According to a report by Ancient Replays on YouTube, Romanian retailer Intend, has a new CPU listing featuring the model name Ryzen 5 3600 AF - indicating its a Ryzen 5 3600 with upgraded Zen 3 cores. Assuming this naming scheme isn't a typo, it marks the return of the "AF" nomenclature for AMD, which is great news for budget PC gamers. The listing shows the Ryzen 5 3600AF as valued at 639.77 Romanian Lei, or roughly $126 USD as of this writing.

The AF nomenclature originally started with the Ryzen 5 1600 AF, which featured upgraded Zen+ cores compared to the original Zen counterpart. This chip was a bargain at the time, featuring a lower price than the Ryzen 5 2600, but offering nearly identical performance thanks to the Zen+ architecture.

But, rather than being an actual model name, the "AF" terminology originally came from the box identification name on these upgraded 1600s. Since both the original Ryzen 5 1600 and the Zen+ powered Ryzen 5 1600 had the same model name, the only way users could tell the difference, was with the box identification number. This number featured the the letters "AF" at the very end for the Zen+ version, which was different from the "AE" model name on the original 1600. So the Ryzen 5 1600AF is actually a non-official model name, created by the community as a way to distinguish between the two parts.

If Intend's retailer listing is real, the Ryzen 5 3600 AF will follow the same recipe, by stripping out the Zen 2 cores in favor of Zen 3 cores. This will put the 3600AF in a similar - if not equal, performance tier to the Ryzen 5 5600 and 5600X, while costing less money. The retailers listing price seems to back up this up at more than 30% cheaper than the Ryzen 5 5600.

We have to take this listing with a grain of salt, since this is the first listing we've seen with the new model name, and the box identification number does not have the letters "AF" in them. AMD is probably using a different box number to identify Zen 3 3600's from Zen 2 versions, but if that is true, then why is Intend using the community made up "AF" terminology in the first place.

It will be great if this Ryzen 5 3600 AF turns out to be true, but there's still a chance it might be a typo and not come to fruition.

Art of PC has released one of the Internet's first reviews of Intel's new Alder Lake Core i3-12100 CPU, giving us a sneak peek of the gaming performance for Intel's new entry-level Core i3 product stack. The site compared the quad-core Alder Lake chip's performance against a Ryzen 5 3600 and shows very competitive results -- making it a contender in our Best CPUs for Gaming 2022 list.

Specs-wise, the Core i3-12100 is very different from its higher-tiered Core i5 and Core i7 brethren. Packing only four cores and eight threads, this CPU lacks E-cores and sports four Golden Cove performance cores. Base frequency starts at 3.3 GHz, with single-core turbo speeds maxing out at 4.3 GHz.

But, thanks to Golden Cove's significant boost in IPC performance, the Core i3 is no slouch, and according to Art of PC's coverage can go toe to toe with any of Intel or AMD's hexa-core CPUs from just a couple of years ago.

Art of PC tested gaming performances against a Ryzen 5 3600, with a testbed including 32GB of 3600 MHz DDR4, ROG Strix Z690-A D4, Dark Rock Pro 4, and GeForce RTX 3080 GPU for the Core i3 setup. The Ryzen 5 3600 testbed is identical to the Core i3 except for the motherboard, an Asus ROG X570 Crosshair VIII Hero.

The site revealed the average FPS for several games, including Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Cyberpunk 2077, Forza Horizon 5, and more.

The Core i3-12100 cumulatively outperforms the hexa-core Ryzen 5 3600 by 7.85%. A rather impressive result considering the Ryzen 5 3600 has two more cores and four more threads.

Looking at the Ryzen 5 3600's general performance against other CPUs, we suspect that the Core i3-12100 will outperform or be just as fast as other CPUs such as the Ryzen 3 3300X and Core i5-10600K from a few years ago as well. If these results are accurate, the Core i3-12100 could make a powerful entry-level CPU for gaming.

Intel's 12th Generation Alder Lake-S processors may be still be a far way off. But the chipmaker has already started sampling the chips to PC partners, and other engineering samples are already running in the hardware world, too. A high-end SKU (via Leakbench) with 16 cores has seemingly broken its cover in Geekbench 5.

Alder Lake-S is a hybrid desktop processor, meaning not all cores inside the chip are made equal. The sample that appeared on Geekbench 5 reportedly comes equipped with 16 cores and 24 threads and matches one of the potential configurations that we've seen. There's also a logical explanation behind the odd thread count.

To understand Alder Lake-S, you first need to know the exact recipe that Intel is employing for its hybrid parts. There are two distinct core types on Alder Lake-S that have specific responsibilities. The Golden Cove cores are the high-performance cores that cater to heavy workloads, while the Gracemont (Atom) cores are designed for lesser workloads.

Coming back to the Alder Lake-S sample, there should be eight Golden Cove cores and eight Gracemont cores present. We suspect that only the Golden Cove cores leverage Intel's Hyper-Threading technology. Therefore, we have 16 threads from the Golden Cove cores and eight threads from the Gracemont cores, which adds up to the reported total of 24 threads.

Geekbench 5 reported a 1.38 GHz base clock speed that's probably for the Gracemont cores. The reported boost clock, on the other hand, is clearly a mistake, which is common among unreleased hardware that goes through benchmarking software.

The cache configuration for the 16-core Alder Lake-S is also quite interesting. There are eight L2 slices of 1.25MB and 320KB, amounting to a total of 12.5MB of total L2 cache. For the L3 cache, we're also looking at eight slices of 3MB and 768KB that total to 30MB.

The preliminary performance from the 16-core Alder Lake-S part is far from impressive though. As with any unreleased hardware, we recommend taking the benchmark numbers with some skeptical salt. As far as today's sample goes, the Alder Lake-S processor scored 996 points in the single-core test and 6,931 points in the multi-core test. For comparison, the single-core performance is right in the same alley as the AMD's mobile Ryzen 5 4600H (994 average points), while its multi-core performance on par with the Ryzen 5 3600X (6,906 average points).

Alder Lake-S, which commands the new LGA1700 socket, will come out of Intel's 10nm Enhanced SuperFin silicon oven. The chipmaker has previously affirmed that Alder Lake-S competes in the performance segment. Today's outing doesn't look very imposing, although Intel won't likely release Alder Lake until the second half of 2021, so this may just be a teaser of what Alder Lake could offer.

Non-X Marks the Spot

10/20/2020 Update:  The AMD Ryzen 5 3600 is still an impressive CPU, but it will soon be supplanted by newer Ryzen 5000 processors. If you find the 3600 processor on sale at a steep discount during Black Friday or over the holidays, it's still worth considering. Just know that this CPU does not include AMD's latest Zen 3 architecture. So if you want the best single-core performance and other features that come with AMD's newest CPUs, you should probably spend more for a Ryzen 5 5600X when it arrives in late 2020. Those new chips have now taken over the top ranks on our CPU Benchmark Hierarchy.

AMD's value proposition has always been straightforward -- more for less. While we typically think of AMD offering more CPU cores than Intel for less money, the strategy also applies to the company's unrestrained feature sets for each processor, regardless of price. That includes in-box coolers, Hyper-Threading (AMD calls it SMT), and unlocked multipliers that enable easy overclocking, all of which are features that Intel either leaves out or disables on some of its chips in the name of segmentation.

Instead of squeezing out extra dollars from its customers, AMD gives you the same basic underlying features with the $199 six-core 12-thread Ryzen 5 3600 that it gives you with its full-fledged counterpart, the $249 Ryzen 5 3600X that we recently named the best mid-range processor on the market. That means the Ryzen 5 3600 has the same six-core 12-thread design, 32MB of L3 cache, and access to 24 lanes of PCIe 4.0, with the only tradeoff being a step back to the 65W Wraith Stealth cooler, while the 3600X comes with the more-capable 95W Wraith Spire cooler.

What does that mean to you? While the Ryzen 5 3600 is a great processor that packs a wonderful amount of performance into a 65W TDP envelope, a boon for small form factor enthusiasts, you can also overclock it and attain similar performance in many applications, like gaming, to the Ryzen 5 3600X (one of our best CPUs). But you save fifty bucks in the process while still getting class-leading features, like the PCIe 4.0 interface.

This follows the same AMD trend we’ve seen in the past, with overclockability making the non-X models a better value for enthusiasts than the pricier X-series models. But if you’re chasing the absolute highest frame rates you can get out of a six-core processor, be aware that the Ryzen 5 3600 chips might not reach the peak overclocking speeds of 3600X models. In either case, the solid blend of features and overclockability makes the Ryzen 5 3600 the clear choice for enthusiasts looking for a great value on a mid-range processor.

AMD isn't sitting still though: The company recently released its own new flagship, the 16-core 32-thread Ryzen 9 3950X, to fend off Intel's new challengers. That chip slots into a much higher tier than the 3950X, but it brings competitive gaming performance and much more threaded horsepower for those looking for the ultimate in performance. 

Ryzen 5 3600

Like the other Ryzen 3000 chips, the six-core 12-thread Ryzen 5 3600 comes with a 7nm compute die (with two disabled physical cores) paired with a 12nm I/O die. These two components come together into a single package that fits inside a 65W TDP envelope, making it physically identical to the 95W Ryzen 5 3600X.

