AMD officially launched the Ryzen 5 3500X yesterday. Regrettably, the new six-core chip will not be available outside of the Chinese OEM market. Today, Chinese website Expreview posted its review of the Ryzen 5 3500X, which is probably as close as we'll ever get to it.

(Image credit: AMD)

If it isn't clear by now, the Ryzen 5 3500X was conceived to go head to head with Intel's Core i5-9400F, which shares the same six-core, six-thread configuration. Logically, Expreview pitched the two processors against each other in its review. The publication also threw the Ryzen 5 3600 into the mix so we can see exactly how much of a performance difference there is between the two Ryzen siblings.

Model Cores / Threads Base Clock Boost Clock L3 Cache TDP PCIe Lanes Memory Support MSRP AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6 / 12 3.6 GHz 4.2 GHz 32MB 65W PCIe 4.0 x 24 Dual DDR4-3200 $199 AMD Ryzen 5 3500X 6 / 6 3.6 GHz 4.1 GHz 32MB 65W PCIe 4.0 x 24 Dual DDR4-3200 N/A Intel Core i5-9400F 6 / 6 2.9 GHz 4.1 GHz 9MB 65W PCIe 3.0 x 16 Dual DDR4-2666 $157

The Ryzen system employs MSI's B450M Mortar Titanium motherboard and G.Skill's FlareX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4-3200 memory kit with CL14-14-14-34 timings. The Intel system utilizes the B360M Mortar Titanium and an undisclosed DDR4-2666 memory kit, which is the maximum memory speed that B360 motherboards support. An XFX RX 5700 XT Black Wolf graphics card handles the graphical duties.

Expreview has a pretty detailed review of the Ryzen 5 3500X. We've summarized the benchmarks that we consider are the most representative of real-world performance.

Office, Web Browser, and Productivity

PCMark 10 Ryzen 5 3600 Ryzen 5 3500X Core i5-9400F Score 6,169 5,860 5,618 Essentials 10,724 10,593 10,142 Productivity 8,432 8,010 7,550 Digital Content Creation 7,046 6,435 6,285 Word 8,665 8,524 7,916 Excel 16,213 14,727 13,832 PowerPoint 12,295 11,584 11,460 Edge 8,635 8,512 7,638

According to the overall PCMark 10 scores, the Ryzen 5 3500X delivers up to 4.3% higher performance than the Core i5-9400F. Despite not having SMT (Simultaneous Multi-Threading), the Ryzen 5 3500X is only 5.3% slower than the Ryzen 5 3600.

Rendering, Encoding, and Compression

Benchmark Ryzen 5 3600 Ryzen 5 3500X Core i5-9400F WinRAR 19,547 13,236 9,879 7-Zip Compression 45,515 36,225 29,184 7-Zip Decompression 787,969 477,672 453,480 X264 FHD Benchmark 50 35.47 34.9 X265 HD Benchmark 30 23.99 22.4 Corona 1.3 Benchmark 3,376,990 2,148,210 2,072,480 POV-Ray 3.7.1 Beta 3 Single thread 448.58 445.25 425.51 POV-Ray 3.7.1 Beta 3 Multi-thread 3,249.26 2,338.25 2,391.34 Blender 2.80 Single Thread 192.32 196.23 201.13 Blender 2.80 Multi-thread 25.52 34.69 36.03 Cinebench R20 Single-core 485 467 430 Cinebench R20 Multi-core 3,696 2,650 2,380

In general, the Ryzen 5 3500X is faster than the Core i5-9400F. In certain benchmarks, such as WinRAR or 7-Zip, there's a 34% and 24.1% performance delta, respectively. However, the other benchmarks show that the normal difference is usually between 2% to 11%.

Gaming

Game Ryzen 5 3600 Ryzen 5 3500X Core i5-9400F PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds 124.6 122.7 127.3 Overwatch 187.4 188 190.2 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive 249.3 238 238 Grand Theft Auto V 151.2 154.4 142 Shadow of the Tomb Raider 114 110 110 Total War: Three Kingdoms 73.6 73.3 73.3 Assassin's Creed Odyssey 65 65 59 Far Cry 5 109 108 111 Metro Exodus 63.39 63.25 63.63

When it comes to gaming, it's fair to say that the Ryzen 5 3500X performs in the same ballpark of the Core i5-9400F. Some titles favor AMD, while others favor Intel. The Ryzen 5 3500X beat the Core i5-9400F in two of the nine tested games. Both chips tie in three of them. So the scales lean slightly to Intel's side.

Power Consumption

Load Ryzen 5 3600 Ryzen 5 3500X Core i5-9400F Idle 54W 47.5W 42W AIDA64 Stress FPU 132W 124W 111W

Although both the Ryzen 5 3500X and Core i5-9400F are rated with a 65W TDP (thermal design power), Expreview's tests show that AMD's chip is seemingly more power hungry. The Ryzen 5 3500X draws up to 13.1% and 11.7% more power than the Core i5-9400F at idle and heavy loads, respectively.

Since the Ryzen 5 3500X is an OEM chip, AMD doesn't list a recommended price for it. However, JD.com, a major Chinese retailer, has the Ryzen 5 3500X listed for 1,099 yuan, which approximately translates to $154. However, Intel recently lowered the Core i5-9400F's recommended pricing from $182 to $157. At any rate, the Core i5-9400F can be found for as low as $139.99.