AMD recently expanded its Ryzen 5000 (Vermeer) family with seven new Ryzen chips. The Ryzen 5 5500, which is part of the latest additions, poses to become one of the best CPUs for gaming if some leaked benchmarks are any indication.
Hardware sleuth Benchleaks recently unearthed a Ryzen 5 5500 submission in Geekbench 5 that gives us a small taste of the Ryzen chip's single-threaded and multi-thread performance. The submitter tested the Ryzen 5 5500 on the MSI MEG X570 Godlike, the exact motherboard we used for our testbed. However, we used different memory for our reviews so that the actual margins may vary.
Processor | Single-Core Score | Multi-Core Score |
---|---|---|
Core i5-12400 | 1,758 | 8,941 |
Ryzen 5 5600X | 1,649 | 8,335 |
Ryzen 5 5600G | 1,532 | 7,725 |
Ryzen 5 5500 (Geekbench submission) | 1,468 | 7,629 |
The Ryzen 5 5600G delivered 4.4% higher single-threaded performance than the Ryzen 5 5500. However, for multi-threaded performance, the Ryzen 5 5600G was only 1.3% faster than the Ryzen 5 5500.
We observed a 12.3% higher single-threaded performance on the Ryzen 5 5600X compared to the Ryzen 5 5500. The multi-threaded margin was around 9.3%.
The Core i5-12400 is faster than the Ryzen 5 5600X, so it makes perfect sense that the Ryzen 5 5500 isn't a match for the hexa-core Alder Lake chip. In addition, the Core i5-12400 offered 20% and 17.2% better single-and multi-threaded performance, respectively, than the Ryzen 5 5500.
AMD prices the Ryzen 5 5600 at $199 and the Ryzen 5 5500 at $159. With the recent price cuts, the Ryzen 5 5600X presently retails for $224.99. It'll take more than a single Geekbench result to determine whether the Ryzen 5 5500 is the new budget processor for consumers. Let's not forget that Intel also has the Core i5-12400F, which costs $179.99, so there is much competition in this price range.
Wielding AMD's renowned Zen 3 cores, the Ryzen 5 5500 checks in with a six-core, 12-thread configuration. It's a recipe that has worked for the chipmaker, so it makes little sense to change it now. The core configuration is similar to AMD's design on the Ryzen 5 5600X and Ryzen 5 5600. However, there are some very substantial differences between the trio of Ryzen 5 SKUs.
The Ryzen 5 5500 only has 16MB of L3 cache, whereas the Ryzen 5 5600X and Ryzen 5 5600 boast a 32MB L3 cache. Therefore, It's safe to assume that the Ryzen 5 5500 utilizes a monolithic die, like the Ryzen 5 5600G APU. The silicon for the Ryzen 5 5500 could be defective dies that don't qualify for the Ryzen 5 5600G or dies where AMD has disabled the iGPU.
Although AMD's Ryzen 5 parts have a 65W TDP, the clock speeds vary from one model to the next. The Ryzen 5 5500 has a 3.6 GHz base clock and 4.2 GHz boost clock. That's a 100 MHz lower base clock and 400 MHz lower boost clock compared to the Ryzen 5 5600X. Comparing the Ryzen 5 5500 to the Ryzen 5 5600G, we're looking at a 300 MHz and 200 MHz lower base and boost clock speeds.