AMD Ryzen 5 1600 CPU Review

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By Paul Alcorn
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Application Benchmarks

Microsoft Excel 2016 - Word, Excel & PowerPoint

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Benchmarking Microsoft Office isn't particularly exciting, but it is representative of software many of us use on a daily basis. The Ryzen processors gain a bit of steam during the PowerPoint workload, but Intel's processors enjoy a lead through most of the tests.

Notably, the overclocked Ryzen 5 1600 and 1600X offer almost identical performance. In either case, aside from the tuned Core i5-7600K, the difference between the various processors is relatively small.

Adobe Creative Cloud

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The same trends emerge throughout the Adobe suite, as Intel's Core i5-7600K largely enjoys a lead due to its per-clock performance advantage.

AMD's overclocked Ryzen 1600X and 1600 achieve a higher cumulative score than the Core i5-7500, and the -7400 falls to the bottom of the chart.  

Rendering

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The six-core Ryzen processors shine during heavily-threaded workloads. Ryzen 5 1600X and 1600 establish convincing leads through our suite of rendering tests, while the overclocked Core i5-7600K jostles for position with Ryzen 5 1500X during a few benchmarks.

The Core i5-7600K, in both stock and overclocked configurations, enjoys a healthy lead in the single-core rendering tests. The tweaked Ryzen CPUs trade blows with the Core i5-7500 in those same metrics, and beat the -7400 during the single-core POV-Ray and Cinebench tests.

Web Browser

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During the Kraken Javascript benchmark, Intel's Core i5-7600K leads in its stock and overclocked configurations. But the overclocked Ryzen processors make short work of Intel's multiplier-locked models. Ryzen 5 1500X can't quite keep up with Core i5-7500 during the MotionMark browser benchmark, but the overclocked Ryzen 5 1600 and 1600X both provide a benefit over the locked -7500 and -7400.

SiSoftware's cryptographic test measures performance for both AES-256 and SHA algorithms. Aside from the overclocked Core i5-7600K, Ryzen's hardware AES units provide a tangible performance benefit over the Intel processors in both single-core and multi-core encryption/decryption tasks. The processors also provide faster SHA2-256 AVX hashing performance.

Encoding & Compression

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The overclocked Core i5-7600K enjoys a substantial lead in the LAME workload, but the tuned Ryzen 5 1600X and 1600 also provide competitive performance. AMD's six-core Ryzen processors leverage their thread count advantage to great effect during the compression workload. A similar trend emerges during the HandBrake benchmark.


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Paul Alcorn
Paul Alcorn
Managing Editor: News and Emerging Tech

Paul Alcorn is the Managing Editor: News and Emerging Tech for Tom's Hardware US. He also writes news and reviews on CPUs, storage, and enterprise hardware.

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94 Comments Comment from the forums
  • AgentLozen
    I've been reading the reviews for the various Ryzen models including this one. I just have to say that it's soooo refreshing seeing AMD go toe to toe with Intel once again. We haven't seen a close race in years.
    Reply
  • DavidDisciple
    10-4. I was soooooo sick of hearing Intel fanboys brag and belittle AMD and now the tide has turned. It's great to see AMD providing some serious competition and a brand new architecture. It's also great to see an AMD 1st generation processor beat a 7th generation Intel processor.
    Reply
  • barryv88
    Finally! Took you guys very long to bring out this article - in what is described by many, the little champ of the Ryzen launch so far. The 1600.
    Can't wait to get mine!
    Reply
  • elbert
    Great review but the big gun was a no show. The 1600's stock cooler and can it do 3.7~3.8Ghz. How does that effect the game price effenciency if we add in cooler costs? How does streaming or just recording the game play for later upload effect performance? How about an older game like CSGO while recording? Can we have a part 2 to this review with these and other tests?
    Reply
  • barryv88
    19749170 said:
    Great review but the big gun was a no show. The 1600's stock cooler and can it do 3.7~3.8Ghz. How does that effect the game price effenciency if we add in cooler costs? How does streaming or just recording the game play for later upload effect performance? How about an older game like CSGO while recording? Can we have a part 2 to this review with these and other tests?

    You can check out Bitwit's vid on streaming/recording performance where Ryzen wins rather dramatically. The 7700 is really humbled, given that its 4 extra theads over the i5's don't help either.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXeenX0FZAY
    Reply
  • ZRace
    @Elbert: When streaming, more use is usually being made of having more cores/threads available, so I'd guess the Ryzen CPUs yield better game streaming results compared to pure gaming results when comparing the to the current i5's.
    Reply
  • darth_adversor
    I'm not an Intel fanboy by any means (I think it's fantastic that AMD is going head-to-head with Intel again), but for gaming, minimum frame-rate data is so much more important than average. The article does make a mention of that toward the end, but I don't think it was emphasized nearly as much as it should have been. I really want AMD to succeed (I was AMD all the way throughout the socket 754, 939, AM2/3 days), but if you look past the author's positive spin, I think the Core i5's are really the way to go for gaming.

    Hopefully that will change as the platform matures and the software catches up. I'm still sitting on a 2500k, probably gonna hold out for one more generation before I upgrade. I'd love to go back to AMD.
    Reply
  • DavidDisciple
    Yeah, and things just keep getting better for Ryzen with all the game optimizations and updates for memory compatibility and manufacturers like ROG are adding them in their performance gaming systems. Things are looking pretty good for Ryzen.
    Reply
  • JocPro
    Hey, Paul: AMD has never said that non X processors lack XFR, they just have a more limited extra boost of 50-100 MHz instead of the 100-200 MHz in the X models...
    Reply
  • PaulAlcorn
    19749289 said:
    Hey, Paul: AMD has never said that non X processors lack XFR, they just have a more limited extra boost of 50-100 MHz instead of the 100-200 MHz in the X models...


    I have marketing materials (reviewers guides, press releases, slides from briefings, etc.) that say, specifically and repetitively, that XFR is only on X SKUs.
    Reply