AMD Takes The Fight to Intel With New Midrange Ryzen 5 Processors

AMD shocked everyone when they released their long awaited Ryzen series of processors. At first the company released the high end processors which competed with $1000+ Intel chips and cost less than half of that. Following up on that, the chipmaker announced the rest of the Ryzen lineup. Called Ryzen 5 it includes 4 different CPU models.

These are are essentially just two processors, with a normal and a beefed up frequency variant.

Ryzen 5 Series Specifications and Price

The highest end processor in the Ryzen 5 lineup is the Ryzen 5 1600X, which comes with a 6-core configuration and 12 threads. The base clock is set at 3.6GHz with a turbo clock of 4GHz. The 1600X also has a TDP of 95W and starts at $249.

The next in line is the Ryzen 5 1600, with similar core and thread-count. It is clocked lower at 3.2GHz with a lower turbo boost of 3.6GHz. It has a TDP of 65W, like every other processor in the range that follows it. It is priced at $219.

AMD is likely trying to tackle Intel’s i5-7600K chip with these two processors as they cost the same as Intel’s offering. Intel’s chip has four cores and slightly lower TDP compared with AMD’s 1600X and 1600 and does not feature hyper-threading unlike AMD’s processors.

Moving on towards the less expensive CPUs, the 1500X and 1400 come in quad-core configurations with 8 threads each. The former has a base clock of 3.5GHz with a turbo of 3.7GHz,while the latter comes with a 3.2GHz base clock and 3.4GHz on boost.

As for the pricing, 1500X costs $189 while the 1400 costs $169

Here, AMD is targeting the i5-7500K with the 1500X and 1400. All 3 feature the same TDP and cores but AMD offers double the threads (8 compared to 4). The price falls within the same range as well.

Close Competition

As for performance benchmarks, we don’t have any yet. With its high end Ryzen processors AMD tried to make up for the lack of single-core performance by including more cores and threads. However with Ryzen 5 the only difference is the number of threads which would make the competition interesting.

The Ryzen 5 series is compatible with AM4 sockets, the same ones used in the high end Ryzen processors. Compatibility would not be an issue if you try to upgrade from a lower end Ryzen CPU to a higher end one.

AMD will also pair the processors with its own Wraith series of optional coolers.

The series is set to launch on April 11th, 2017.