The Ryzen 5 3600 has slightly lower clock speeds than the 3600X, with its 3.6 GHz base and 4.2 GHz Precision Boost 2 frequencies, a difference of 200 MHz in both measurements.

The 3600’s 4.2 GHz boost frequency is lower than the $192 Core i5-9500’s 4.4 GHz boost, but its 3.6 GHz base frequency equates to a 600 MHz advantage that, paired with AMD's drastic improvement to its instruction per cycle (IPC) throughput, will equate to higher performance in heavy workloads, not to mention the six additional threads of the AMD part. It’s notable that, unlike the previous-gen Ryzen models and Intel’s chips, AMD only guarantees the peak boost frequency on one core, while other cores could have lesser capabilities. Head to our Not All Ryzen 3000 Cores are Created Equal article for more information on that front.

Compared to the $182 Core i5-9400F, the 3600 has an 800 MHz base and 100 MHz boost frequency advantage. The Ryzen 5 3600 comes with a bundled 65W Wraith Stealth cooler, and while both the Core i5-9500 and -9400F come with stock coolers, they are of significantly lower quality. However, both of the Intel processors come with integrated graphics, while the Ryzen 5 3600 requires a discrete graphics card. If you’re not planning on incorporating a discrete GPU in your build, the Intel processors are the obvious choice.

The Ryzen 5 3600 comes with a healthy 32MB of total L3 cache, a neat doubling of capacity over its predecessor and more than three times the cache of the -9500 and -9400F. That does come with a few caveats, however, as cache performance and efficiency has a big impact on how much cache capacity benefits the processor in typical applications. As usual, our benchmarks will tell the tale.

The Ryzen 5 3600 drops into the AM4 CPU socket on the new X570 motherboards, which you'll need for official support for the PCIe 4.0 interface. But those new boards are more expensive than previous-gen models and aren't a good fit for value chips like the Ryzen 5 3600. Luckily, you can also use an older 400-series motherboard (B450 is a good fit) as a value alternative. But if you go that route you'll lose access to PCIe 4.0, which is one of the key selling points of the new processors.

Ryzen 3000 chips officially support dual-channel DDR4-3200, a step up from the previous-gen's support for DDR4-2966. AMD has greatly improved its memory compatibility and overclocking capabilities, but you still have to abide by rules that dictate the maximum supported frequency based on DIMM type and slot population. Ryzen 3000 also supports memory overclocking, either by hand-tuning or one-click A-XMP profiles with pricier kits, to skirt those rules.

AMD also has its Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) feature on offer, which is an automated overclocking tool that will tune your processor to its maximum achievable performance based on its cooling, motherboard, and power delivery accommodations. The quality of your cooling solution, and the vagaries of the silicon lottery, have a big impact on how well PBO can auto-tune your processor.

MORE: Best CPUs
MORE: CPU Benchmarks Hierarchy
MORE: All CPUs Content

Overclocking and Test Setup

AMD's Ryzen 3000 processors have drastically improved single-threaded performance, but you'll lose that benefit if you manually overclock. That's largely because the chips can't be manually overclocked on all cores to reach the same frequency as the single-core boost frequency. In fact, we often find the all-core overclock ceiling to be 200 to 300 MHz lower than the rated boost speeds, which is likely due to the AMD’s new binning strategy that finds the Ryzen 3000 chips with a mix of both faster and slower cores.

We've tested several of the Ryzen 3000 processors in manually-overclocked configurations, and the results are predictable: You gain some extra threaded performance over automatic overclocking with PBO, but lose too much performance in lightly-threaded apps to make it worthwhile. In other words, outside of a few edge cases, like systems that will only do heavily-threaded work, manual overclocking simply isn't worth your time -- or the egregious power consumption it requires for relatively small performance gains.

As we've seen, AMD’s PBO algorithms provide a speedup that improves threaded performance while preserving the single-core boost frequency. The feature also keeps the Ryzen processor in its power-to-performance sweet spot, which means that it doesn't require much additional power consumption or cooling. Unfortunately, PBO gains are slight (don't expect miracles), but it is worthwhile if you have adequate cooling. As we've found in the past, AMD's stock coolers tend to extract most of the full benefit.

AMD's Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) is an adaptive overclocking approach that allows the processor to communicate with the platform to modulate performance based on the motherboard's power delivery subsystem and thermal dissipation capabilities. The processor monitors Package Power Tracking (PPT), which is total socket power, and the Thermal Design Current (TDC) variable, which is the motherboard's maximum available sustained current. Electrical Design Current (EDC) also indicates the maximum current possible from the VRMs during peak/transient conditions.

AMD enables two options for PBO: IPM is AMD's default PBO setting, which is activated if you leave the PBO setting to 'Auto' in the Godlike's UEFI (our testing board). But you can select 'Enabled' to activate a profile that's dictated by the maximum limits of the motherboard's power delivery subsystem. These limits vary by motherboard and are defined by the vendor. We chose the latter to unlock the full potential of PBO. This setting kicks the socket's maximum power delivery up to 1000W to offer the best of increased multi-core boost clocks while retaining the high single-core boost clocks. You won't need anything near that much power delivery, but we don't want to leave any performance on the table.

AMD says you can also further tune the chip with an Auto OC (AOC) feature. AMD designed the new feature to give you some control over the maximum attainable boost clocks by allowing you to add up to an extra 200MHz to the maximum boost clock, but it isn't guaranteed that the processor will reach those speeds at all times, or under all conditions.

Unfortunately, we've found that the PBO+AOC feature often comes at the expense of performance in single-threaded workloads even though it is billed as retaining, and even heightening, single-core boost clocks. In most cases, the feature has no observable impact.

Security Mitigations

The new AMD-optimized Windows scheduler is only present in Windows 10 1903 and promises to expose gains in several types of applications. As such, we updated our test image to the latest version of Windows 10 available (18362.207). All of our test results come from the aforementioned operating system and include all publicly available security mitigations and the latest motherboard firmware revisions. Intel is currently impacted by Spectre, Spectre v4, Meltdown, Foreshadow, Spectre v3a, Lazy FPU, Spoiler, and MDS, while AMD is only impacted by Spectre and Spectre v4. AMD has added hardware-based mitigations for both variants of Spectre, which should reduce the performance impact, but the requisite patches for both companies have performance penalties, which are reflected here in our testing.

Phoronix Benchmark

We added in several new tests from Phornix's open-source benchmark suite. While this suite is heavily focused on Linux test environments, the benchmark utility does have several powerful testing options for Windows systems, along with Apple OS X, GNU Hurd, Solaris, and BSD operating systems. The test also outputs deviation metrics that help ensure accuracy in our test results.We've integrated key tests, like GIMP productivity, web browser benchmarks, SVT-AV1 encoding, NAMD, and the build-llvm compile test.

MSI MEG X570 Godlike

We're using MSI's MEG X570 Godlike as our test platform for the second- and third-gen AMD processors. The pricey Godlike board retails for around $800, but has the 14+4+1-phase power delivery subsystem to support aggressive overclocking.

The MEG X570 Godlike comes with a few nifty accessories like a 10Gb “Super LAN” Ethernet card and a PCIe Gen 4 Xpander-Z M.2 expansion card. That lets you add two more M.2 drives to complement the three M.2 PCIe Gen 4 M.2 ports on the board. You also get four PCIe 4.0 x16 slots, an RGB Mystic Light Infinity II mirror over the IO shroud, and a tiny OLED screen, alongside the two-digit LCD display for error codes.

Comparison Products

Test System and Configuration

MORE: Best CPUs
MORE: CPU Benchmark Hierarchy
MORE: All CPUs Content

Power Consumption

Power consumption measurements are always a bit tricky. But as long as your 12V supply (EPS) readings, motherboard power supply sensor values, and voltage transformer losses plausibly coincide, everything is fine. Therefore, we're using pure package power to avoid possible influences from our motherboard. Results from the PWM controller are very reliable if you take them as averages over a few minutes.

We began with the non-AVX stress test in AIDA64 and found that the Ryzen 7 3600 drew 67W, beat only by the Core i5-9400F at 53W. With PBO active and the Corsair H115i cooler, the 3600 only drew 70W.

The y-cruncher benchmark computes pi using a heavy multi-threaded AVX workload and also generates a performance measurement that we can use for efficiency metrics. We also measure power with HandBrake in x264 and x265 flavors. The latter uses a heavier distribution of AVX instructions than the former, but both transcoders are great for stressing the processor with a real-world workload.

The small increases in the 3600's power consumption from overclocking equate to relatively minor performance improvements. At stock settings, AMD has tuned the processors right at the knee of the voltage/frequency curve where the chip provides the maximum frequency possible and great efficiency. This PBO configuration also retains some of those same characteristics, but that doesn't leave much headroom for explosive performance gains.

Like the Ryzen 5 3600X, the six-core Ryzen 5 3600 is basically an eight-core Ryzen 7 3700X, but with two cores disabled. However, the 3600’s lower 65W TDP envelope equates to less power consumption at stock settings although, after overclocking, the 3600 does come close to matching the 3600X. That leads to surprisingly similar power consumption measurements during our x265 and y-cruncher tests. 

