AMD Ryzen 5 5600G Review: Zen 3 and 7nm Vega
The six-core 12-thread Ryzen 5 5600G comes to market as part of AMD’s first salvo of 7nm ‘Cezanne’ APUs for desktop PCs, and today we’re taking an early look at the promising new chip. AMD plans to use the Cezanne chips to plug big price gaps in its Ryzen 5000 lineup that dominates our Best CPU list and CPU Benchmark hierarchy, but they’re limited to the OEM market until the full retail launch on August 5, 2021. We already grabbed an off-the-shelf system from HP to take the eight-core 16-thread Ryzen 7 5700G for a spin, and today we’re giving the $259 Ryzen 5 5600G the same treatment.
The Cezanne APUs come with Zen 3 execution cores paired with the Radeon Vega graphics engine for iGPU-powered gaming rigs, and their arrival is long overdue. Cezanne will be the first new AMD APUs available at retail since the quad-core Zen+ “Picasso” models came to market in 2019. AMD actually augmented that lineup with the more modern eight-core Zen 2-powered Ryzen Pro “Renoir” series in 2020, but limited those chips to OEM systems only. Now, three chip generations after it launched its last round of APUs (Zen 2, XT, Zen 3), AMD is finally replacing its 12nm quad-core Zen+ APUs.
AMD Ryzen 5 5600G Specifications and Pricing
The Ryzen 5000G family spans from four to eight cores and has the Zen 3 architecture that provides a 19% IPC uplift over the Zen 2 architecture used in the previous-gen Ryzen 4000G models. AMD is only bringing the eight-core 16-thread Ryzen 7 5700G and six-core 12-thread Ryzen 5 5600G to retail, at least for now. In addition, AMD currently hasn’t announced when it will bring the four-core eight-thread Ryzen 3 5300G or the 35W GE-Series models to retail, meaning we won’t see any significant change to our list of the Best Cheap CPUs any time soon.
The $259 Ryzen 5 5600G lowers the price of entry to the Ryzen 5000 family by $40, plugging the $100 gap between the $299 Ryzen 5 5600X and, well, AMD’s entire sub-$299 product stack. For now, the previous-gen $200 Ryzen 5 3600 represents the next step down AMD’s product stack. Based on suggested pricing, the 5600G grapples with the Core i5–11600K, meaning AMD has yet to address the Intel Core i5–11400, which is the current value budget gaming champ if you plan on using a discrete GPU. The six-core 12-thread Ryzen 5 5600G comes with a 3.7 GHz base and a 4.4 GHz boost clock, 16MB of L3 cache, and seven Radeon RX Vega CUs that operate at 1.9 GHz. The chip has a configurable TDP (cTDP) that stretches from 45W to 65W, though most desktop PCs will operate at the latter threshold. As with all Zen 3 processors, the Ryzen 5000G chips step up from DDR4–2933 to DDR4–3200 interface, which will help boost gaming performance with the integrated GPU. Surprisingly, the majority of the Ryzen 5000G ‘Cezanne’ SoC comes from the Ryzen 4000 ‘Renoir’ SoC. To improve time to market, AMD essentially swapped in new Zen 3 cores, leaving the I/O, 7nm Radeon RX Vega integrated graphics engine, and SoC design intact. As such, the 5600G has 24 lanes of PCIe 3.0 connectivity compared to 24 lanes of PCIe 4.0 found on the Ryzen 5000 models for the desktop PC. AMD also chose to reuse the 7nm Vega graphics engine [Jarred: again, sigh] instead of incorporating newer RDNA variants. Compared to the six-core Ryzen 5 5600X, you gain the Radeon RX Vega graphics engine but sacrifice 200 MHz of peak CPU boost clock and half the L3 cache. The 5600G does have a 200 MHz higher base clock, though. Stepping down $100 from the $359 eight-core Ryzen 7 5700G requires trading off one graphics CU and 100 MHz of GPU frequency along with 1MB of L2 cache, two CPU cores, and 200 MHz of peak CPU clock rates. The loss of GPU cores and clocks should mean about 15% less graphics performance, though it might be less of a difference than that since both GPUs are still likely limited at least in part by the shared memory bandwidth. The Cezanne desktop chips will find their way into 500-series and some 400-series motherboards, though support on the latter will vary by vendor.
The biggest testament to the 5600G’s strength comes from simply comparing it to the eight-core Ryzen 7 5700G. While the $359 Ryzen 7 5700G has two extra CPU cores, one extra CU, and higher GPU clocks, the $258 Ryzen 5 5600G lands within 4% at both resolutions — but for 30% less cash. Clearly, as expected, the shared memory bandwidth is more of a factor than raw compute.
The Intel chips give us about what we expect, roughly the same (or slightly less) performance than the crippled Ryzen 7 5700G with a single memory stick. Intel’s UHD Graphics 750 engine with the Xe architecture is a decent improvement over the company’s UHD Graphics 630 engine, but Intel ported the Xe architecture back to the 14nm process, resulting in fewer graphics cores. As such, the highest-end desktop chips currently have 32 EUs, whereas the 10nm Tiger Lake chips stretch up to 96 EU.
The 11700K and 11600K with UHD Graphics 750 struggle at both 1280x720 and 1080p, netting roughly half the performance of a properly configured Ryzen 7 5700G system. The Core i5–11400 fares even worse; its UHD Graphics 730 engine only comes with 24 EUs. Intel has made strides compared to the UHD Graphics 630 engine in the 10600K, which also comes with 24 EUs, but the best Intel chips still trail AMD’s three-year-old Ryzen 5 3400G ‘Picasso’ chips by significant margins.
Overall, the results are clear: If you’re looking for the best integrated graphics on the desktop, Cezanne is the new leader for desktop PCs. Overall the Ryzen 5 5600G gives you the lion’s share of the Ryzen 7 5700G’s performance, but at a much more accessible price point.
We might see more differentiation between the two chips when we turn the overclocking knobs for the full review, but we don’t think it will change the calculus too much. We found 1280x720 gaming to be solid across numerous titles with both Cezanne chips. While the number of titles you can play becomes extremely restricted at 1080p, you can get away with 1080p gaming with reduced fidelity settings in many titles, too.
