Ryzen 7 was just the tip of the iceberg for AMD’s next-generation processor ambitions. AMD also revealed its plans to roll out Ryzen 5 processors at an even more disruptive price (sub $300/£250/AU$400) for gamers and creators in the next couple of months.
The first of these will be the Ryzen 5 1600X, which features 6-cores and 12-threads. With a base clock speed of 3.6GHz and the potential to boost to 4.0GHz, it’s a worthy rival to the Intel Core i5-7600K.
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Just below the 1600X power-wise, AMD also plans to introduce a Ryzen 5 1500X chip outfitted with 4-cores and 8-threads tuned to a 3.5GHz frequency (3.7GHz boost clock)
When going up against the competitive i5-7600K, AMD claims its flagship Ryzen 5 1600X processor performs 69% better in the Cinebench benchmark tests with a score of 1,196cb whereas Intel’s part could only achieve 669cb.
As with Ryzen 7 processors, it seems AMD has a leg up on multi-threaded processes, which should lend themselves better to CPU-intensive tasks like live-streaming and encoding video. Of course, we’ll have to test and see if they can really live up to that one number.
AMD also has more planned for the second half of the year and we can expect even lower-priced Ryzen 3 chips for budget gamers. AMD has noted it wants to cater to the eSports crowd that typically plays MOBA and FPS games.
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