Hot on the heels of AMD’s stunning Ryzen 7 2700X and Ryzen 5 2600X (see my full launch article) are the non X-editions of those CPUs and I’ve finally finished benchmarking them - the Ryzen 5 2600 and Ryzen 7 2700. Today I’ll be taking a close look at the former, which is the cheapest 6-core/12-thread model of the new lineup, in content creation, overclocking and all-important game benchmarks.
Firstly we need to set the scene, so cast your minds back to this time last year and AMD was in the midst of releasing its first generation Ryzen CPUs. Amongst the numerous four, six, eight - all the way up to 16-core CPUs that hit retailer’s shelves during 2017 were a couple of gems and the most precious of those stones was the Ryzen 5 1600. It was great value, costing less than Intel’s overclockable quad-cores, but outstripping them by big margins in many benchmarks and once overclocked proved a great CPU.
| Ryzen 5 2600 | Ryzen 5 2600X | Ryzen 7 2700 | Ryzen 7 2700X | |
| Cores/Threads | 6/12 | 6/12 | 8/16 | 8/16 |
| Base Freq | 3.4GHz | 3.6GHz | 3.2GHz | 3.7GHz |
| Max Boost Freq | 3.9GHz | 4.2GHz | 4.1GHz | 4.3GHz |
| L2 Cache | 3MB | 3MB | 4MB | 4MB |
| L3 Cache | 16MB | 16MB | 16MB | 16MB |
| TDP | 65W | 95W | 65W | 105W |
| Price (US) | $199 | $229 | $299 | $329 |
| Price (UK) | £169 | £209 | $259 | £299 |
For me it was a great mid-range all-rounder – a crown it wrestled from Intel’s Core i5-7600K. It lacked a little grunt in some games, but elsewhere it was usually a far better choice than Intel’s quad-core CPU. Coupled with numerous price cuts which now see it retailing for less than $180, it’s still great value, but as Intel’s Coffee Lake and more recently AMD’s 2nd Generation Ryzen CPUs have shown, the original Ryzen models did lack performance in lightly threaded tasks, including some game titles. With the Ryzen 5 2600, though, AMD is looking to shake up the mid-range $200 CPU market and once again offer the best value all-round CPU in a six-core package.
How to overclock the Ryzen 5 2600
To do this, the Ryzen 5 2600 has the same lower latencies as all 12nm Zen+ Pinnacle Ridge CPUs as well as their enhanced boosting algorithms – Precision Boost 2 and XFR 2. It also has higher frequencies out of the box compared to its predecessor too – the Ryzen 5 1600 has a 200MHz lower base frequency and 250MHz lower maximum boost frequency.
Everything else is the same, such as the cache, with 19MB in total, as well as the cores and threads – six and 12, and the TDP, which remains at a relatively low 65W. One thing that isn’t the same, though, is the price, which has fallen along with most other CPUs in the last 12 months, and now sits at $199 for the Ryzen 5 2600. This is $20 less than its predecessor cost at launch and also $30 less than the Ryzen 5 2600X. It already seems like a bargain given Intel’s Core i5-8600K costs $40 more. Enough, on specifications and scene-setting, though – let’s take a look at performance.
Test systems
Both my Intel and AMD systems use the latest Windows 10 updates and drivers, including updates and motherboard BIOS versions to patch the latest Spectre and Meltdown security vulnerabilities, which are known to impact performance. The numbers you see here are exactly what you’d get on a real-world, up-to-date system.
I’ve tested each CPU at stock speed and then also at the maximum safe overclock I could achieve with each of my samples. I’ve used 3000MHz memory for testing, but I should stress that you’ll see much better performance from AMD CPUs if you use faster memory. I’d like to thank AMD for sending me the official 2nd Gen Ryzen press pack including the Ryzen 7 2700X and Ryzen 5 2600X, Intel for the Core i7-8700K, Overclockers UK for the Core i5-8600K, Corsair for the memory and PSU, Zotac for the graphics card, Samsung for the SSDs, Cooler Master for the processor cooler and Asus and MSI for the motherboards.
Intel System:
AMD System
Common hardware
Corsair 16GB 3000MHz Vengeance memory
Zotac GeForce GTX 1080 AMP! Edition
Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML120L RGB
Overclocking frequencies: Core i5-8600K – 5GHz, Core i7-8700K – 5GHz, Ryzen 5 2600X – 4.2GHz, Ryzen 7 2700X – 4.25GHz, Ryzen 7 1800X – 4.05GHz, Ryzen 5 1600X – 3.95GHz, Ryzen 5 1600 – 3.9GHz Ryzen 7 1700 – 4.05GHz, Ryzen 5 2600 – 4.15GHz
Content creation
Cinebench and HandBrake are two multi-threaded benchmarks that make use of all a CPUs cores and threads. Cinebench is a real-world rendering program benchmark while HandBrake is a real-world application and here I’ve converted a video file as a benchmark.
