238 |
Grand Theft Auto V | 151.2 | 154.4 | 142 |
Shadow of the Tomb Raider | 114 | 110 | 110 |
Total War: Three Kingdoms | 73.6 | 73.3 | 73.3 |
Assassin's Creed Odyssey | 65 | 65 | 59 |
Far Cry 5 | 109 | 108 | 111 |
Metro Exodus | 63.39 | 63.25 | 63.63 |
When it comes to gaming, it's fair to say that the Ryzen 5 3500X performs in the same ballpark of the Core i5-9400F. Some titles favor AMD, while others favor Intel. The Ryzen 5 3500X beat the Core i5-9400F in two of the nine tested games. Both chips tie in three of them. So the scales lean slightly to Intel's side.
Power Consumption
Load | Ryzen 5 3600 | Ryzen 5 3500X | Core i5-9400F |
Idle | 54W | 47.5W | 42W |
AIDA64 Stress FPU | 132W | 124W | 111W |
Although both the Ryzen 5 3500X and Core i5-9400F are rated with a 65W TDP (thermal design power), Expreview's tests show that AMD's chip is seemingly more power hungry. The Ryzen 5 3500X draws up to 13.1% and 11.7% more power than the Core i5-9400F at idle and heavy loads, respectively.
Since the Ryzen 5 3500X is an OEM chip, AMD doesn't list a recommended price for it. However, JD.com, a major Chinese retailer, has the Ryzen 5 3500X listed for 1,099 yuan, which approximately translates to $154. However, Intel recently lowered the Core i5-9400F's recommended pricing from $182 to $157. At any rate, the Core i5-9400F can be found for as low as $139.99.