AMD has officially launched the Ryzen 5 3500 in Japan at a price point of 16,000 Yen. Like the Ryzen 5 3600, the 3500 also features 6 cores but lacks SMT, limiting the thread count to 6 as well. It also includes half as much L3 cache compared to the 3600 (16MB vs 32MB) and a slightly lower boost clock of 4.1GHz (3600 boosts up to 4.2GHz).

The Ryzen 5 3500 has already been available in the Indian and Chinese retail markets, and as an OEM exclusive in the West. The reason for a retail launch in Japan is unclear. My best guess would be that AMD is slowly going to phase out the older 2600 which presently sells for 14K.

The Ryzen 5 3500 goes up against the Intel Core i5-9400F which is priced around 2,000 Yen higher at 15,980. From older benchmarks, we already know that the 3500 beats the Core i5 in most scenarios. This will put more pressure on Intel’s budget consumer offerings.

As you can see, the Ryzen 5 3500 sits right below the Zen+ based 2600X and the 3400G. It’s nearly 10,000 Yen cheaper than the 3600 while offering nearly the same level of performance. We expect the prices of the older parts to drop in the coming months: ~15K for the 2600X and 16-17K for the 3400G.

Other than the reduced thread and cache amounts, the Ryzen 5 3500 retains all the features of the Zen 2/Matisse platform: PCIe 4.0 support, 7nm process and a 65W TDP, same as the 3600 and 3700X.

AMD Ryzen 5 3500 vs 3600 Benchmarks

In Cinebench R20, the single-core performance is largely the same as the 3600. The multi-core score of the Ryzen 5 3500 unsurprisingly is a notch below the 3600, although still higher than the Intel Core i5-9400F.

FFXIV

In Final Fantasy XIV, the Ryzen 5 3500 levels with the Core i5-9400F while the 3600 is marginally ahead.

In Fortnite (DX12), the Core i5-9400F gets a better average than the 3500 but the lows favor the latter. The Ryzen 5 3600 is once again ahead here, but the lows are nearly identical.

While streaming Fortnite with OBS Studio (x264), the same results are reproduced. The Core i5-9400F ends up last while the 3500 is sandwiched between the 3600 and the former. Strangely, the 3600 produces better averages with SMT turned off. This can be attributed to the higher cache available to each individual core in the scenario.

As you can see, the Ryzen 5 3500 thoroughly beats the Core i5-9400F across all the tested workloads, while offering nearly the same level of performance as the 3600 in gaming. Once the 2nd Gen Ryzen chips run out of stock, we expect AMD to launch the 3500 as a retail part globally.

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