Intel's launch of the first few chips in its 12th Generation Core desktop CPU family (code-named "Alder Lake") is officially in the rear-view mirror—but the processing drag races have just begun! AMD selections like the Editors' Choice-winning Ryzen 5 5600G ($259 list) haven't gone anywhere, and as AMD has struggled through 2021 to keep chips like those on the shelf at something close to their list prices, Intel is coming to the table with new options like the Core i5-12600K. Both are now on shelves for a bit over or under $300. Show
A long list of upgrades and improvements have come to the Intel desktop-CPU line with Alder Lake, versus previous generations of 14nm-based Intel processors. But will they be enough to take down one of AMD's reigning champs, known for its strength at casual gaming using its integrated Radeon graphics? Let's jump into a blow-by-blow comparison to find out. Core i5-12600K vs. Ryzen 5 5600G: Specs and ArchitectureTo start off our duel between these two midrange chips, let's take a peek at some base specs across the pair... First up, let's get some nomenclature out of the way. With Alder Lake, Intel is finally moving beyond the umpteenth revision of 14nm lithography, last seen in its 11th Gen ("Rocket Lake") Core family. Its new process technology, dubbed the "Intel 7 Process" (at its heart, a 10nm manufacturing process) underpins the Core i5-12600K. With this new design, the chip is divided between "Performance cores" (P-cores) and "Efficiency cores" (E-cores). This is part of 12th Gen Core's new "big.LITTLE"-style architecture, an approach which (in this specific chip) pairs six P-cores with four E-cores (for a total of "10" cores, sort of) and dynamically allocates the demands of your PC across them depending on the task at hand. (This is also why we see a core-to-thread ratio that is not 2:1; only the six P-cores are Hyper-Threaded in this new chip design, for two threads per core.) Chris Stobing is a hardware analyst at PCMag. He brings his experience benchmarking and reviewing consumer gadgets and PC hardware such as laptops, pre-built gaming systems, monitors, storage, and networking equipment to the team. Previously, he worked as a freelancer for Gadget Review and Digital Trends, spending his time there wading through seas of hardware at every turn. In his free time, you’ll find him shredding the local mountain on his snowboard, or using his now-defunct culinary degree to whip up a dish in the kitchen for friends. The Intel Core i5-11600K vs AMD Ryzen 5 5600X rivalry is a heated battle for supremacy right in the heart of the mid-range CPU market. AMD's Ryzen 5000 processors took the lead in the desktop PC from Intel's competing Comet Lake processors last year, upsetting our Best CPU for gaming recommendations and our CPU Benchmarks hierarchy. Intel's response comes in the form of its Rocket Lake processors, which dial up the power to extreme levels and bring the new Cypress Cove architecture to the company's 14nm process as Intel looks to upset AMD's powerful Zen 3-powered Ryzen 5000 chips. Intel has pushed its 14nm silicon to the limits as it attempts to unseat the AMD competition, and that has paid off in the mid-range where Intel's six-core Core i5-11600K weighs in with surprisingly good performance given its $232 to $262 price point. Intel's aggressive pricing, and the fact that the potent Ryzen 5 5600X remains perpetually out of stock and price-gouged, has shifted the conversation entirely. For Intel, all it has to do is serve up solid pricing, have competitive performance, and make sure it has enough chips at retail to snatch away the win. Features and Specifications of AMD Ryzen 5 5600X vs Intel Core i5-11600KSwipe to scroll horizontally Rocket Lake Core i5-11600K vs AMD Zen 3 Ryzen 5 5600X Specifications and PricingHeader Cell - Column 0Suggested PriceCores / ThreadsBase (GHz)Peak Boost (Dual/All Core)TDPiGPUL3AMD Ryzen 5 5600X$299 (and much higher)6 / 123.74.665WNone32MB (1x32)Intel Core i5-11600K (KF)$262 (K) - $237 (KF)6 / 123.94.6 / 4.9 (TB2)125WUHD Graphics 750 Xe 32EU12MB The 7nm Ryzen 5 5600X set a new bar for the mid-range with six Zen 3 cores and twelve threads that operate at a 3.7-GHz base and 4.6-GHz boost frequency. Despite AMD's decision to hike gen-on-gen pricing, the 5600X delivered class-leading performance at its launch, not to mention a solid price-to-performance ratio. Things have changed since then, though, due to overwhelming demand coupled with pandemic-spurred supply chain disruptions, both of which have combined to make finding the Ryzen 5 5600X a rarity at retail, let alone at the suggested $299 pricing. The Core i5-11600K comes with integrated graphics, so it wins by default if you don't plan on using a discrete GPU. Conversely, you can sacrifice the graphics for a lower price point. AMD has no high-end chips that come with integrated graphics, though that will change by the end of the year when the Ryzen 5000 Cezanne APUs arrive. Gaming Performance on AMD Ryzen 5 5600X vs Core i9-11600KThe Ryzen 5 and Core i5 families tend to be the most popular gaming chips, and given the big architectural advances we've seen with both the Zen 3 and Cypress Cove architectures, these mid-range processors can push fast GPUs along quite nicely. Image 1 of 18 (Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)At stock settings at 1080p, the Core i5-11600K notches an impressive boost over its predecessor, the 10600K, but the Ryzen 5 5600X is 7.8% faster over the full span of our test suite. Overclocking the 11600K brings it up to snuff with the stock Ryzen 5 5600X, but the overclocked 5600X configuration is still 3.6% faster. Pricing is the wild card, though, and the Core i5-11600K wins that category easily — even if you could find the Ryzen 5 5600X at suggested pricing. We'll dive into that in the pricing section. Application Performance of Intel Core i5-11600K vs Ryzen 5 5600XImage 1 of 11 (Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)We can boil down