Ryzen 5 6600H is only 5 percent faster than the Ryzen 5 5600H to feel like a rebrand in many aspects

Laptops sporting the AMD Ryzen 5 6600H CPU are now just beginning to hit the market to replace last year's Ryzen 5 5600H. We recently reviewed our first 6600H retail model via the budget-friendly Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 15 which gave us a pretty good idea of what the affordable Zen 3+ CPU is capable of. Our benchmarks below compare the 6600H in our Lenovo to several other laptops running on the older Ryzen 5 5600H. How does AMD's newer CPU hold up to its immediate predecessor?

Unfortunately, fans who were crossing their fingers for a boost in processor performance will be disappointed. The 6600H is just barely faster than the average 5600H laptop in our database by only single-digit percentage points. In fact, a select few 5600H laptops can actually match or even outperform our 6600H. CPU power draws remain similar as well for no major improvements in terms of performance-per-watt.

The biggest difference between the 6600H and the 5600H lies instead in their integrated GPUs. The Radeon 660M in the Zen 3+ CPU readily outperforms the Radeon RX Vega in the older Zen 3 CPU. We've yet to run iGPU benchmarks on the 6600H, however, as the IdeaPad Gaming 3 15 ships with a dedicated GeForce GPU. Nonetheless, our experience with the Ryzen 5 Pro 6650U reveals the Radeon 660M to be slightly faster than most laptops running on the Iris Xe 96 EUs which outperforms any integrated Zen 2 or Zen 3 Radeon RX Vega solution.

Based on our findings, the 6600H will only offer minimal benefits at best over the 5600H in gaming laptops since such laptops typically come with faster dedicated graphics to supplant the integrated solution. Therefore, it's recommend that gamers invest in an older 5600H laptop with faster graphics and a better display rather than a newer 6600H laptop just for the newer generation processor. The 5600H will work best outside of gaming laptops and onto thinner Ultrabooks and mini PCs where dedicated GPU options are not usually available.