AMD launched the first chips based on the company’s new “Zen” architecture earlier this month. The Ryzen 7 chips are powerful chips aimed at high-performance desktop computers.

Now AMD is announcing that its more affordable Ryzen 5 line of quad-core and hexa-core desktop-class chips are on the way. Ryzen processors will be available starting April 11th.

With prices starting at just $169, these chips are basically AMD’s answer to the latest Intel Core i5 Kaby Lake processor lineup.

So how do they actually compare? We’ll probably start to see real-world test results closer to launch day, but AMD says its $249 Ryzen 5-1600X is a 6-core, 12-thread chip with support for boost clock speeds up to 4 GHz. It allegedly scores nearly 70% higher in the Cinebench test than the similarly-priced Intel Core i5-7600K.

That’s the most powerful member of the Ryzen 5 family for now. But like all Ryzen chips, it’s an unlocked processor, which means that enthusiasts can attempt to overclock the chip to run at higher speeds.

AMD says the Ryzen 7 chips are more suited to heavy-duty multitasking (such as playing a video game and live streaming it at the same time or workstation-class tasks). But folks that want a chip that’s powerful enough to handle gaming in a single-tasking environment might be satisfied with a Ryzen 5 chip like the 1600X when paired with a high-performance graphics cards..

Here’s a rundown of the Ryzen 5 chips launching April 11th:

  • Ryzen 5 1400: 3.2 GHz quad-core 65W chip with 3.4 GHz boost speeds
  • Ryzen 5 1500X: 3.5 GHz quad-core 65W chip with 3.7 GHz boost speeds
  • Ryzen 5 1600: 3.2 GHz hexa-core 65W chip with 3.6 GHz boost speeds
  • Ryzen 5 1600X: 3.6 GHz hexa-core 95W chip with 4 GHz boost speeds

AMD also plans to launch less powerful (and likely cheaper) Ryzen 3 chips in the second half of 2017.

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10 replies on “AMD Ryzen 5 desktop ships launch April 11th for $169 and up”

  1. Hmmm, AMD cpu’s have been a no-go for gamers for a long time.
    In fact, the olde Core i5-2500 still outcompetes AMD’s flagship FX8350.

    And to ensure you get little/no bottlenecks via the cpu side people had to adopt either the:
    Core i7-2600K
    Core i7-3770K
    Core i5-4670
    Core i5-6500
    Core i5-7400

    So today it makes sense for gamers to get a Core i5-7400, 16GB DDR-2133 RAM, a mid-range SSD (eg Crucial MX300) and after all that… get the best gpu they can afford with the money left.

    So gamers interested in Ryzen chips would mostly benefit from the AMD RyZen 5-1500X.
    The r5-1500X isn’t quite as fast as the Core i7-7700K, but like it, neither should pose any bottlenecks from the cpu-side. And it would definitely be faster than the Core i5-7600 and the Core i5-6600K.

    So gamers, either go team Blue-Green:
    Core i5-7400 + Nvidia GTX 1060 (6GB)
    …or go team Red:
    r5-1500X + RX 480 (4GB)

    Probably one of the best bang-for-buck combinations!

  2. That’s a big price jump over the models it replaces. I see people backing off over that.

  3. Interesting. Could I change multiplier freely on both of them? It’s understood, that X processors are more confident to overclock, but I personally intend to underclock them… Nowadays Intel doesn’t allow change multiplier (not up, not down) on non-K processors. Due to thermal efficiency on installations without fans, I would prefer to underclock my processors to stable temp about 60C in maximum load. Even if it 2.0GHz. And yet I need desktop platform, not a notebook in dekstop case.

    2. Interesting thought. I hadn’t thought about under-clocking a CPU. If you go this route, though, please buy only one at first and test it under work conditions to make sure it will do the job under-clocked. I would hate to see you buy a bunch of these expecting to under-clock them and find they won’t do the job you intended them to do.

    3. I can lower the multiplier with my Haswell, do the newer motherboard chipsets block this? The OS should be doing this for lower power states anyway, so if they are foolish enough to force chipsets to not allow the user to lower the multiplier then you should be able to do this in the OS. I haven’t used Win 10 yet but I don’t see how this could be possible.

      1. Is your Haswell processor has “k” litera or not? Do you use Z-chipset motherboard or H-chipset?
        Basically, could you tell us your processor and your motherboard models?

        1. It is a G1850 Celeron with an H81 chipset. I was curious as to what point in time they stopped allowing to lower the multiplier in BIOS, because I have never heard this before. Lowering the multiplier is one of the most important functions of a low power idle state and has been for years as far as I am aware. Perhaps certain boards removed the option from BIOS, but this doesn’t mean all CPU’s or chipsets in that family can’t lower the multiplier. Laptop users in particular would be in a lot of trouble if the multiplier was locked in at full speed.

          In older Windows versions you could set a maximum processor percentage, which would lower the max multiplier. I use Linux now and cpufrequtils and other utilities can be used to monitor and adjust the multiplier settings and behavior of how it automatically adjusts. I think the ads on this page keep my CPU up at 2900 MHZ but when I close my browser it drops to 800MHZ. I can limit the max multiplier on my H81M-H Gigabyte motherboard.

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