AMD Ryzen 5 2600 takes on the Intel Core i5-8600K in first benchmarks

We're just a couple of days away from the official unveiling of the next generation Ryzen CPUs but select reviewers have already got their hands on the new chips. After posting initial benchmarks of the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, Spanish site El Chapuzas Informatico has now posted benchmark scores of the Ryzen 5 2600. Most reviewers were handed the Ryzen 5 2600X; therefore, this review of the non-X part makes for an interesting comparison. Specs wise, the Ryzen 5 2600 is a 6C/12T part clocked at 3.4 GHz base and 3.9 GHz boost with a 65W TDP. The Ryzen 5 2600X on the other hand, while still a 6C/12T part, is clocked at 3.6 GHz base and 4.2 GHz turbo and sports a 95W TDP envelope. Price wise, the Ryzen 5 2600 competes with the Intel 'Coffee Lake-S' Core i5-8600K, which is a 6C/6T CPU (no HyperThreading) clocked at 3.6 GHz base and 4.3 GHz turbo with a 95W TDP. Let's now have a look at how the new Ryzen performs.

El Chapuzas Informatico's test bed comprised of the following —

• X470 motherboard with RGB (under NDA)
• G.Skill FlareX DDR4
• MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Gaming Z
• Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 1200W
• Adata SU900 256 GB SSD
• Corsair LX 512 GB SSD
• Windows 10 64-bit

The Ryzen 5 2600 continues AMD's legacy of great performance in CPU-intensive tasks with strong multi-core performance. While the Ryzen 5 2600 lagged significantly behind the Core i5-8600K and even the Core i5-8400 in single-core wPrime (32M) tests, it managed to maintain a respectable lead over the previous generation Ryzens. AMD has gone for improved core speeds with Zen+ and it shows. The Ryzen 5 2600, however, gets to flex its muscles in the multi-core wPrime test where it manages to beat the Core i5-8600K by a significant margin but still falls short of the Core i7-8700K and the Ryzen 7 1700X. Cinebench R15 and x264 benchmarks also paint a similar picture with the Ryzen 5 2600 sitting right below the Core i7-8700K and well above the Core i5-8400. As expected and detailed earlier, the Ryzen 7 2700X absolutely trumps the competition in these benchmarks. In synthetic GPU benchmarks, the Ryzen 5 2600 manages to move past the Core i5-8500K and is within reach of the 'Skylake-X' Core i7-7800X, which is an admirable feat in itself. 

AMD markets the Ryzen 5 2600 as high performant CPU for gamers and while it obviously does not top the charts, it fares wonderfully well in the games that were run. The Core i5-8600K did top the charts in Battlefield 1 and Doom but the Ryzen 5 2600 was not too far behind. The difference in fps in most games was in single digits at best. It even managed to beat the Core i7-8700K in Resident Evil 7, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Total War Warhammer 2. All games were run at FHD Ultra settings. In supported games, the Ryzen 5 2600 showed very good DirectX 12 performance. The X470 platform has support for faster DDR4 RAM and that should help with some frame rate boosts as well.

The reviewers could overclock the CPU up to 4.30 GHz with 1.5V but the system was found to be more stable at 4.10 GHz with 1.456V. The overclock resulted in a 2.5% improvement in Cinebench scores and a 1% improvement in 3DMark Fire Strike scores. There was no mention of using an aftermarket cooler so we assume that the overclock was performed with the bundled Wraith Stealth cooler.

At an asking price of US$199, the Ryzen 5 2600 scores big on performance per dollar compared to the Core i5-8600K, which currently retails for US$238 on Amazon. The excellent multi-core performance coupled with significantly improved fps scores in gaming compared to the previous generation makes the Ryzen 5 2600 a no-brainer for anyone looking to build a capable mid-range PC for content creation and FHD gaming at Ultra settings. We look forward to test this chip ourselves and see how it performs against some big names in our database. April 19th cannot come sooner.

Source(s)