AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Zen 2 first review and benchmarks leak

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One of the first reviews for AMD’s upcoming Ryzen 5 3600 CPU has broken cover. Spanish site El Chapuzas Informatico appears to have taken the embargo and wiped its behind with it, beating every other site to the punch.

As a result, we’ve got some fairly detailed looks at the Ryzen 5 3600 processor’s performance across a range of benchmarks, including Cinebench, Aida64, wPrime, Unigine Heaven 4, and of course a smattering of game benchmarks from the likes of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Total War: Warhammer 2, and Far Cry 5.

There are a few small caveats to these tests though. Firstly, El Chapuzas doesn’t have access to an X570 motherboard yet, so all these benchmarks were performed on an X470 chipset. There are still a few teething issues in terms of support and, as a result, the reviewer notes the Ryzen 5 3600 crashes whenever an overclock is applied.

We’ll start with the Ryzen 5 3600 itself though, which is just one of six confirmed AMD Ryzen 3000 series processors. All of these CPUs will use the 7nm Zen 2 core architecture, the first consumer CPUs to utilise the new process. The Ryzen 5 3600 sits right at the bottom of the pile, offering 6C / 12T, clocked at 3.6 GHz base and 4.2 GHz boost clock speed. It has a 65W TDP, ships with a Wraith Stealth cooler, and carries a price tag of just $199.

These tests were performed on a system with an X470 AORUS Gaming 7 motherboard, 16GB 3200 MHz DDR4 memory, and with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition graphics card.

The results, well, the results are mighty impressive. In terms of multi-core performance, the Ryzen 5 3600 can outperform an Intel Core i7-9700K ($374), while single-core performance is approaching an Intel Core i9-9900K ($485). It’s a bit of a monster, to be honest, and demonstrates impressive IPC improvements from AMD. Factor in that this is the weakest of all the announced Ryzen 3000 Zen 2 CPUs and AMD is coming out fighting.

There are still a few questions marks over this hardware but the early impressions indicate AMD could be onto a winner here. We’re keen to see some wider reviews of the Ryzen 3000 series, particularly in terms of the overclocking capabilities, as well as with the final BIOS updates and X570 motherboards.

For now though, if you’re thinking about top-tier gaming performance for a price that won’t break the bank, the Ryzen 5 3600 is looking like a fine contender. The 3600, and the five other Zen 2 processors, are all due to launch on July 7th.

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