We tested with both the stock cooler and the Corsair H115i to see how much extra cooling impacts the maximum performance the auto-overclocking algorithms can extract from the processor, and how that impacts power consumption. According to our measurements, the bundled Wraith Stealth cooler dissipates enough waste heat to nearly achieve the maximum amount of available performance in some applications, but it also doesn't offer much of a boost in others. A better cooler is a good investment if you're overclocking the 3600, but you won't need something as robust as our H115i (even a low-cost Hyper 212 should suffice).

Plotting power consumption over our performance measurements shows that the Ryzen 5 3600 is an incredibly efficient processor, giving a solid level of performance at impressively low power consumption. That low power consumption isn't all about your electricity bill, either; it also equates to a lower bar for your cooling solution.

MORE: Best CPUs
MORE: Intel & AMD Processor Hierarchy
MORE: All CPUs Content

Test Notes

Test results annotated with "PBO" reflect performance with AMD's auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive feature activated. As noted in the charts, we tested the overclocked Ryzen 5 3600 with two cooling solutions, the Corsair H115i watercooler and the bundled Wraith Stealth cooler. The overclocked previous-gen Ryzen 5 2600X offers roughly the same performance as an overclocked Ryzen 5 2600, so consider this model as a stand-in for its cheaper counterpart.

VRMark, 3DMark

We aren't big fans of using synthetic benchmarks to measure performance, but 3DMark's DX11 and DX12 CPU tests provide useful insight into the amount of horsepower available to game engines.

The DX11 and DX12 CPU test results expose the full-threaded heft of the Ryzen 3000 series processors, so there are no surprises. You'll notice that, even after overclocking, the Ryzen 5 3600 just barely matches the stock 3600X's performance, and it looses by a decent margin to the overclocked 3600X. It is clear that AMD's binning makes more of a difference with the Ryzen 3000 processors. 

That said, even at stock settings, the Ryzen 5 3600 offers enough threaded horsepower to rival even the agile overclocked Core i5-9600K. The more cost-comparable 6C/6T Core i5-9400F can't contend with the 3600's twelve threads.

We compare the Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) auto-overclocking with the bundled Wraith Stealth and the beefier Corsair H115i cooler, which unlocks 2% and 1.5% more performance in the DX12 and DX11 tests, respectively.

The VRMark test benefits heavily from per-core performance, and the Ryzen 3000 processors have made great strides compared to the first- and second-gen models. The Ryzen 5 3600 beats the Core i5-9400F by ~15 FPS, while tuning with a capable cooler gives us ~5 more FPS. 

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation is a computationally intense title that scales well with thread count, but clock speeds and per-core performance play a big role. The Core i5-9400F falls behind the 3600 by 7.2 FPS and the $262 i5-9600K by 5.5 FPS. We typically expect Intel processors to take the lead after overclocking; they are much more capable in that regard than AMD's processors. But the tuned twelve-threaded Ryzen 5 3600 scores within 0.1 FPS, which is essentially a tie.

MORE: Best CPUs
MORE: Intel & AMD Processor Hierarchy
MORE: All CPUs Content

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.

MORE: Best CPUs
MORE: Intel & AMD Processor Hierarchy
MORE: All CPUs Content

Far Cry 5

The Ryzen 5 3600 lags the 3600X by 2.7 FPS at stock settings, and while tuning the 3600 improves its performance, it still lags the overclocked 3600X by the same amount.

The Core i5-9400F is faster than the 3600 at stock settings, but AMD's unlocked multiplier evens the score. 

Final Fantasy XV

We run this test with the standard quality preset to sidestep the impact of a bug that causes the game engine to render off-screen objects. This title scales well with additional cores and threads, and tuning brings the 3600 within 0.4 FPS of the overclocked 3600X, meaning they offer essentially the same performance after overclocking.

Meanwhile, the stock Ryzen 5 3600 handily beats the Core i5-9400F.

MORE: Best CPUs
MORE: Intel & AMD Processor Hierarchy
MORE: All CPUs Content

Grand Theft Auto V

Grand Theft Auto V favors Intel architectures and, more generally, multi-core designs with high clock rates. Here we see that the Ryzen 5 3600 benefits more from improved cooling than its X-series counterpart, which means that investing in a better cooler is a good idea if you're interested in overclocking the chip. After overclocking, the difference between the 3600 and 3600X is negligible.

Hitman 2

Hitman 2 unleashes Intel's overclocking advantage with the Core i5-9600K, but the Core i5-9400F remains mired at the bottom of the chart due to its locked multiplier. With the right cooling, the Ryzen 5 3600 has comparable performance to the 3600X after overclocking.

MORE: Best CPUs

MORE: Intel & AMD Processor Hierarchy

MORE: All CPUs Content

Project CARS 2

Although Project CARS 2 is purportedly optimized for threading, clock rates obviously affect this title's frame rates. Intel's per-core performance, which is a mixture of IPC and frequency, pays big dividends in this title. Here the -9400F grapples with the stock 3600 models, but tuning again proves beneficial for Ryzen.

The Division 2

Here we see the two overclocked 3600 configurations offer the same performance regardless of the cooler. We also noticed the same trend with the 3600X in this title.

World of Tanks enCore

We can add Worlds of Tanks to the list of titles that respond extremely well to overclocking Intel's chips. The Ryzen 5 3600X offers much higher performance at stock than the 3600, and after tuning, we still see a similar delta.

MORE: Best CPUs

MORE: Intel & AMD Processor Hierarchy

MORE: All CPUs Content

Web Browser

Browsers tend to be impacted more by the recent security mitigations than other types of applications, so Intel has taken a haircut in these benchmarks of fully-patched systems.

The ARES-6 web browser benchmark focuses on the latest and greatest JavaScript features, with a heavy focus on forward neural networks used for machine learning tasks, and browser responsiveness. The 3600 profits from AMD's diligent work on improving IPC with the Zen 2 microarchitecture. Intel's faster processors exploit the company's frequency advantage, which equates to higher per-core performance, but the Core i5-9400F's lower base and boost clocks trail the Ryzen 5 3600.

We such much of the same with Speedometer 2 and Jetstream 2, with the Ryzen 5 3600 opening up a wider gap between itself and the -9400F. WebXRPT 3 puts the cap on the 3600's full sweep of the -9400F.

You'll notice that overclocking the Ryzen processors doesn't yield any improvement. That's because the processor is still limited to its maximum single-core boost speed during these lightly-threaded tasks.

Microsoft Office

The Microsoft Office suite of benchmarks runs via PCMark 10's new application test. This benchmark tests with real Microsoft Office applications, and we can see that the Ryzen 3000 series processors are very competitive in Excel, the Edge browser, and Word.

The Ryzen 5 3600 proves to be an agile performer in these common applications, even beating the speedy Core i7-9700K and i5-9600K in the overall score. We see some gains via overclocking Ryzen chips, and although the gains aren't as pronounced in these applications, the 3600 lands in a virtual tie with the Ryzen 5 3600X.

Productivity

The LLVM compiler benefits from extra threads, handing the 3600 an easy lead over the competing Intel chips, even after overclocking. The Core i5-9400F even trails the first-gen Ryzen 5 1600X, highlighting how much Intel's feature-trimming (in this case, Hyper-Threading) hamstrings its lineup against AMD's more well-rounded chips.

The application start-up metric measures load time snappiness in word processors, GIMP, and Web browsers under warm- and cold-start conditions. Other platform-level considerations affect this test as well, including the storage subsystem. The Ryzen 5 3600 actually loses a little performance when we kick on PBO with the Wraith Stealth cooler, but the result lands within the expected 3% variance of this test, implying there is no uplift from overclocking in some applications with the stock cooler. We see this trend repeat a few times throughout our test suite. In any case, the Ryzen 5 3600 is incredibly competitive given its price point, easily beating the -9400F.

Our video conferencing suite measures performance in single- and multi-user applications that utilize the Windows Media Foundation for playback and encoding. It also performs facial detection to model real-world usage. Here we see the 3600/Stealth combo beat the H115i-equipped configuration, but the deltas are small enough to chalk up to expected run-to-run deviation.

The photo editing benchmark measures performance with Futuremark's binaries using the ImageMagick library. Common photo processing workloads also tend to be parallelized, which plays well to Ryzen's multi-threaded design. Once again, we see very little uplift from overclocking with the Wraith Stealth cooler.

MORE: Best CPUs

MORE: Intel & AMD Processor Hierarchy

MORE: All CPUs Content

Rendering

As we can see throughout this series of tests, AMD's Ryzen processors undoubtedly sit atop the multi-threaded benchmark throne. The six-core -9600K and -9400F, which both lack Hyper-Threading, are outclassed in these tasks. Meanwhile, the 12-threaded Ryzen 5 chips dominate in these types of workloads with convincing wins across the board. The Ryzen 5 3600X at stock settings is comparable, or faster, than the overclocked Ryzen 5 3600 in most of these heavily-threaded workloads, meaning it does offer some benefit for the extra $50 investment, particularly if you're not interested in overclocking.

Encoding

The SVT-AV1 encoder is an Intel- and Netflix-designed software video encoder that became available earlier this year. This new encoder is more scalable than other encoders, thus offering faster performance paired with efficient compression. While it may seem counter-intuitive to use an Intel-designed encoder for testing AMD processors, consider that most encoders are inherently reliant upon per-core performance, which is a strength of Intel, while SVT-AV1 exposes the power of threading, a strength of Ryzen. At stock settings, the Ryzen 5 3600X beats the overclocked Ryzen 5 3600 by a slim margin, but overclocking the X-series model opens a wider gap. The Ryzen 5 3600 fares better against the -9400F, which lags by a decent margin.

