It’s been about a month since the AMD Ryzen™ 5 processors launched, and we’re celebrating that anniversary with a brief little roundup of the greatest things said about these award-winning chips.

A little bit about Ryzen 5

Let’s face it: almost all of us multi-task while gaming. Browsing Reddit is just too interesting. There’s 10 seconds of downtime you can fill with dank memes and cute cats! You might even have more than one monitor on your desk to feed this appetite… some of your friends probably ask you what you do with all of those monitors. It’s hard to explain. They don’t understand.

But you know that multi-tasking life! And that brings us to today’s topic: with six cores and 12 threads, or four cores and eight threads, Ryzen 5 processors are fantastic gaming CPUs with a little extra “oomph” on the side for all those times you need to do anything beyond gaming.

Those core and thread counts just aren’t offered by any other CPUs at the same prices, so the benefit to you is simple: great performance in creative apps; beastly game streaming; scalability for DirectX® 12 and Vulkan®; and threads to spare when you inevitably fire up a movie, browse the web, and hang out on Discord alongside your game.

Even if you’re just going to sit down and game, because you have the superhuman focus that I do not, the Ryzen 5 CPUs are more than ready for the challenge:



Testing by AMD Performance Analysis Labs as of 4/24/2017. All games evaluated at 1920x1080 with the “High” in-game preset. System config: ASRock AB350 Gaming K4 (AMD), ASRock B250 Gaming M3 (Intel), GeForce GTX 1080 (21.21.13.7878 driver), Windows® 10 x64 (Build 1607), 16GB DDR4-2933 (16-16-16-36).

You don’t have to take our word for it

As independent reviewers dug into the Ryzen 5 lineup, I think it would be fair to say that they were impressed with everything these affordable processors can offer.





Proving that extra cores and threads make a difference, TechRadar said: “The extra processing power of the Ryzen 5 1600X puts Intel’s processors to shame, including both its closest competitor and a much higher-spec Broadwell-E part.”

Asserting that Ryzen 5 is the definitive midrange CPU, PC World wrote: “[…] Ryzen 5 is the way to go. It burns Core i5 to the ground in multi-threaded applications performance and doesn’t give up much in single-threaded performance.”

Noting that the extra cores and threads are great for gaming and creating, CG Magazine wrote: “the Ryzen 5 1600X is releasing as one of the best CPU’s to cater to both gamers and content creators alike.”

Speaking directly to creators who deserve an affordable option, Digital Trends said: “Whether you’re encoding video, streaming and recording while gaming, or compressing and uncompressing large files, you’ll see a benefit from the extra cores…”

Now that you know a little more about how beloved these fantastic chips really are, perhaps your curiosity is piqued. Maybe your credit card has even started to tingle a little (mine did). “But Robert,” you ask with skeptical eyes, “how much will all this performance cost me?”

Not much! AMD Ryzen 5 processors are now available from your favorite online retailers starting at around $169 US for the 8-thread 1400 model and $219 for the 12-thread 1600 model.1 Though you can buy any AM4 motherboard you like, boards based on the AMD B350 chipset are a great option starting around $80 US.2

And if you still need a little more help: let Paul’s Hardware guide the way with this awesome $1000 AMD Ryzen 5 PC!

Robert Hallock is a technical marketing guy for AMD's CPU division. His/her postings are his/her own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

1. AMD suggested electronic retailer pricing as of April 31, 2017.

2. Prices from Newegg.com as of April 31, 2017.