AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Review: Non-X Marks the Spot
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Civilization VI AI, Stockfish Test
Stockfish, an open-source chess engine, is the perennial world leader in computer chess competitions, beating other engines like Google's Deepmind AlphaZero engine. The engine is designed to extract the utmost performance from many-core chips, so it scales well up to 512 cores. As we can see, that equates to a big win over both the Core i5-9400F and the i5-9600K as the engine unleashes the power of Ryzen 5's six extra threads.
Again, you'll notice that the overclocked Ryzen 5 3600 just manages to match the stock 3600X, but it lags behind considerably after tuning the latter.
Civilization VI's AI performance test is highly dependent on per-core performance, and AMD has made impressive steps forward compared to the stock Intel processors in the competing price ranges. However, Intel still holds the overclocking advantage, so it takes the uncontested lead after tuning.
Civilization VI Graphics Test
Intel's -9400F once again finds itself trailing the Ryzen 5 3600, but while the -9400F isn't overclockable, you can enable one-click overclocking with the 3600 and unlock higher frame rates.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III
The Warhammer 40,000 benchmark responds well to threading, so the Ryzen 5 3600 contends with the pricey -9600K, and it even closes in on the overclocked 3600X after tuning.
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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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RodroX Three things to comment,Reply
1. Why aren't any temps readings on the article ?
2. I did some Cinbench testing with stock cooler and only PB enable (no PBO nor AutoOC) and I usually get around 359X to 360X. After changing the stock cooler for a better tower cooler, temps went down, frecuency went up and cinbench results landed at even better 365x to 366x.
This was on Windows 10 (1903) + Avast antivirus and hwinfo running, with AGESA 1003 ABB and the latest AMD chipset drivers on a Gigabyte B450 Gaming X, is funny and strange to see that a very expensive motherboard like the one used is getting such lower results, wonder if the motherboard could be affecting other benchmark results aswell.
Once again, this numbers I wrote are with stock BIOS settings, no PBO nor AutoOC, no manul oc, no vcore offset, nothing (Ive checked, had the 3 PBO options disable on BIOS).
3. Also why not more recent and better optimized games like Shadow Of Tomb Raider or Battlefield V, or anyof the Assassin Creeds ?
Cheers -
Neal4iu am usingReply
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo CPU Cooler w/ 4 Continuous Direct Contact Heatpipewith graphite pad and even on overclock to 4ghz staying at 39C so... is nice -
djbillyd9849 For all the glorious review, I just wish I could get the system to post. I replaced a 3-2200 with the 5-3600, and nothing I knew to do made it post. I found the BIOS upgrade, and ran it, but I haven't tried the thing since. I'm just weird-ed out by it all. Anything I should do differently?Reply
And Oh, BTW, it's sitting on a Gigabyte AORUS B450 Pro WiFi mobo.... -
RodroX djbillyd9849 said:For all the glorious review, I just wish I could get the system to post. I replaced a 3-2200 with the 5-3600, and nothing I knew to do made it post. I found the BIOS upgrade, and ran it, but I haven't tried the thing since. I'm just weird-ed out by it all. Anything I should do differently?
And Oh, BTW, it's sitting on a Gigabyte AORUS B450 Pro WiFi mobo....
You do have a graphic card on your system right ?
The Ryzen 5 3600X does not come with an integrated GPU. Your R3 2200 is an APU = CPU+GPU -
Pnky When upgrading the bios are you leaving the ryzen 2200 in the socket for the bios upgrade? youll need the earlier cpu in socket to upgrade the bios then you should be able to swap out cpus or if youre lucky and that MBO has a usb bios flashback port you can do it through that.Reply -
runephilosof Why do you write "No cheap B-series motherboards with PCIe 4.0", what about for instance a Gigabyte B550M S2H?Reply -
TheMillz Rookies I got my R5 3600 stable @4400, your cooler and board are Key I run a x570 Asus tuf and a Cool Master Master Cool W/ A plane Jane Rtx 2060@ 2025mhz o.c Playng warzone @ 160-170 fpsReply