A short Ryzen 5 3500X video review has surfaced on Chinese video sharing platform Bilibili. The Chinese reviewers benchmarked AMD's six-core, SMT-less chip and compared it to the Intel Core i5-9400F.
The Ryzen 5 3500X and Core i5-9400F are natural rivals. Both processors are equipped with six cores and six threads. AMD obviously has the advantage as the Ryzen 5 3500X chip sports a higher base clock (3.6 GHz vs 2.9 GHz) and more L3 cache (32MB vs 9MB). Nevertheless, the two processors are rated with the same 65W TDP (thermal design power). The Ryzen 5 3500X offers 24 PCIe 4.0 lanes and DDR4-3200 support while Core i5-9400F provides 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes and DDR4-2666 support.
| Model | Cores / Threads | Base Clock | Boost Clock | L3 Cache | TDP | PCIe Lanes | Memory Support | MSRP |
| AMD Ryzen 5 3500X* | 6 / 6 | 3.6 GHz | 4.1 GHz | 32MB | 65W | PCIe 4.0 x 24 | Dual DDR4-3200 | ? |
| Intel Core i5-9400F | 6 / 6 | 2.9 GHz | 4.1 GHz | 9MB | 65W | PCIe 3.0 x 16 | Dual DDR4-2666 | $182 |
*Specifications in the table are unconfirmed
The Bilibili reviewer paired the Ryzen 5 3500X with MSI's B450M Mortar motherboard, a pair of DDR4-3000 memory modules with CL17-19-19-38 timings and an Nvida GeForce GTX 1660 graphics card. The included AMD Wraith Stealth CPU heat sink and fan cooled the Ryzen 5 3500X. Being early benchmarks, it'd be wise to approach the results with caution. Furthermore, we're unable to confirm whether the Intel system has the same accompanying hardware as the AMD system.
The reviewers first put the Ryzen 5 3500X and Core i5-9400K through CPU-Z's internal benchmark. According to the results, the Ryzen 5 3500X delivers up to 5.52% and 8.05% higher single-and multi-thread performance than the Core i5-9400F.
The Master Lu benchmark, which is widely used in Asia, is the next benchmark up to bat. Think of it as the Chinese version of Geekbench. The Master Lu results show that the Ryzen 5 3500X performs up to 4.82% faster than the Core i5-9400F.
The video review also included a few real-world gaming tests at the 1920x1080 resolution. Unfortunately, the reviewers only provided the numbers for the Ryzen 5 3500X so we were unable to directly compare them with the Core i5-9400F. Regardless, Chinese marketing material from JD.com claims that the Ryzen 5 3500X's gaming performance is reportedly right up the alley of the Core i5-9400F.
| Game | Minimum FPS | Average FPS | Maximum FPS |
| PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds | 76 | ~ 80 - 85 | 94 |
| Assassin's Creed: Odyssey | 27 | 65 | 141 |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | 56 | 77 | 84 |
| League of Legends | 175 | ~ 190 - 200 | 222 |
| World War Z | 109 | 126 | 171 |
Chinese retailer JD.com has listed the Ryzen 5 3500X with a 1,099 yuan price tag that translates to approximately $155 on our side of the globe. We have yet so see the Ryzen 5 3500X listed anywhere. However, hardware detective momomo_us has shared an image revealing that the Ryzen 5 3500X is supposed to come out today.
