AMD Ryzen 5 5600X bests Intel in single-thread performance

The Ryzen 5 5600X has come out on the top of the pile in a key area. And yes, these benchmarks put the AMD CPU ahead of the top-end Core i9-10900K. According to a recent PassMark update, the new CPU will be the best in terms of single-core loads. The reveal al but guarantees that the CPU battle is about to heat up.

In PassMark’s latest results, the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X has managed to come out ahead of all of Intel’s current offerings. The core metric here is that the CPU jumps ahead of everything else in terms of single-thread performance. The single-thread performance metric has been a key competition point between both CPU giants. Intel has been consistently ahead in this area for some time, and AMD is finally making up ground.

And the Zen 3 performance jump is pretty noticeable compared to the previous generation. AMD’s last-gen Ryzen 5 3600X is on par with 23% less single-core performance compared to the new offering.

What does this mean for the future?

AMD has been getting a bunch of traction lately thanks to its tighter pricing in previous CPU generations. The roughly equivalent 5 3600X is a pretty large gulf of performance, as even the multi-threaded performance is much better for the Zen 3 CPU, And with the inclusion of the motherboard updates for 400-series motherboards there will likely be a rush to upgrade when those release. It will be interesting to see how prices on older CPUs get affected.

The Ryzen 5 5600X will be the cheapest offering from AMD at $299, which does away with much of the price advantage that previous Zen CPUs enjoyed. Although for a six-core 12-thread CPU, that’s not bad for solid performance across the board. There are four new CPUs coming in the Zen 3 lineup. The launch of Zen 3 CPUs from AMD is getting much closer. Price points range from $299 to $799 at the top. They all drop on November 5.