Our LAME and FLAC tests, like many encoders, rely heavily upon per-core performance. That means Intel's frequency advantage comes into play, allowing the -9600K to take the lead. Conversely, the lower-clocked -9400F suffers. The -9600K has the advantage at stock settings, but overclocking propels it to the top of the chart.

Intel processors traditionally leverage high frequencies to dominate the HandBrake x265 test, which relies heavily on AVX instructions, and the x264 test. But Intel's higher clock speed isn't too much of an advantage in these tests when the similarly-priced competition has twice the number of threads, so the Ryzen 5 chips carve out nice leads in both x265 and x264 encoding. We also noticed that the Wraith Stealth-cooled 3600's overclocked configuration often trails the stock settings with the same cooler, which we confirmed with repeated testing. It looks like AMD might have some tuning left to do with its PBO algorithms in thermally-limited situations.

Compression, Decompression, Encryption, AVX

Our threaded compression and decompression 7-Zip and ZLib tests work directly from system memory, removing storage throughput from the equation. The combination of Ryzen 5 3600's improved memory subsystem and generous helping of cores helps it take an easy lead over the -9600K and -9400F while the Ryzen 5 3600X does provide at least some advantage over the 3600 via overclocking, although it isn't enough to justify a $50 premium for value-seekers.

We can also see the vast improvement in Ryzen's AVX performance in the y-cruncher tests: That's a massive generational leap, particularly in single-threaded performance. You'll notice that the overclocked 3600 with the Stealth cooler again suffers during a heavily-threaded AVX workload, furthering our suspicion that the PBO algorithms aren't fully optimized. In either case, the improved gen-on-gen AVX performance is truly impressive and benefits a wide range of applications.

MORE: Best CPUs

MORE: Intel & AMD Processor Hierarchy

MORE: All CPUs Content

Conclusion

After a simple one-click activation of the PBO automatic overclocking feature, the Ryzen 5 3600 offers much of the same performance as the Ryzen 5 3600X that retails for $50 more. AMD continues to offer the full complement of features with its lesser processors, like Hyper-Threading (SMT), overclockability, and capable stock coolers, making the Ryzen 5 3600 the value CPU to beat.

In the chart below, we plot gaming performance with both average frame rates and a geometric mean of the 99^th percentile frame times (a good indicator of smoothness). It's worth noting that AMD's previous-gen lineup is heavily discounted, so we’re departing from our standard practice of using official price lists. Instead, we’re using average pricing found online (temporary sales excluded). Volatility applies.

The Ryzen 5 3600 beats the Core i5-9400F in our gaming suite at stock settings, even coming within a mere 0.6 FPS of the $265 Core i5-9600K in the average of our 99th percentile results. The 3600 expands its lead over the Core i5-9400F after tuning, but the Core i5-9600K leverages its unlocked multiplier to take a big lead - but for $63 more. While we don't have one on hand, the $192 Core i5-9500 is a natural competitor with the 3600 as well, but 300 MHz of additional clock speed likely doesn't change the value proposition much.

It's clear the Ryzen 3000-series chips are the best bang for your gaming buck in this price segment. For gamers, the real choice boils down to the 3600 versus the 3600X. The Ryzen 5 3600X does have a bit more performance in the tank than the Ryzen 5 3600 in the overclocking department, which largely boils down to binning. It's also faster when we compare the two processors at stock settings, but the Ryzen 5 3600 slightly exceeds the stock X-model after tuning. In either case, the difference between the two chips boils down to a few FPS, which isn't worth the extra $50 unless you're chasing every last drop of performance. Also, bear in mind these deltas essentially vanish if you're gaming at higher resolutions.

The picture is a bit different when we switch over to productivity workloads. In threaded apps there really is no contest again: The Ryzen 3000 processors offer far more value than Intel's competing chips, and the lack of Hyper-Threading makes this a no contest for threaded applications. In gaming, we recorded slim differences between the overclocked Ryzen 5 3600 with the stock cooler and the Corsair H115i, but that delta widens in heavily-threaded tests. In fact, we noticed a few regressions with the stock cooler during overclocking, suggesting the all-aluminum cooler may get a bit overwhelmed when more voltage is put to the chip in heavily threaded workloads. As a result, the Corsair H115i cooler extracts more performance, especially in the AVX workloads, but the deltas are slight in most areas. Given the 3600's relatively low power draw, you could top it with a much lesser cooler, like a Hyper 212 Black, and get the same benefit. It really just boils down to how much noise you're willing to tolerate, but a beefy dual-radiator cooler is overkill.

If you need integrated graphics, the Ryzen 5 3600 and 3600X aren't for you. However, if you plan on using a discrete graphics card, the Ryzen 5 3600 is hands-down the best value on the market. The 3600X might be worth the extra coin if you aren't interested in overclocking, as it does provide more performance out of the box and comes with a better cooler. However, it's hard to justify the $50 premium over the Ryzen 5 3600. For small form factor (SFF) enthusiasts, AMD has packed in quite a bit of punch into a 65W envelope, giving it the uncontested lead for small systems.

A Ryzen 5 3600 paired with a B450 motherboard will make a great setup for mainstream gamers, and you have the option to upgrade to a PCIE 4.0-capable motherboard in the future. We aren't sure when, or if, AMD's partners will push out new B-series motherboards, but that could be a compelling upgrade path in the future.

Image Credits: Tom's Hardware

MORE: Best CPUs

MORE: Intel & AMD Processor Hierarchy

MORE: All CPUs Content

The AMD Ryzen 5 3600XT has dropped to a new low price on Newegg. This processor normally runs for $249, but now you can get your hands on it for $234 using promo code 62GAMETBR9. If you want to see what’s leading the CPU market right now, head over to our list of Best CPUs for 2020.

This processor has 6 cores and a total of 12 threads. It has a base operating speed of 3.8GHz. When boosted, it can reach as high as 4.5GHz.

This model supports up to 128GB of DDR4 with speeds up to 3200MHz. You may want to opt for a more powerful third-party cooling option, but you will also get a stock Wraith Spire cooler with this offer.

Visit the AMD Ryzen 5 3600XT product page on Newegg to grab this deal for yourself. Note that you'll have to apply the promo code in order to receive this discount. The deal is set to expire Monday, October 12th.

Youtuber Buildzoid, on his channel Actually Hardcore Overclocking, has demonstrated how you can overclock your AMD Ryzen 3000-series (codename Matisse) processor on an A520 motherboard.

If you're familiar with AMD's A-series chipsets, you already know that they don't support CPU overclocking. As Buildzoid has proven, BCLK (base clock) overclocking appears to be working just fine on Gigabyte's A520M H motherboard. It's uncertain if other vendors support BCLK overclocking on their A520 offerings or if this workaround is all Gigabyte's doing.

The biggest challenge with BCLK overclocking is finding the settings that ensure the entire system lives in harmony. Ryzen's BCLK is connected to other interfaces, including PCIe, SATA, and USB ports. Raising the BCLK effectively overclocks everything else, which is why overclockers prefer playing with the ratio multipliers more than the BCLK if given a choice. Sadly, only the latter is possible on the A520 chipset.

For the demonstration, Buildzoid overclocked his Ryzen 5 3600 on the Gigabyte A520M H motherboard, which retails for roughly $78 overseas. He highlighted that the motherboard was on the factory F1 firmware. Since that time, Gigabyte has released the F2 firmware for the A520M H, so we're unsure if Gigabyte has patched BCLK overclocking on the newer firmware.

Buildzoid pushed the Ryzen 5 3600 to 4,389 MHz on all six cores by increasing the BCLK to 108 MHz and moving the CPU clock ratio to 40.50. For context, the Ryzen 5 3600 typically has an all-core boost clock the fluctuates around 4.1 GHz, depending on the motherboard, cooling, and the workload.

The hardware enthusiast thinks that BCLK overclocking on the A520 chipset is somewhat linked to AMD's Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) technology. Therefore, he had to raise the power limits in the XFR (Extended Frequency Range) enhancement section of the motherboard.

In theory, you can overclock more powerful Ryzen chips, such as the Ryzen 9 3950X on AMD's A520 motherboards. It's tempting, but you really shouldn't since A520 motherboards pretty much come with baseline power delivery subsystems that are only designed for running the processor at stock speeds.

In China, AMD is shipping some Ryzen 5 3600 CPUs in packaging meant for weaker chips, according to a recent Facebook post from Chinese hardware site HKEPC. 

In a Facebook post yesterday, Chinese hardware site HKEPC posted photos of a Ryzen 5 3600 they recently ordered that came in a Ryzen 3 3200G box. AMD had placed a sticker seal on the box indicating that the product inside was indeed the Ryzen 5 3600, but everything else on the packaging pointed to the weaker Ryzen 3 3200G.