PC Mark 10 is a system benchmark and I’ve used the individual photo editing test to gauge performance using scores obtained by running the benchmark.
Gaming
Ashes of the Singularity performance was obtained using the built-in CPU benchmark. It responds well to CPU frequency and the number of cores and threads a CPU has.
Deus Ex is a reasonably CPU-dependent game, especially when you’re using a high-end graphics card such as the GTX 1080 I used in testing. I used the game’s built-in benchmark to obtain results.
Final Fantasy XV is a classic example of a game that’s more graphics card-bound than CPU-bound but it’s important to show that some games simply aren’t affected by CPU performance or optimization and than you’ll see no difference between AMD or Intel in these titles.
Unigine Superposition is a synthetic benchmark and more proof that CPU performance doesn’t always matter when it comes to gaming.
VR Mark leans towards high single core performance and as a result, responds to overclocking as well as high boost frequencies.
World of Tanks Encore is a benchmark testing the new Core graphics engine recently introduced in the game. I use fraps to record the frame rates over a one minute section of gameplay. It’s proven to be more graphics card than CPU-limited.
Fallout 4 is another game that benefits little from CPU performance unless you’re using a particularly slow CPU. However, it’s still popular and relevant as an example of an easy-to-run game.
Power Consumption
These tests are fairly self-explanatory. I measure the power consumption for the system as a whole at stock speed and when overclocked, with the system at idle and with the CPU under load.
Performance discussion
To start with, the biggest improvement came in overclocking, with my sample reaching 4.15GHz, which is 250MHz higher than my Ryzen 5 1600 will go with the same voltage of 1.425V. Starting with Cinebench, the Ryzen 5 2600 is noticeably quicker than its predecessor adding 7% to the score at stock speed and 8% when overclocked. In fact, this was just a fraction behind the overclocked Ryzen 5 2600X and faster than Intel’s Core i7-8700K at stock speed, nearly matching the stock speed 8-core Ryzen 7 1700 as well. It outstrips the Core i5-8600K by big margins too, even with the latter overclocked to 5GHz – amazing for a $200 CPU.
AMD’s single-core performance highlighted in the second Cinebench test still lags behind Intel, but it’s made big gains here with second-generation Ryzen. The Ryzen 5 2600 is quicker than every other first-generation Ryzen CPU and comes close to matching Intel’s Core i5-8600K when overclocked and faster memory will close the gap even more. Video encoding saw similar results, with HandBrake showing the Ryzen 5 2600 is equivalent to the Ryzen 5 1600X at stock speed, and matches the Ryzen 7 1700 when overclocked, as well as matching the overclocked Ryzen 5 2600X. Even when overclocked to 5GHz, the Core i5-8600K was still 8% slower.
For gaming, I don’t want to gloss over similar results but the likes of World of Tanks enCore and Fallout 4 are simply graphics card-limited with the CPUs I’m testing here, which are all fairly powerful and sport at least six cores. Intel has a small lead in Fallout 4 with noticeably higher average frame rates, but it’s in Deus Ex and Ashes of the Singularity that the real differences emerge. Deus Ex shows some big improvements for AMD, with a 7% boost to the minimum frame rate compared to the Ryzen 5 1600. Interestingly, the Ryzen 5 2600X is only a little quicker and the two 2600-series CPUs perform identically once overclocked.
While Intel still has a lead here, it’s important to state the impact memory speed had with the Ryzen 7 2700X, which managed a minimum frame rate of 71fps using 3400MHz memory. I didn’t have time to test the Ryzen 5 2600 with the faster stuff here, but I have no doubt it would be well into the 70fps area, closing the gap on Intel. Ashes of the Singularity loves high frequencies and lots of cores so it’s no suprise to see both the Core i7-8700K and Ryzen 7 2700X at the top of the charts. The Ryzen 5 2600 was less impressive here, although it’s still quicker than its predecessor and matched the Ryzen 5 2600X when overclocked too.
One final great result is the power consumption. At just 124W under load at stock speed, it was the most power-frugal CPU I tested and even when overclocked it only drew a little more power than the Intel Core i5-8600K.
Is this the best all-round ever desktop processor?
The Ryzen 5 2600 doesn’t top the performance graphs, but performance isn’t the only deciding factor when it comes to being a great value product. It’s $40 cheaper than the Core i5-8600K and $30 cheaper than the Ryzen 5 2600X, yet beats the former in every content creation test I tried and matches the latter once overclocked too. There are still a few game titles where Intel is faster, but coupled with faster RAM, those gaps are far smaller than they were last year.
You need to overclock it get the most out of it, but this is very easy to do and once pushed above 4GHz, it offers unbeatable value for just $200. If that’s you’re budget and your PC use varies between gaming and content creation, look no further than the Ryzen 5 2600.
