AMD Ryzen 5 5600G Review: The Value iGPU Gaming King

Ryzen 5 5600G Overclocking and Thermals

The Ryzen 5 5600G will compete with budget processors paired with low-end discrete GPUs, like the Core i3-10100 paired with an Nvidia GT 1030 GPU, so we've added that setup to our line of test systems. 

When it comes to overclocking, the Ryzen 5 5600G is shockingly similar to the Ryzen 7 5700G. That's a good thing. The integrated RX Vega graphics engine proved to be an easy overclocker, jumping up to 2.3 GHz (a 400 MHz improvement over stock settings) with the SoC dialed in at 1.35V (this power domain feeds both the iGPU and SoC). Higher settings introduced artifacting, though, and we didn't attempt to add in too much additional voltage to the graphics due to our memory and core overclocks. Notably, this is only 100 MHz less iGPU frequency than we achieved with the 5700G, and that was the only difference in overclocks between the two chips.  

APUs are one of the trickiest types of chips to overclock, at least in terms of balancing the different units. Because gaming performance scales far better with iGPU and memory throughput than core clocks, we toggled AMD's auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) for the CPU cores. PBO alleviated the lion's share of our difficulties balancing the CPU, iGPU and memory clocks, but further tuning might have yielded a better all-core overclock. The silicon lottery always comes into play, so your mileage might vary. 

We've heard that good Cezanne chips support a fabric clock (FCLK) up to 2400 MHz, but again, it's a balancing act. We settled for a 2000 MHz FCLK and dialed in an easy DDR4-4000 with a 1:1 FCLK/memory ratio. This 'coupled mode' is the sweet spot for memory latency on AMD's Zen 2 and 3 platforms, but dialing in a higher FCLK can unlock higher coupled frequencies. We're aiming to represent a basic overclock, and a DDR4-4000 kit is already very pricey for a build with an APU, so we stopped there. You should shoot for a DDR4-3200 kit with this type of chip, provided you can nab one at a decent price.

We recorded a maximum of 73C and an average of 65C during an extended period of multi-threaded stress tests while a simultaneous instance of Furmark hammered the overclocked iGPU. However, this is with the Corsair H115i's fans cranking away at full speed. Most enthusiasts won't have such a powerful cooling solution for this class of chip, so you'll have to adjust your expectations accordingly. It should go without saying that you shouldn't expect to pull off such vigorous overclocks with the bundled cooler. As always, you should view our overclocking results as an exhibition. 

We didn't have to adjust the VDDP voltage to ensure stability, but otherwise, our overclocking efforts were very similar to what we've achieved with the Ryzen 7 4750G in the past, highlighting the similarities between the two SoCs. 

AMD says the Ryzen 5 5600G slots in as what we would traditionally think of as a non-X CPU. Additionally, some enthusiasts will seek out the chip to game with the iGPU until they can find a discrete GPU after the shortage recedes. As such, we also paired the chip with the Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3090 Eagle we use for our standard gaming suite to see how the chip would fare with a discrete GPU. One note about using a dedicated GPU with the 5600G is that, unlike the earlier AMD APUs that limited add-in boards to an x8 PCIe link, you get the full x16 link with Cezanne. We also ran our standard application test suite, so there are plenty of results to analyze. 

AMD Ryzen 5 5600G Power Consumption and Efficiency 

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It's no secret that Intel has dialed up the power to compete with AMD's surprisingly efficient chips. As such, there are no real surprises here — Intel chips draw more power across the board.

AMD's Zen 3 models are the most power-efficient desktop PC chips we've ever tested, and the Ryzen 7 5000G series brings that same level of efficiency to the APU lineup, though the 5700G turned out to be the most power-efficient even though it consumed more power than the 5600G. In either case, the Ryzen 7 5600G is a miserly chip, sucking very little power for a superb power-to-performance ratio that easily beats any Intel chip. 

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Here we take a slightly different look at power consumption by calculating the cumulative amount of energy required to perform Blender and x265 HandBrake workloads, respectively. We plot this 'task energy' value in Kilojoules on the left side of the chart. 

These workloads are comprised of a fixed amount of work, so we can plot the task energy against the time required to finish the job (bottom axis), thus generating a really useful power chart. 

Bear in mind that faster compute times, and lower task energy requirements, are ideal. That means processors that fall the closest to the bottom left corner of the chart are best. 

Ryzen 5 5600G Test Setup

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