A Hardware Times story from earlier today elaborates that this has affected a whole batch of Ryzen 5 3600 CPUs bound for customers in China. The story attributes the incorrect packaging to Ryzen 5 3600 sales figures breaking expectations during the recent Chinese mid-year sale in June, leading AMD’s Chinese team to use old packaging instead of waiting for additional, more accurate boxes to come in. Of course, it's also entirely possible that the situation is the result of a simple mistake during packaging.

Even though these boxes did have the processors they ordered, we have to imagine customers were pretty confused. It’s not uncommon for mix-ups to happen when ordering components online- I’ve had to return CPUs to Newegg twice in a row after they accidentally sent me the wrong parts- so this is just another reminder to always double check what’s in the box (and what your system reads as installed) before you wrap up your latest build.

Update 30/06/2020 4:56 am PT: VideoCardz confirmed our suspicions that the chip pictured by TecLab was not a real Ryzen 5 3600XT, but rather a standard 3600, making this a likely case of a fake preview. 

Original article below:

AMD officially announced the new Ryzen 3600XT, 3800XT, and 3900XT processors just two weeks ago, but the review embargo hasn't lifted yet. Now, the folks from TecLab on the Chinese video site Bilibili are back again with another embargo-breaking review, comparing performance of the AMD Ryzen 5 3600 XT against that of the new Intel Core i5-10400.

As with their previous leaks, the presenter is wearing a dog mask to hide their identity, ensuring that AMD is unable to track down who they should stop sending hardware samples to. To further cover their tracks, the QR code, XT denotation, and serial number on the chip's IHS have also been covered up with tape -- so note that this also makes it very possible that this isn't a 3600XT chip at all. 

The results speak for themselves. When the chip was tested across World War Z, CS GO, Tomb Raider, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint, Metro Exodus, Far Cry 5, and Borderlands, Far Cry 5 was the only title where the Ryzen 5 3600XT beat the cheaper Core i5-10400.

Nevertheless, the differences were small.

We haven't tested the Intel Core i5-10400 yet, so we are unable to say how its performance compares to that of the Ryzen 5 3600X, and thus unable to say whether TecLab's results are representative of real-world performance, or not.

Amazon Italy (via Reddit) has just spilled the beans on AMD's looming Ryzen 3000-series XT processors. According to the listings, AMD will officially announce the Zen 2 refresh chips on June 16 with a tentative release date of July 7.

Rumors suggest that AMD will unleash three Ryzen 3000-series XT parts. Thus far, Amazon Italy has revealed the Ryzen 9 3900XT and Ryzen 5 3600XT. Only the rumored Ryzen 7 3800XT is missing.

According to the Amazon Italy posting, the Ryzen 3000-series XT parts will retain the same recipe as the current Ryzen 3000-series (codename Matisse) processors. The chips will arrive with identical cores, threads, and cache as their vanilla counterparts. The most notable improvement lies in the faster clock speeds. In other words, the XT models appear to just be higher-binned chips than the non-XT SKUs, though it's possible AMD has some other surprises in store. For instance, the company moved to the 12nm node with second-gen Zen processors, yielding impressive performance gains through a combination of enhancements to the chips, like improved cache latency borne of faster speedpaths. It isn't immediately apparent if those types of changes could come to the XT models, but it wouldn't be without precedent. 

Amazon Italy didn't specify the base clocks, but we do have the boost clocks for comparison. The Ryzen 9 3900XT appears to come with a 4.7 GHz boost clock, which is 100 MHz faster than the Ryzen 9 3900X. The same improvement is present with the Ryzen 5 3600XT, as the six-core chip flaunts a 100 MHz higher boost clock than its counterpart.

Despite the higher boost clocks, the Ryzen 9 3900XT and Ryzen 5 3600XT respect the same TDP (thermal design power) as the normal Ryzen offerings. That would be 105W for Ryzen 9 3900XT and 95W for the Ryzen 5 3600XT.

While AMD included the Wraith Prism CPU cooler with the Ryzen 9 3900X, the Amazon Italy listing shows the Ryzen 9 3900XT without any cooling. The Ryzen 5 3600XT, on the other hand, still comes with the Wraith Spire.

Although Amazon Italy posted the pricing, we should still approach it with some caution as it could be a placeholder or just an inflated pre-order price. If the pricing is to be trusted, the Ryzen 9 3900XT and Ryzen 5 3600XT apparently cost €569.69 ($640) and €284.84 ($320), respectively. For reference, the Ryzen 9 3900X and Ryzen 5 3600X go for €449.10 ($505) and €212.9 ($239) on Amazon Italy. Basically, we're looking at a 26.7% price increase for the Ryzen 9 3900XT and a 33.9% rise for the Ryzen 5 3600XT.

If we apply the same percentages to the current prices in the U.S., the Ryzen 9 3900XT could sell for up to $528, and the Ryzen 5 3600XT may surface with a price tag around $306.

Horizon Zero Dawn has been a PlayStation 4 exclusive title since 2017, but that exclusivity won't be for much longer. This summer, the PC port will be coming out -- and that's incredibly exciting because it's known to be an absolutely amazing title.

No release date is available yet, nor can you buy it on preorder (not that we ever recommend preorders). However, it looks like very soon, AMD will be bundling the game with select Ryzen 3000 processors.

The information comes from Overclockers UK, who already have the deal listed. If you purchase any Ryzen CPU between the Ryzen 5 3600 and the almighty Ryzen 9 3950X, you'll have a claim to the title.

Horizon Zero Dawn is a single-player RPG title set in a post-apocalyptic future around the year 3000, in which you play as hunter Aloy, as acted by Ashly Burch. The game has been extremely well-received by critics, landing many perfect, or near-perfect scores across the board.

Of course, the game isn't out yet on PC, so you'll have to be a little patient. However, if this is anything to go by, Horizon Zero Dawn will be landing on PC sooner, rather than later. Here's to hoping this Ryzen bundle comes to the US too. 

Stealing The Crown

AMD's new Ryzen 3000 series processors set a new pricing and performance bar for halo parts, but most enthusiasts and gamers buy processors in the $200 to $300 price range. Intel dominated this segment for years, but AMD's Ryzen processors have made inroads with the company's typical advantage of more cores and threads for less money. Pair that with less-expensive motherboards, bundled coolers, and unrestricted overclocking for all Ryzen 5 models, and AMD offers a compelling alternative with its previous-gen parts. 

But what if AMD wasn't the value alternative, instead being the performance leader? The third-gen Ryzen 5 processors certainly have the right mix of features to accomplish that goal. These processors come with the same six cores and twelve threads as their predecessors, but AMD boosts performance with a new 7nm process and the Zen 2 microarchitecture that brings big speedups to all types of applications that span from gaming to productivity work. Not to mention the new PCIe 4.0 interface that offers twice the I/O throughput of the PCIe 3.0 standard that Intel uses for its chips.

The new level of performance now comes with a more expensive overall price tag, though. The previous-gen Ryzen 5 2600X undercut the competing Core i5-8600K by ~$30, while the new 3600X lands $13 beneath its new competitor, the Core i5-9600K. New X570 motherboards, which you'll need for official support for the PCIe 4.0 interface, are also more expensive than previous-gen models, so AMD's overall platform costs have also risen. Luckily, you can opt for an older X470 motherboard as a value alternative, but you'll lose access to PCIe 4.0, which is one of the key selling points of the new processors.

But while AMD is coming closer to charging premium pricing for its parts, it's logical to expect to pay more for faster chips. AMD undoubtedly holds the crown for performance in multi-threaded workloads, like productivity applications, as a side benefit of supporting multi-threading in this price range while Intel disables the feature. But the Ryzen chips have historically lagged Intel in gaming. That changes with the Ryzen 5 3600X, which upset the Core i5-9600K in our testing. Pair that performance advantage with leading performance in threaded applications, and the 3600X is one of the best gaming CPUs you can buy, a new leading chip for the mainstream.

Ryzen 5 3600X

Like the other Ryzen 3000 chips, the six-core 12-thread Ryzen 5 3600X comes with a 7nm compute die (with two disabled physical cores) paired with a 12nm I/O die. These two components come together into a single package that adheres to a 95W TDP ceiling, while the lesser Ryzen 5 3600, which has the same complement of features (but lower clocks), comes with a 65W rating. As we've seen with AMD's non-X models in the past, the X-branded models come with premiums that often aren't in line with the small performance difference between the two models. That means the Ryzen 5 3600 may be more attractive for value seekers, at $199.

The Ryzen 5 3600X does have higher clock speeds with its 3.8 GHz base and 4.4 GHz Precision Boost 2 frequencies, an advantage of 200 MHz in both measurements over the previous-gen 2600X and the Ryzen 5 3600 model. Those frequencies lag Intel's Core i5-9600K, which weighs in with a 3.7 GHz base and 4.6 GHz boost. But AMD's drastic improvement to its instruction per cycle (IPC) throughput evens the score in many types of applications. Not to mention the six additional threads.

Intel's Core i5-9500 weighs in at a lower price point, but it's drastically pared back clock frequencies and price make it a more natural competitor with AMD's Ryzen 5 3600.

The Ryzen 5 3600X comes with a healthy 32MB of total L3 cache, a neat doubling of capacity over its predecessor and more than three times the cache of the -9600K. That does come with a few caveats, however, as cache performance and efficiency has a big impact on how much cache capacity benefits the processor in typical applications. As usual, our benchmarks will tell the tale.

