CPU Performance
Frequency is king for single-threaded PiFast. We already had a good idea of how both of these Ryzen 5 chips would benchmark because their frequencies are closely aligned to Ryzen 7 processors. Intel maintains both an IPC and frequency lead though Ryzen 5 is fundamentally better than the older FX chips. Would we have liked a little more perf in many of the applications that rely on a single thread? Yes, but AMD is back in the game.
AMD's far more aggressive core-per-dollar pricing - and you will see visual representation of this later - means that multi-threaded benchmark results are impressive. The Ryzen 5 1600X costs close to $100 less than the Core i7-7700K and is able to beat it in our trio of multi-core-focussed benchmarks because it ships with 50 per cent more cores and threads. That's more than enough to get around the aforementioned IPC and frequency obstacle.
The Ryzen 5 1500X, meanwhile, is about 20 per cent slower than the Core i7-7700K for this very reason. On the financial flip side, it only costs $20 more than a Core i3-7350K and is in another multi-core league altogether. Want the best bang for your cores? Ryzen 5 provides in spades.
