AMD’s new Zen architecture and Ryzen line of CPUs has been a real shot in the company’s arm when it comes to its competitive standing with Intel. The Ryzen 7 series of processors has demonstrated strong performance wherever multiple cores are a benefit and competitive gaming performance given the price.
The Ryzen 5 series hasn’t yet hit the streets, and so there’s not much hard data on how it will perform compared to Intel’s Core i5 CPUs. However, one intrepid reviewer managed to get a Ryzen 5 1400 running in a system and provided a video overview of its performance, as Hexus reports.
Santiago Santiago was the reviewer, and he compared the Ryzen 5 1400 both stock and overclocked to 3.8GHz to the Intel Core i5-7400 and Intel Pentium G4560. That equates to the Ryzen 5’s four cores and eight threads going up against the Core i5’s four cores and four threads and the Pentium’s two cores and four threads.
Note that the performance comparison was limited somewhat by the pre-release nature of the Ryzen 5 and the lack of updated firmware. The processor gets hot as is, and apparently that limited the ability to overclock. RAM was also running at a relatively slow speed.
Nevertheless, the video does provides a tantalizing glimpse at the Ryzen 5’s performance, and Santiago ran a number of games to compare performance across the AMD and Intel chips. Santiago was kind enough to provide a list of the games and where the coverage begins in the video in his description:
- Battlefield 1 (01:18)
- Fallout 4 (04:04)
- GTA 5 (04:51)
- Hitman (06:49)
- Just Cause (07:39)
- Assassin’s Creed (08:06)
- The Witcher 3 (08:57)
- Rise of the Tomb Raider (10:02)
After providing a brief introduction, Santiago went straight to clips from the games in a split-screen mode showing relative performance. Results were mixed depending on the game, where in some cases the overclocked Ryzen 5 exceeded the Intel Core i5’s performance, in some cases matched it, and in yet some other cases fell short.
On paper, Ryzen 5 should perform as well as or better than the comparably priced Intel Core i5 processors. Ryzen 5 offers double the threads of Intel’s Core i5-7400, and offers a faster maximum clock speed. The Intel equivalent is also slightly more expensive.
According to Santiago’s testing, the Ryzen 5 is competitive against Intel’s CPUs, and there’s still room for improvement as AMD brings the chips to market. If you’re considering AMD’s newest midrange chips instead of Intel’s, then the video should be something of an eye opener in helping you establish your plans. Ryzen 5 is expected to be released sometime in the current quarter.