Ryzen 3000 chips officially support dual-channel DDR4-3200, a step up from the previous-gen's support for DDR4-2966. AMD has greatly improved its memory compatibility and overclocking capabilities, but you still have to abide by rules that dictate the maximum supported frequency based on DIMM type and slot population.

You can overclock your memory, either by hand-tuning or one-click A-XMP profiles with pricier kits, to skirt those rules. The Zen microarchitecture responds well to improved memory performance, so higher-priced kits are a good investment that pays off.

AMD also has its Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) feature on offer, which is an automated overclocking tool that will tune your processor to its maximum achievable performance based on its cooling, motherboard, and power delivery accommodations. The quality of your cooling solution has a big impact on how well PBO can auto-tune your processor, and the Ryzen 5 3600X comes with a bundled the Wraith Spire cooler. While beefier coolers can help improve the amount of extra kick you get from tuning, the Wraith Spire should provide plenty of headroom, as we'll show throughout our entire test suite.

MORE: Best CPUs
MORE: CPU Benchmark Hierarchy
MORE: How to Overclock a CPU 

Overclocking and Test Setup

AMD's Ryzen 3000 processors have drastically improved single-threaded performance, but you'll lose that benefit if you choose to overclock the Ryzen 3000-series processors manually. This unfortunate side effect comes because the chips can't be manually overclocked on all cores to reach the same frequency as the single-core boost frequency. In fact, we often find the all-core overclock ceiling to be 200 to 300 MHz lower than the rated boost speeds (which we did see activate frequently on our Ryzen 5 3600X sample).

We've tested several of the Ryzen 7 processors and the Ryzen 9 3900X in manually-overclocked configurations throughout our entire suite of benchmarks, and the results are predictable: You gain some extra threaded performance over automatic overclocking with PBO, but lose too much performance in lightly-threaded apps to make it worthwhile. In other words, outside of a few edge cases, like systems that will only do heavily-threaded work, manual overclocking simply isn't worth your time -- or the egregious power consumption it requires for relatively small performance gains.

So we're sticking with AMD's PBO feature for this round of testing. As we've seen, these algorithms provide a speedup that improves threaded performance while also leaving the single-core boost frequency intact. The feature also keeps the Ryzen processor in its power-to-performance sweet spot, which means that it doesn't require too much additional power consumption or cooling. Unfortunately, the gains via PBO are slight, so you definitely shouldn't expect miracles, but they are worthwhile if you have sufficient cooling. However, given the relatively small performance boosts, we think you could get most of the PBO feature with the stock cooler, which we'll put to the test today.

AMD's Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) is an adaptive overclocking approach that allows the processor to communicate with the platform to modulate performance based on the motherboard's power delivery subsystem and thermal dissipation capabilities. The processor monitors Package Power Tracking (PPT), which is total socket power, and the Thermal Design Current (TDC) variable, which is the motherboard's maximum available sustained current. Electrical Design Current (EDC) also indicates the maximum current possible from the VRMs during peak/transient conditions.

AMD enables two options for PBO: IPM is AMD's default PBO setting, which is activated if you leave the PBO setting to 'Auto' in the Godlike's UEFI. But you can select 'Enabled' to activate a profile that's dictated by the maximum limits of the motherboard's power delivery subsystem. These limits vary by motherboard and are defined by the vendor. We chose the latter to unlock the full potential of PBO. This setting kicks the socket's maximum power delivery up to 1000W to offer the best of increased multi-core boost clocks while retaining the high single-core boost clocks.

You can also further tune the power delivery options with an Auto OC (AOC) feature. This new feature grants you some control over the maximum attainable boost clocks by allowing you to add up to an extra 200MHz to the maximum boost clock, but it isn't guaranteed that the processor will reach those speeds at all times, or under all conditions. Instead, the processor will still respect the limits imposed by the motherboard maker.

Unfortunately, we've found that the PBO+AOC feature often comes at the expense of performance in single-threaded workloads even though it is billed as retaining, and even heightening, single-core boost clocks. From a performance and power consumption standpoint, it is more comparable to an all-core overclock. We chose to go with the limits of the motherboard, noted on the charts as PBO.

Security Mitigations

The new AMD-optimized Windows scheduler is only present in Windows 10 1903 and promises to expose gains in several types of applications. As such, we updated our test image to the latest version of Windows 10 available (18362.207). All of our test results come from the aforementioned operating system and include all publicly available security mitigations and the latest motherboard firmware revisions. Intel is currently impacted by Spectre, Spectre v4, Meltdown, Foreshadow, Spectre v3a, Lazy FPU, Spoiler, and MDS, while AMD is only impacted by Spectre and Spectre v4. AMD has added hardware-based mitigations for both variants of Spectre, which should reduce the performance impact, but the requisite patches for both companies have performance penalties, which are reflected here in our testing.

A Note on Multi-Core Enhancement (MCE)

Intel's motherboard partners have infused their boards with predefined all-core boost profiles that go by many names, such as Multi-Core Enhancement (MCE) with ASUS motherboards and Enhanced Turbo with our MSI motherboard. These features are largely referred to as MCE, but the functionality remains the same: These settings essentially apply an all-core overclock to the processor that is defined by the maximum Turbo Boost bin supported by the processor. This setting modifies the CPU's clock rate and voltage to deliver higher performance, which is basically factory-sanctioned overclocking.

MSI turns this on by default in its BIOS, similar to most of its competition. Performance, power consumption, and heat are all affected, naturally. We manually disable this feature for our stock CPU testing to best reflect Intel's specifications. 

Phoronix Benchmark

We added in several new tests from Phornix's open-source benchmark suite. While this suite is heavily focused on Linux test environments, the benchmark utility does have several powerful testing options for Windows systems, along with Apple OS X, GNU Hurd, Solaris, and BSD operating systems. The test also outputs deviation metrics that help ensure accuracy in our test results.

We're integrating key tests, like GIMP productivity, web browser benchmarks, SVT-AV1 encoding, NAMD, and a build-llvm compile-time test.

MSI MEG X570 Godlike

We're using MSI's MEG X570 Godlike as our test platform for the second- and third-gen AMD processors. Due to the compatibility matrix for the AM4 socket, we stepped back to the MSI X470 Gaming M7 AC for the Ryzen 7 1800X.

The pricey Godlike board retails for around $800, but has the 14+4+1-phase power delivery subsystem to support aggressive overclocking.

The MEG X570 Godlike sits at the top of MSI's X570 motherboard hierarchy. It also comes with a few nifty accessories like a 10Gb “Super LAN” Ethernet card and a PCIe Gen 4 Xpander-Z M.2 expansion card. That lets you add two more M.2 drives to complement the three M.2 PCIe Gen 4 M.2 ports on the board. You also get four PCIe 4.0 x16 slots, an RGB Mystic Light Infinity II mirror over the IO shroud, and a tiny OLED screen, alongside the two-digit LCD display for error codes.

Comparison Products

MORE: Best CPUs

MORE: Intel & AMD Processor Hierarchy

MORE: All CPUs Content

Power Consumption

Power consumption measurements are always a bit tricky. But as long as your 12V supply (EPS) readings, motherboard power supply sensor values, and voltage transformer losses plausibly coincide, everything is fine. Therefore, we're using pure package power to avoid possible influences from our motherboard. Results from the PWM controller are very reliable if you take them as averages over a few minutes.

We began with the non-AVX stress test in AIDA64 and found that the Ryzen 7 3600X draws the least power in its class -- and that even applies after overclocking. With PBO active and the Corsair H115i cooler, the chip only drew 76W.

The y-cruncher benchmark computes pi using a heavy multi-threaded AVX workload and also generates a performance measurement that we can use for efficiency metrics. We're also adding in HandBrake in x264 and x265 flavors. The latter uses a heavier distribution of AVX instructions than the former, but both transcoders are great for stressing the processor with a real-world workload.

The small increases in the 3600X's power consumption from overclocking equate to relatively minor performance improvements. It appears that, for stock operation, AMD has tuned the processors right at the knee of the voltage/frequency curve where the chip provides the maximum frequency possible and great efficiency. This PBO configuration also seems to retain some of those same characteristics, but that doesn't leave much headroom for explosive performance gains.

The six-core Ryzen 5 3600X is basically an eight-core Ryzen 7 3700X, but with two cores disabled. That leads to surprisingly similar power consumption measurements during our x265 and y-cruncher tests. 

We tested with both the stock cooler and the Corsair H115i to see how much extra cooling impacts the maximum performance the auto-overclocking algorithms can extract from the processor, and how that impacts power consumption. According to our measurements, the bundled Wraith Spire cooler dissipates enough thermal load to achieve the maximum amount of available performance in these applications. We did see some deltas sprinkled throughout the rest of our tests, but there is little doubt that beefier cooling solutions don't do much to unlock more performance from the Ryzen 5 3600X. 

Plotting power consumption over our performance measurements shows that the Ryzen 5 3600X is an incredibly efficient processor, giving a solid level of performance at impressively low power consumption. That low power consumption isn't all about your electricity bill, either; it also equates to a lower bar for your cooling solution. In this case, the bundled cooler is enough to get great performance while maintaining impressive power efficiency.

