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AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D Productivity Benchmarks — The TLDR
The first slides are simplified without the overclocking configs, while the remainder of the slides in the album covers the full roster of tested configurations. We boil productivity application performance down into two broad categories: single- and multi-threaded. These slides show the geometric mean of performance in several of our most important tests in each category, but be sure to look at the individual benchmark results below.
The Ryzen 5 5600X3D’s 3D V-Cache tech provides a major performance uplift in games, but the resulting lower boost clock speeds hamstring performance in productivity applications. The 5600X3D's older Zen 3 microarchitecture and six CPU cores also factor in to make it a less-than-stellar performer in productivity applications.
The Intel Core i5-13400 is 35% faster in threaded applications and 26% faster in single-threaded work than the 5600X3D, highlighting that it’s the far better choice if you’re looking for an all-rounder in this price range.
The Ryzen 5 5600X3D does manage to tie the Ryzen 5 5600X in our threaded benchmarks, and that is a result of its higher 105W TDP rating. As you can see in our power testing on the following page, at times, the Ryzen 5 5600X3D will draw more power than the 65W Ryzen 5 5600X in threaded applications. That’s because the 5600X has a lower TDP limit. In contrast, the 105W Ryzen 5 5600X3D regularly peaked at 85W, which allows it to maintain comparable (or even higher) all-core clock speeds when under heavy load. This does help in threaded applications — just not much.
The higher TDP doesn’t help in lightly threaded work, though, as the 5600X3D’s lower single-core boost frequency significantly hampers performance in single-threaded work, giving the 5600X a 9% lead. Even the $129 Ryzen 5 5600 is 3% faster than the 5600X3D in single-threaded work and 2% faster in threaded work, highlighting the disparity we see between the 5600X3D’s gaming performance and its performance in desktop PC productivity applications.
You’ll need to carefully assess your common usage and workloads if you’re upgrading to a 5600X3D, and plan accordingly. While you gain tremendously in gaming performance, you will lose quite a bit of performance in applications. If you’re upgrading an existing AM4 system and looking for a more balanced performer, you should give the eight-core Ryzen 7 5700X a close look. This chip is great a value at its current retail pricing.
The Ryzen 5 5600X3D clearly isn't designed to deliver robust performance in applications outside of gaming, so the below results are fairly predictable. As such, we'll limit our commentary throughout the application benchmarks, though we will call out a few areas of interest.
Rendering Benchmarks on AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D
The Ryzen 5 5600X is five percent faster than the 5600X3D in the multi-threaded Cinebench benchmark, and the chip continues to lag the field by substantial amounts throughout the full spate of both single- and multi-threaded benchmarks. The Ryzen 5 5600X3D clearly isn't the best option for rendering workloads, but that's the sacrifice you'll make to access the class-leading gaming performance.
Encoding Benchmarks on AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D
Most encoders tend to be either heavily threaded or almost exclusively single-threaded — it takes an agile chip to master both disciplines. Handbrake, SVT-HEVC, and SVT-AV1 serve as our threaded encoders, while LAME, FLAC, and WebP are indicative of how the chips handle lightly-threaded engines.
The Ryzen 5 5600X3D is actually faster than the Ryzen 5 5600X in the x264 HandBrake test, and our power logging indicates that the chip ran at a higher power draw, and thus higher all-core frequency, during this benchmark. That didn't hold true throughout the rest of the tests as the 5600X3D continued to lag the rest of the field.
Adobe, Web Browsing, Office, and Productivity on AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D
Compilation, Compression, AI Chess Engines, AVX-512 on AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D
Aside from the compression/decompression tests, most of these benchmarks aren't as important for this class of processors, but we include them for the sake of completeness. These benchmarks run the gamut from the exceedingly branchy code in the LLVM compilation workload to the massively parallel molecular dynamics simulation code in NAMD to encryption and compression/decompression performance.
The demanding Y-cruncher benchmark computes Pi with the AVX instruction set and has optimizations for both Intel and AMD’s architectures. The Ryzen 5 5600X3D once more ekes out a slight win over the 5600X due to its higher TDP, which in turn allows it to sustain slightly higher all-core clocks in some situations. Those cases are rare, though, as the 5600X3D largely trails the rest of the pool in these benchmarks.
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