productivity application performance into two broad categories: single- and multi-threaded. The first slide in the above album has a geometric mean of performance in several of our single-threaded tests, but as with all cumulative measurements, use this as a general guide and be aware that performance will vary based on workload. The Core i5-11600K takes the lead, at both stock and overclocked settings, by 3.8% and 1%, respectively. These are rather slim deltas, but it's clear that the Rocket Lake chip holds the edge in lightly threaded work, particularly in our browser tests, which are a good indicator of general snappiness in a standard desktop PC operating system. We also see a bruising performance advantage in the single-threaded AVX-512-enabled y-cruncher. Image 1 of 21 (Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)Here we take a closer look at performance in heavily-threaded applications, which has long been the stomping grounds of AMD's core-heavy Ryzen processors. Surprisingly, in our cumulative measurement, the Core i5-11600K is actually 2.5% faster than the 5600X at stock settings and is 1.8% faster after we overclocked both chips. These are, again, slim deltas, and the difference between the chips will vary based on workload. However, the Core i5-11600K is very competitive in threaded work against the 5600X, which is an accomplishment in its own right. The substantially lower pricing is even more impressive. Overclocking of Ryzen 5 5600X vs Core i5-11600KWe have reached the land of diminishing returns for overclocking the highest-end chips from both AMD and Intel, largely because both companies are engaged in a heated dogfight for performance superiority. As a result, much of the overclocking frequency headroom is rolled into standard stock performance, leaving little room for tuners, making memory and fabric overclocking all the more important. There's still plenty of advantages with overclocking the midrange models though in today's Ryzen 5 5600X vs Core i5-11600K battle, but be aware that your mileage may vary. Winner: Tie Both the Ryzen 5 5600X and the Core i5-11600K have a bit more overclocking headroom than their higher-end counterparts, meaning that there is still some room for gains in the mid-range. Both platforms have their respective overclocking advantages and a suite of both auto-overclocking and software utilities, meaning this contest will often boil down to personal preference. Power Consumption, Efficiency, and Cooling of Intel Core i5-11600K vs AMD Ryzen 5 5600XImage 1 of 12 (Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)The Core i5-11600K comes with the same 125W TDP rating as its predecessor, but that rating is a rough approximation of power consumption during long-duration workloads. To improve performance in shorter-term workloads, Intel increased the PL2 rating (boost) to 251W, a whopping 69W increase over the previous-gen 10600K that also came with six cores. Pricing and Value of AMD Ryzen 5 5600X vs Intel Core i5-11600KAMD was already riding the pricing line with the Ryzen 5 5600X's suggested $299 price tag, but supply of this chip is volatile as of the time of writing, to put it lightly, leading to price gouging. This high pricing comes as a byproduct of a combination of unprecedented demand and pandemic-spurred supply chain issues, but it certainly destroys the value proposition of the Ryzen 5 5600X, at least for now. The Ryzen 5 5600X currently retails for $370 at Microcenter, which is usually the most price-friendly vendor, a $69 markup over suggested pricing. The 5600X is also $450 from Amazon (not a third-party seller). Be aware that the pricing and availability of these chips can change drastically in very short periods of time, and they go in and out of stock frequently, reducing the accuracy of many price tracking tools. In contrast, the Core i5-11600K can be found for $264 at Amazon, and $260 at Microcenter, which is surprisingly close to the $262 suggested tray pricing. Additionally, you could opt for the graphics-less Core i5-11600KF if you don't need a discrete GPU. That chip is a bit harder to find than the widely-available 11600K, but we did find it for $240 at Adorama (near suggested pricing). Swipe to scroll horizontally Header Cell - Column 0Suggested PriceCurrent (volatile for 5600X)Price Per CoreCore i5-11600K$262$262 to $264~$32.75Ryzen 5 5600X$299$370 to $450~$46.25 to $56.25Core i5-11600KF$237$240 (spotty availability)~$29.65 The Core i5-11600K doesn't come with a cooler, so you'll have to budget that into your purchasing decision. AMD's premium pricing for the Ryzen 5 5600X was a bit of a disappointment for AMD fans at launch, but the chip did offer enough advantages to justify the price tag. However, the arrival of the Core i5-11600K with its disruptive pricing and good-enough performance would probably merit a slight pricing adjustment from AMD, or the release of a non-X model, if these were normal times. These aren't normal times, though, and instead of being able to improve its value proposition, AMD faces crippling supply challenges. Is Ryzen 5 better than i5 11th generation?The Ryzen 5 3600 is 12.7% faster in our cumulative measurement if you top the Core i5-11400 with the stock cooler and force it to strictly adhere to Intel's recommended power settings.
What AMD processor is equivalent to the i5Add CPUs to start comparisons. Is Ryzen 5 5600X better than Intel Core i5 11600K?The Ryzen 5 5600X and the Core i5-11600K are close with six cores and twelve threads (and each of those cores has comparable performance), but the 5600X gets the nod here due to its bundled cooler and native support for DDR4-3200 memory.
Is Ryzen 5 better than i5?The Ryzen 5 offers more cores and threads than the Core i5, making it better suited for demanding tasks such as video editing and 3D rendering. Additionally, the Ryzen 5 has a higher base clock speed, meaning it can complete tasks faster than the Core i5.
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