MORE: Best CPUs

MORE: Intel & AMD Processor Hierarchy

MORE: All CPUs Content

Test Notes

Test results annotated with "PBO" reflect performance with AMD's auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive feature activated. As noted in the charts, we tested the overclocked Ryzen 5 3600X with two cooling solutions, the Corsair H115i watercooler and the bundled Wraith Spire cooler. We did not include overclocked results for the Ryzen 7 3700X, as those are largely identical to the overclocked 3800X.

VRMark, 3DMark

We aren't big fans of using synthetic benchmarks to measure performance, but 3DMark's DX11 and DX12 CPU tests provide useful insight into the amount of horsepower available to game engines.

The DX11 and DX12 CPU test results expose the full threaded heft of the Ryzen 3000 series processors, so there are few surprises here. The Ryzen 5 3600X offers enough compute power in threaded workloads to unseat even the impressive overclocked Core i5-9600K. If games were coded to lean more on the threaded horsepower of the processor, it would equate to more performance in gaming. Unfortunately, that isn't always the case.

Adding a beefier cooler, in this case, the Corsair H115i, allows the auto-overclocking algorithms to expose an additional 1.47% and 0.5% of performance in the DX12 and DX11 tests, respectively. For most enthusiasts, that likely isn't worth the additional $140.

The VRMark test benefits heavily from per-core performance, and the Ryzen 3000 processors have made great strides compared to the first- and second-gen models. The Ryzen 5 3600X offers 50% more performance than the first-gen Ryzen 5 1600X, and ~29% more performance than the second-gen Ryzen 5 2600X. The beefier Corsair cooler extracts less than a single percentage point of extra performance. 

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation is a computationally intense title that scales well with thread count, but clock speeds and per-core performance play a big role. The 3600X lags the overclocked Core i5-9600K by a mere 1.3 FPS, but kicking in the automated overclocking feature allows it to take the lead.

MORE: Best CPUs

MORE: Intel & AMD Processor Hierarchy

MORE: All CPUs Content

Civilization VI AI, Stockfish Test

The Ryzen 5 3600X shows impressive gains over the previous-gen models in Civilization VI's AI performance test. This 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.

We've added Stockfish, an open-source chess engine, to our test suite. This chess engine is the perennial world leader in computer chess competitions, beating other engines like Goggle'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 the Core i5-9600K as the engine unleashes the power of Ryzen 5's six extra threads. 

Civilization VI Graphics Test

Here we see what will become a familiar trend in many game titles: The 3600X either matches or beats the Core i5-9600K at stock settings, but tuning hands the Core processors the lead. Precision Boost Overdrive gives us an extra 3.2 FPS when paired with the Wraith Spire cooler, but stepping up to a beefier cooler doesn't provide much more uplift.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III

The Warhammer 40,000 benchmark responds well to threading, so the Ryzen 5 3600X takes the lead at stock settings.

MORE: Best CPUs

MORE: Intel & AMD Processor Hierarchy

MORE: All CPUs Content

Far Cry 5

The Ryzen 5 3600X lags the Intel processors in this title, but overclocking shrinks the gap with the -9600K tremendously. That said, overclocking the -9600K propels it to 142.9 FPS.

You'll notice that the PBO configuration with the Wraith Spire cooler takes a slim lead over the Corsair-equipped setup, but the 0.3 FPS margin lands within expected variance for this title.

Final Fantasy XV

We run this test with the standard quality preset to sidestep the impact of a bug that causes the game engine to render off-screen objects. This title scales well with additional cores and threads, but tuning grants minimal uplift for the Ryzen 5 3600X.

MORE: Best CPUs

MORE: Intel & AMD Processor Hierarchy

MORE: All CPUs Content

Grand Theft Auto V

Grand Theft Auto V favors Intel architectures and, more generally, multi-core designs with high clock rates. Ryzen 5 3600X lags the -9600K by a few FPS at stock settings, and again we see that improved cooling does little to improve performance – both setups land within the expected variance for this benchmark.

Hitman 2

Hitman 2 finds the 3600X again beating the stock -9600K, but Intel's overclocking advantage opens up a big lead. The 3600X gains 3.3 frames with the Wraith Spire cooler and overclocking, while the Corsair cooler extracts another 1.1 FPS. 

MORE: Best CPUs

MORE: Intel & AMD Processor Hierarchy

MORE: All CPUs Content

Project CARS 2

Although Project CARS 2 is purportedly optimized for threading, clock rates obviously affect this title's frame rates. Intel's per-core performance, which is a mixture of IPC and frequency, pays big dividends in this title.

The Division 2

The two overclocked Ryzen 5 3600X configurations offer nearly the same amount of performance, again highlighting that additional cooling might not be worth the additional investment.

World of Tanks enCore

We can add Worlds of Tanks to the list of titles that respond extremely well to overclocking Intel's chips. We also see gains with the overclocked 3600X, but they aren't nearly as explosive.

MORE: Best CPUs

MORE: Intel & AMD Processor Hierarchy

MORE: All CPUs Content

Web Browser

Browsers tend to be impacted more by the recent security mitigations than other types of applications, so Intel has taken a haircut in these benchmarks of fully-patched systems.

The ARES-6 web browser benchmark makes its debut in our lineup due to its focus on the latest and greatest JavaScript features, with a heavy focus on forward neural networks used for machine learning tasks, and browser responsiveness. The 3600X offers an amazing performance boost over both the first- and second-gen Ryzen models, highlighting AMD's diligent work on improving IPC. Intel's processors continue to wield the company's frequency advantage, which equates to higher per-core performance, to great effect as they lead by substantial margins.

Speedometer 2 and Jetstream 2 tell a similar story. While AMD's processors are fast enough to deliver a great user experience, the Intel processors still hold the lead. However, the Ryzen 5 3600X is competitive with the stock -9600K in several of the tests, and carves out a slight lead in WebXPRT 3.

You'll notice that overclocking the Ryzen processors doesn't yield any improvement. That's because the processor is still limited to its 4.4 GHz maximum boost speed during these lightly-threaded tasks.

Microsoft Office

The Microsoft Office suite of benchmarks runs via PCMark 10's new application test. This benchmark tests with real Microsoft Office applications, and we can see that the Ryzen 3000 series processors are very competitive in Excel, the Edge browser, and Word.

We see some gains via overclocking the Ryzen 5 3600X, but they aren't as pronounced in the Office suite. Again, the beefier cooler offers little additional performance uplift.

Productivity

The LLVM compiler benefits from extra threads, handing the 3600X an easy lead over the -9600K, even after we overclock the Intel silicon. The 3600X even grapples with the 12-threaded -9700K in this test. The flagship Ryzen 9 3900X offers the best performance by far, easily beating the rest of the test pool, even at stock settings.

The application start-up metric measures load time snappiness in word processors, GIMP, and Web browsers under warm- and cold-start conditions. Other platform-level considerations affect this test as well, including the storage subsystem. The Core i5-9600K takes a relatively slim lead over the 3600X, but adding a PCIe 4.0 SSD to our Ryzen test system swings this benchmark in favor of the Ryzen 3000-series processors.

Our video conferencing suite measures performance in single- and multi-user applications that utilize the Windows Media Foundation for playback and encoding. It also performs facial detection to model real-world usage.

The photo editing benchmark measures performance with Futuremark's binaries using the ImageMagick library. Common photo processing workloads also tend to be parallelized, which plays well to Ryzen's multi-threaded heft. It isn't surprising, then, to find the 3600X taking the lead over the stock -9600K.

MORE: Best CPUs

MORE: Intel & AMD Processor Hierarchy

MORE: All CPUs Content

Rendering

As we can see throughout this series of tests, AMD's Ryzen processors undoubtedly sit atop the multi-threaded benchmark throne. The six-core -9600K, which lacks Hyper-Threading, is out of its element in these tasks. Meanwhile, the 12-threaded Ryzen 5 3600X dominates in these types of workloads with convincing wins across the board. Intel's overclocking advantage is a boon for gamers, but it isn't enough to level the playing field in threaded rendering tests: Cranking away at 5.0 GHz, the Core i5-9600K lags the stock 3600X in nearly every multi-threaded test. 

Encoding

The SVT-AV1 encoder is an Intel- and Netflix-designed software video encoder that became available earlier this year. This new encoder is more scalable than other encoders, thus offering faster encoding times paired with efficient compression. While it may seem counter-intuitive to use an Intel-designed encoder for testing AMD processors, consider that most encoders are inherently reliant upon per-core performance, which is a strength of Intel, while SVT-AV1 exposes the power of threading, a strength of Ryzen. Here we can see AMD's Ryzen 5 3600X going toe-to-toe with the stock -9600K.

Our LAME and FLAC tests, like many encoders, rely heavily upon per-core performance. That means Intel's frequency advantage comes into play, allowing the -9600K to take the lead. The -9600K's advantage at stock settings is slight, but overclocking propels the -9600K into the upper echelons of the chart.

Intel processors traditionally leverage high frequencies to dominate the HandBrake x265 test, which relies heavily on AVX instructions, and the H.264 test. But Intel's higher clock speed isn't too much of an advantage in these tests when the similarly-priced competition has twice the number of threads, so the Ryzen 5 3600X carves out nice leads in both x265 and x264 encoding.

