![]() For Intel, to get the best out of the unlocked K chips, investing in either a Z170 or Z270 board is essential - overclocking only works with those expensive chipsets, and even your fast DDR4 is limited to 2400MHz on lower-end motherboards. A key advantage of the AM4 platform is that processor and memory overclocking is not limited to the most expensive boards though - we also verified similar results in an Asus board based on the cheaper B350 chipset. In terms of equipment, we tested our Ryzen 5s on an MSI X370 Titanium board and paired them with two 8GB modules of 3200MHz GSkill Flare-X DDR4. By extension, you can assume that the CPU with higher results offers more headroom, more future-proofing if you like. It's not indicative of performance in an actual gaming rig, but it shows the difference in relative power between one CPU and the next. The idea is to remove graphics as the limiting factor and push CPU (and by extension, DDR4 memory bandwidth) to the forefront of testing. ![]() Our methodology adjusts the focus though: we run our test titles at 1080p on ultra settings or close to it, and we pair the CPU with an overclocked Titan X Pascal graphics card. Ideally, gaming frame-rates should be limited either by the GPU, by v-sync or by a frame-rate limiter - all of these scenarios give smoother gameplay. The role of the CPU is in running game logic and simulation (physics, animation and much more) then preparing the instructions for the GPU on what to draw. It's a strategy that works well in these benchmarks and it also carries through to gaming - which begs the question: to what extent is the CPU important to gameplay? Meanwhile, AMD blitzes the competition through sheer brute force in terms of processing resources. Its per-core performance is excellent, but clearly the lack of hyper-threading is holding it back significantly, both in games (as seen in the i5 vs i7 benchmark video) and productivity applications. Regardless though, the i5 is clearly on shaky ground. This video breakdown of the strengths and weaknesses of Ryzen 5 and Core i5 effectively visualises why we reckon AMD has the better buy in the mainstream CPU market. However, the HEVC results place the Ryzens in-between the i5 and i7 - this is because the x265 encoder utilises AVX instructions heavily, an area of CPU design where Intel is much stronger. They reveal that AMD's much cheaper CPUs can power through h.264 encoding, beating the i5 effortlessly and marginally outperforming the 7700K. ![]() The benchmarks a little further down the page are based on our real-life workflow based on 4K processing with Handbrake, using the industry-leading x264 and x265 encoders. Here at Digital Foundry, we do a lot of video encoding. The extent to which that synthetic benchmark reflects on real-life performance in productivity apps will, of course, vary according to the application. The cheaper Rycan even beat the Core i7 7700K - even though the latter has a 1GHz advantage over the AMD offering. Cinebench confirms that Intel's Kaby Lake has a substantial single-thread advantage but on the multi-core benchmark, AMD's lead is overwhelming. However, despite Ryzen 5's massive advantage in terms of basic resources, Intel still has some fundamental advantages - but certainly in terms of productivity, there's no competition. Both Ryand 1600X have six full cores and 12 threads, available for the same ballpark money as the i5's basic four cores and four threads. The rest of the review effectively writes itself then: what Ryzen 5 lacks in clocks, it makes up for with many more threads. Single-core performance is still important but the takeaway is that more processing cores and threads trump frequency, with the majority of modern game engines favouring more than four cores. Across the titles tested, the majority show a stock i7 outperforming an overclocked i5. To understand why Ryzen 5 is so effective, check out this stock vs 4.8GHz overclock Core i5 7600K vs Core i7 7700K benchmark head-to-head. And to cut straight to the chase, given the choice between a 7600K or the cheaper Ryzen 5 1600, it's the AMD product we'd choose. But the return of AMD has already proven disruptive in other areas of the x86 market and the Ryand 1600X are simply irresistible products: Core i5 is no longer the 'go to' CPU line for gamers - there is now genuine, potent competition. The i5 is always fast out of the box and overclocking can keep your platform competitive for anything up to five or even six years. Since the release of the Core i5 2500K in January 2011, Intel's mainstream quad-core processor line has been the default choice for those looking to put together a capable gaming PC.
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