Compression, Decompression, Encryption, AVX

Our threaded compression and decompression 7-Zip and ZLib tests work directly from system memory, removing storage throughput from the equation. The combination of Ryzen 5 3600X's improved memory subsystem and generous helping of cores helps it take an easy lead over the -9600K.

We can also see the vast improvement in Ryzen's AVX performance in the y-cruncher tests: We would never have imagined such a massive generational leap, particularly in single-threaded performance. The work AMD has done here, along with the substantially larger caches that can feed the demanding AVX instructions, is truly impressive and benefits a wide range of applications.

MORE: Best CPUs

MORE: Intel & AMD Processor Hierarchy

MORE: All CPUs Content

Conclusion

Out of the box, the Ryzen 5 3600X is the best processor in its price range for gaming and productivity, marking a massive shift in the mid-range. At stock settings, the Ryzen 5 3600X regularly beat the more expensive Core i5-9600K in both categories, albeit by slim margins in gaming, reversing the long-held trend of Ryzen being best for productivity while Intel ruled the gaming roost. If you're into overclocking, the Intel processors are going to deliver more performance, but the majority of enthusiasts looking for a set-it-and-forget-it processor will find incredible value in the Ryzen 5 3600X.

In the chart below, we plot gaming performance with both average frame rates and a geometric mean of the 99^th percentile frame times (a good indicator of smoothness). It's worth noting that AMD's previous-gen line-up is heavily discounted, so we’re departing from our standard practice of using official price lists. Instead, we’re using average pricing found online (temporary sales excluded). Volatility applies.

After a few years of staring at gaming value charts that always show Intel in the leadership position, it jumps right off the page that the stock Ryzen 5 3600X topples the Intel Core i5-9600K. The difference is slight in average framerates, a mere 1.1 FPS, but widens to 2.5 FPS in 99th percentile metrics, indicating the 3600X also offers a smoother gaming experience. While these deltas are small and likely imperceptible to casual users, especially when these chips are paired with mid-range graphics cards or higher-resolutions, there's no understating the impact. Intel does take the uncontested lead after overclocking, so overclocking enthusiasts will still flock to those processors for the ultimate gaming performance, but the Ryzen 5 3600X is the new king of the mid-range for the majority of gamers.

The -9600K can't compete with the 3600X in many threaded applications, like rendering, even after overclocking. Pairing the 3600X's slightly better gaming performance with its overwhelming advantage in threaded productivity apps seals the deal.

But there are two elephants in the room. Firstly, not all Ryzen models are hitting their rated boost clock rates. This boils down to several factors, including motherboard firmwares that will hopefully improve, and how enthusiasts measure clock rates. We measured clock rates at a 100ms granularity and found that, unlike what we've seen with the Ryzen 9 3900X, the Ryzen 5 3600X does achieve its rated clock speeds. There are a few caveats associated with that, which we'll dive into deeper in a follow-up piece. 

Overclocking performance is also another concern for enthusiasts. The previous-gen Ryzen models were never known for their overclocking prowess, but more often than not, you could eke out some decent performance gains via manual tuning. Outside of a few edge use-cases, those days are over. Now it's best to stick with AMD's automated PBO overclocking feature, and you shouldn't expect massive gains. It seems that AMD is extracting the best performance it can from the 7nm process at stock clocks, so there is precious little overhead left to exploit. Intel does offer higher overclocking capability, and that will continue to be attractive to enthusiasts chasing that last frame per second in their favorite titles.

AMD's PBO does give some slight performance gains, and the company says that better cooling can extract better performance. We found that to be true, but the bundled (i.e., 'free') Wraith Spire cooler offers the lion's share of the benefits of PBO, and with no additional investments. As you can see in the gaming performance charts above, a beefy $140 liquid cooler with dual 140mm fans cranking away at full speed extracted an additional 0.8 FPS in average gaming performance and 0.2 FPS in 99th percentile measurements. The beefier cooler did give us slightly larger gains in some heavily-threaded applications, but the basic rule still holds: The Wraith Spire will give you 90-95% of the performance of PBO with no additional investment. There are other reasons to go with a better cooler, such as aesthetics or acoustics. However, if your sole objective is to extract more performance, that money is best spent on other additives, like a better GPU or a new PCIe 4.0 SSD.

The ability to even use a PCIe 4.0 device at its full performance is an advantage that Intel simply can't match. Unfortunately, the faster interface does result in higher-priced X570 motherboards, but AMD's continued support for the X470 motherboard ecosystem could help blunt the blow. Motherboard partners continue to offer X470 motherboards, and they are cheap and plentiful. You'll lose access to the PCIe 4.0 interface in exchange for lower pricing, at least officially, but you'll also have a compelling upgrade path in the future.

Our only hesitation with recommending the 3600X comes from competition within AMD's own stable. After overclocking, AMD's non-X models, like the Ryzen 5 3600, often offer the same level of performance as their more-expensive counterparts. That means the 3600 looks like a great chip (from afar) that will offer similar performance at a $50 savings. We'll have that part in for testing soon.

With all of Ryzen 5 3600X's advantages, aside from higher overclocking ceilings or integrated graphics, there are very few reasons to buy a competing Intel processor in this price range. The Ryzen 5 3600X has stolen the mid-range crown from Intel.

Image Credits: Tom's Hardware

MORE: Best CPUs

MORE: Intel & AMD Processor Hierarchy

MORE: All CPUs Content

Are you ready to upgrade your old gaming rig? Newegg has this awesome Ryzen 5 3600X and Sapphire Radeon RX 5700 bundle for $559.89, which saves you up to $40 as opposed to buying each part individually.

• Get the Ryzen 5 3600X and Sapphire Radeon RX 5700 bundle for $559.89.

The Ryzen 5 3600X is part of AMD's Zen 2 army that recently invaded the processor market. The processor has formidable attributes that include six cores, 12 threads and up to 32MB of L3 cache. The chip runs with a 3.8 GHz base clock and 4.4 GHz boost clock. The Ryzen 5 3600X supports DDR4-3200 memory modules and the new PCIe 4.0 inferface out of the box. The Wraith Spire CPU cooler is included with the Ryzen 5 3600X so you don't have to spend extra for a cooling solution.

The Sapphire Radeon RX 5700 is a Navi-powered graphics card that's based on AMD's pristine RDNA (Radeon DNA) architecture. It comes with 2,304 Stream Processors that operate with a 1,465 MHz base clock, 1,625 MHz game clock and a boost clock that tops out at 1,725 MHz. The graphics card also has 8GB of GDDR6 memory running at 14 Gbps across a 256-bit memory bus for a maximum memory bandwidth of 448 GB/s.

The Radeon RX 5700 has a TBP (Typical Board Power) off 180W and draws power from one eight-pin PCIe connector and one six-pin PCIe connector. It's recommended that your system has at least a 600W power supply.

Should You Buy This Bundle?

As usual, we highly recommend you check out our in-depth Radeon RX 5700 review before opening your wallet. For more help picking the best graphics card for you, there's our graphics card buying guide, the AMD and Nvidia GPU hierarchy and our breakdown of the best graphics cards we've tested.

You can also review our CPU buying guide for help. To see where the Ryzen 5 3600X ranks among others currently available, including from rival Intel, check out our CPU hierarchy page. And for other CPUs we love, see our favorite gaming CPUs and favorite CPUs for productivity performance. 

The benchmark and result database Passmark (also known as cpubenchmark.net) recently added the six-core, 12-thread Ryzen 5 3600 to its ranks and, if these results are accurate, the performance is nothing short of incredible. The Ryzen 5 3600 seemingly matches the performance of the Core i9-9900K (which has two more cores) in multi-threaded testing and actually beats the -9900K in single threaded tests (beating the 2700X by 36%), making the Ryzen 5 3600 the fastest single-threaded CPU, according to Passmark.

However, it does have to be said; this sounds just a little too good to be true. The $200 CPU has lower clock speeds and fewer cores, making the test results dubious. Matching the -9900K, let alone beating it, seems too good to be true. Luckily, Passmark lets you look at the five most recent benchmarks for any given CPU, and at the time of writing, there are three we can examine (seemingly from the same test system).

The system reportedly uses a B450 Aorus M board, not an X570 board. According to the reported clock speed, the CPU doesn't seem to be overclocked either; all three tests show the same turbo of 4.21 GHz, and one result shows a "measured speed" of 3.37 GHz, and the other two 3.61 GHz. It doesn't seem like there was some sort of trick making this 3600 so fast, at least not something we can glean from Passmark's reported information.

Interestingly, the third benchmark for the 3600 uses a 16GB kit of 3200 MHz CL14 G Skill RAM, unlike the first two benchmarks which used a single stick of Crucial RAM at 2666 MHz CL16. The third benchmark reports a score of 7% faster than the two previous scores, which implies that Zen 2 and/or Passmark benefits heavily from having high-speed low-latency dual-channel RAM, something which previous iterations of Zen also benefit from.

Overall, this result seems legitimate, but AMD's lowest-end Zen 2 CPU beating the -9900K overall seems unrealistic at best, especially when AMD positions the beefier Ryzen 7 3800X against the Core i9-9900K. This benchmark does, however, prove that Zen 2 does some things far better than Coffee Lake, which bodes well for Zen 2's overall performance. July 7th is just eight days away now, so it won't be long before we know what the Ryzen 5 3600 can really do.